Take a second to honor
the amplifiers that made
the music louder, swung it
from parlor to night club to
theater and then arena;

commemorate the day feedback
came to be, the day distortion
came to be; salute the heat
of gain, the saintly shiver
of spring reverb, the jaw-clench
of chorus all carried

by boxes marked Fender 
and Gibson, Supro and Vox,
Marshall, Mesa Boogie, 
Randall and Roland; Orange,
Peavey, Hartke, and all those
one-offs and forgotten names,
tubes aglow in each
like the candles on so many cakes:

happy birthday to the Big Noise.

My base tongue is
rock, even more foundational
than English. My dialect, punk
underlaid with classic,
smatterings of metal. I know
a few words in prog. 

Old blues and country and basic folk
are a second language to me,
mostly because I have a passion for
etymology that led me to 
learning them to better understand
my root and seed.

I know enough jazz to do more
than get by.  It’s a language
I love; I’m swiftest to translate fusion
in my head, but nuances may
slip by if couched too deeply in bop
or swing; most excited when I hear
free being spoken, though I cannot
say a word.

Orchestral? Fine. Chamber?
Fine. I grew up surrounded,
immersed in these and opera too,
but have lost the taste for them
and now it’s like recalling 
childhood as it was before my memory
was solid enough to track.

I wish I could speak hip hop
better than I can now.  I know
what I love of it and how it fastens
to poetry, my first and best craft. 
I am resolved to any facility
I may yet develop being 
strictly rote, merely mechanical;
I am serene in knowing hip hop
is now and forever will be fine
without me.

I turn it all off

and face the world:
salsa, son, bachata, merengue;
rai, reggae, reggaeton, dub;
Breton, Irish, Scottish, English;
K-pop, J-pop, EDM, trance;
drum and bass, raga, township jive;
how much noise do you want me to love?
How many tongues can this old man learn?

Then there’s this:

somewhere on a beach
with no musicians around for miles,
the ocean, the drummer,
is still beating time 
on the earth itself.

This air-conditioned
room has recently
been full of Nas

and Brand Nubian.
That’s just the truth. Not trying
to make a point 

or add to my name-weight
by borrowing heft from others.
It’s just that there’s an afternoon

of 90s videos on TV and those
were the only two
that made me look up.

I don’t believe in
nostalgia.  A lot of
so called classic rock

isn’t. A lot of hip hop
went over my head
and still does. When 

a good punch lands, though,
it lands well and age
means nothing to me

or to the music. “Street Dreams.”
“Don’t Let It Go To Your Head.”
In case you were wondering. In case

you want to know more as
I wanted to know more. I wrote
those names down

in an air-conditioned room.
I turned them up. I looked them
up and watched them again

alone, at top volume,
the way I listen to any rock 
that hits me right

at a given moment and makes me
want to know more. Anything that gets me
to sniff around new knowledge

excitedly, as if I was hot upon 
some original trail away from
the lonely air-conditioned room.

A pop star is filmed
holding a machete
in what I think must be
a field of sugar cane.

Is this her first time
holding a machete?
That’s quite a hat.
Where was this filmed?

I look it up to be sure.
Yes, that’s sugar cane.
Yes, it’s possible that 
she has held a machete before,

based on what little I know
from what I’ve read of her.
It doesn’t answer the question
of how these images connect

to this song. I didn’t listen
to the lyrics.  I’ll have to look them up.
Once I’m prepared, I’ll be able
to live more in the moment

the next time I hear this song
or see this video. After all
I did like her previous work.
Perhaps I will like this, 

now that I am fully informed
as to what I will be watching.
Until then, nothing.  I feel 
nothing.