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It Makes You Age (Sharp 9 Gallery)

A force
Which compulses contortions in your face,
Sends spasms through your body,
Induces irregular emotional intervals——
Music!

Positioned above a chair,
Beside a tea candle,
Under which was a table,
Were two ears——
A head sat between them
And so on.

Then a old man came out, and the lights dimmed.
We dove in vibrational pools and swam——
Shouts and giggles, respectful frowns and grins——
“Boom! Buddlii-a-deet, boom-bum-badum bam!”

A silly sheepish smile towards the laughing couple behind me
As I went for a(nother) tall Slovenian cab.

Energy sent into the audience,
With little remorse and lacking constraint.
It had its way with me——so obvious
That where I had felt it, wrinkles remained.

[They think that if Death saw them there,
Without the marks of time,
He’d pass them, oh but they forget
That little babies die :((]

After the show,
Because it was clear by the timing of my hollers and spasms that I knew what I was hearing,
A woman slightly aged for my taste was looking at me with big and unreciprocated eyes
And asked me what I played——
I said Mahjong, games, tricks, pranks, jokes, Mario, house, and mermaids.

I told her she ought to listen to more Sun Ra——for the sake of her soul.

And when her inebriated twink,
Who looked like a xerox of a xerox of someone I once knew,
Came over and touched me on the shoulder
And asked me what I played
I said Nothing, Just Listen.

I quickly went on my way,
and you’ll have to understand
Sometimes that
Violent imagery doesn’t mean that something is bad or wicked or contemptable.

What I mean is,
Never, before being in that room,
not at Disney World, or mass, or McDonald’s, or the beach,
Had I seen so many smiling eyes.