through headphones

ev­ery­thing sounds bet­ter
through head­phones—
ev­ery suc­cu­lent morsel of mu­sic
drips from the wires lodged in the ears or
packed tight against the head,
some­times com­plete­ly en­cap­su­lat­ing our ears,
hell, box­ing our whole heads in­to
our own per­son­al lis­ten­ing stu­dio
ev­ery­where we go, at most times of the day—
one imag­ines that Ni­et­zsche, who died 10 years too ear­ly
to ex­pe­ri­ence the won­der of Bald­win’s in­ven­tion,
would have nev­er even got up to piss &
would have rather stayed lis­ten­ing to his fa­vorite melodies
while pump­ing out work
un­til his heart stopped in his chest
(no doubt from the thump­ing tim­pani) &
the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the two,
had they been of rough­ly the same age, liv­ing in the same area,
might have brought out Ni­et­zsche’s own in­sis­tence that
“god is dead,” whilst Bald­win’s mor­monism would have
made Ni­et­zsche ask him just ex­act­ly how some­one could in­vent
such an in­ter­est­ing & im­por­tant cul­tur­al tool
on the one hand,
while liv­ing a life­style es­tab­lished by a man who
swore that he was giv­en gold­en plates of rev­e­la­tion & seer stones
by an “an­gel” who amidst oth­er things,
in­sists up­on the vi­va­cious tour of the Amer­i­c­as by that spe­cial
fic­tion­al char­ac­ter, post-res­ur­rec­tion &
the need to sport mag­i­cal un­der­gar­ments through­out one’s life,
but then the wast­ing of all his mon­ey that came from this
won­der­ful in­ven­tion on the lds, sub­se­quent­ly go­ing
bank­rupt & fi­nal­ly spend­ing two years in prison at Mc­Neil
should have brought it all home.