More Than A Woman
Ever since I woke up today,
a song has been playing uncontrollably
in my head - a tape looping
over the spools of the brain,
a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun,
mad fan belt of a tune.
If must have escaped from the radio
last night on the drive home and tunneled
while I slept
from my ears to the center of my cortex.
It is a song so cloying and vapid I won't even
bother mentioning the title
but on the plays as if I were a turntable
covered with dancing children and their spooky
pantomimes,
as if I everything I had ever learned was being
slowly replaced by its slinky chords and the
puff-balls of its lyrics.
It played while I watered the plants and continued
when I brought in the mail and fanned out
the letters on a table.
It repeated itself when I took a walk and watched
from a bridge brown leaves floating in the channels
of a current.
Late In the afternoon it seemed to fade,
but I heard it again at the restaurant when I peered
in at the lobsters
lying on the bottom of an illuminated tank which
was filled to the brim with their copious tears.
And now as this dark window in the middle
of the night I am beginning to think
I could be listening to music of the spheres,
the sound no one ever hears because
it has been playing forever,
only the spheres are colored pool balls,
and the music is oozing from a jukebox
whose lights I can just make out through
the clouds.
