12.1.09

Just now. Not a poem. Maybe soon:

Summer, and you protect your ears

Against the lawnmower's roar

With music.

Your iPod skips a song,

Landing on one you downloaded

Long ago. And have not

Listened to since.

And in that instant, you are

What you claim you can never be:

Two places at once.

As the music pours in,

As sweat pours out,

You are in your car.

Parked, in the snow.

The song playing

For your ears,

The very first time:

You need to go in.

You need to finish.

It is very cold.

It is getting late.

But you stay to write

But you stay to hear

Down that line you liked.

The chorus one last time

In both worlds, the music is
So clear.  Though it's hard
To discern which smell it is
That permeates the air:

The fresh-cut grass

Or, the snow.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an iPod

I

Among two teenage siblings

The only speaking thing

Was the sound of the iPod.

II

I was of three minds,

Like an iPod

In which there are three playlists.

III

The iPod whirled in the washing machine.

It was part of the small tragedy.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and an iPod

Are one and a half.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of bass

Or the beauty of treble,

The iPod whistling

Both just right.

VI

Icicles filled the long windows

Of my apartment.

The shadow of the iPod

Crossed them, quickly.

My mood

Traced in the shadow

Of having dropped it again.

VII

O fat men of RIAA,

Why do you imagine golden royalties?

Do you not see how the iPod

Holds the bootlegs

Of the pirates around you?

VIII

I know noble ballads

And brash, inescapable powerchords;

But I know, too,

That the iPod is involved

In what I hear.

IX

When the iPod was out of sight

It marked the moment

Of actual solitude.

X

At the sight of an iPod

Glowing a pale light,

The lovers of euphony

Stop their cries.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a station wagon with his parents.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he realized

The battery was low

On his iPod.

XII

His mouth is moving.

My iPod must be playing.

XIII

It was day all night

It was a party

And there would be a party.

The iPod sat

In its docking station.