As If It Were “This Is Our Music”

  Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again

      the ground that was to’ve been there wasn’t.

Bits of ripcord crowded the box my head had

                                                                       be-

    come, the sense we were a band was back,

the sense we were a band or in a band...    The

   rotating gate time turned out to be creaked,

                                                                        we

    pulled away. Lord Invader’s Reform School

       Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dionysian

Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet...    The sense

   we were a band or were in a band had come

                                                                        back,

    names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num-

bers’ crooked sense our bequest. Clasp it tee-

   tered near to, abstraction, band was what to

                                                                        be

there was...    Band was what it was to be there

     we shouted, band all we thought it would

   be. Band was a chant, that we chanted, what

                                                                         we

    chanted, chant said it all would be alright...    

A new band, our new name was the Abandoned

   Ones, no surprise. We dwelt in the well-being

                                                                           that

       awaited us, never not sure we’d get there, what

   way we were yet to know. I stood pat, a rickety

     sixty-six, tapped out a scarecrow jig in waltz

time, big toe blunt inside my shoe...    Who was I to

                                                                               so

    rhapsodize I chided myself, who to so mark my-

       self, chill teeth suddenly forming reforming,

   who to let my heart out so...    To be at odds with

                                                                              my-

    self resounded, sound’s own City the wall I hit

      my head against, polis was to be and to be so hit...

  We heard clamor, clash, blue consonance, noise’s

                                                                              low

    sibling

  sense

             ________________

  We pumped our arms as though they were

    pistons, elbows in and out. We nicked our

name to Abandon. Abandon was our name

                                                                    now...

      Thus was our music no music. Music too

  we left behind. Everything beside the point

    that there was no point, everything thus the

point... Thus was being there sibling sense

                                                                  gone

    treble, the balm to be a band the true amen-

  ity music was, the fact of having been there

                                                                      new

      to its Buddha-nature, the fact of having been

                                                                            there

    moot

                        •

To have been there wasn’t dasein. No Hei-

    degger told my horse. Trussed up to

  the side it sat, pressed and preponderant,

                                                                  sov-

      ereign, self-contained, were it music the

  music we sloughed... Slipped accompa-

    niment, surrogate cloud, rapt adjournment.

Agitant. Surrogate cue... I kept clear of it,

                                                                 caught

    up at arm’s length, all but caught out I came

to see... Thus was our music no music it seemed

  I said, mujic more than music I might’ve said,

                                                                          might

      as well have said, no matter I mumbled other-

  wise under my breath... The Freedmen’s Debate

    Society our name now was, the Ox Tongue

Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative

                                                                          ser-

  ration. Cutaway run, cutaway arrest... Thus was

    our music no music I did say, say’s default on

sing such as it was... We called it history even

                                                                        so,

    insisted it, the it crowding the corner of eve-

ryone’s eye. None of us were not crept up on,

  none not required we sing it, say it. Thus was

                                                                         our

  say not

so

             ________________

  Beginning again for the muleteenth time,

    we counted off. It was our muleteenth

breakdown, muleteenth new beginning...

                                                                  Brass

      rubbed off on our lips, reed rubbed off as

    well, string steel left on our fingertips, stick

                                                                        wood

      left on our

  thumbs