AS IF IT WERE “THIS IS OUR MUSIC”
— “mu” one hundred eighteenth part —
Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again
the ground that was to’ve been there wasn’t.
Bits of ripcord crowded the box my head had
be-
come, the sense we were a band was back,
the sense we were a band or in a band . . . The
rotating gate time turned out to be creaked,
we
pulled away. Lord Invader’s Reform School
Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dionysian
Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet . . . The sense
we were a band or were in a band had come
back,
names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num-
bers’ crooked sense our bequest. Clasp it tee-
tered near to, abstraction, band was what to
be
there was . . . Band was what it was to be there
we shouted, band all we thought it would
be. Band was a chant, that we chanted, what
we
chanted, chant said it all would be alright . . .
A new band, our new name was the Abandoned
Ones, no surprise. We dwelt in the well-being
that
awaited us, never not sure we’d get there, what
way we were yet to know. I stood pat, a rickety
sixty-six, tapped out a scarecrow jig in waltz
time, big toe blunt inside my shoe . . . Who was I to
so
rhapsodize I chided myself, who to so mark my-
self, chill teeth suddenly forming reforming,
who to let my heart out so . . . To be at odds with
my-
self resounded, sound’s own City the wall I hit
my head against, polis was to be and to be so hit . . .
We heard clamor, clash, blue consonance, noise’s
low
sibling
sense
________________
We pumped our arms as though they were
pistons, elbows in and out. We nicked our
name to Abandon. Abandon was our name
now . . .
Thus was our music no music. Music too
we left behind. Everything beside the point
that there was no point, everything thus the
point . . . Thus was being there sibling sense
gone
treble, the balm to be a band the true amen-
ity music was, the fact of having been there
new
to its Buddha-nature, the fact of having been
there
moot
•
To have been there wasn’t dasein. No Hei-
degger told my horse. Trussed up to
the side it sat, pressed and preponderant,
sov-
ereign, self-contained, were it music the
music we sloughed . . . Slipped accompa-
niment, surrogate cloud, rapt adjournment.
Agitant. Surrogate cue . . . I kept clear of it,
caught
up at arm’s length, all but caught out I came
to see . . . Thus was our music no music it seemed
I said, mujic more than music I might’ve said,
might
as well have said, no matter I mumbled other-
wise under my breath . . . The Freedmen’s Debate
Society our name now was, the Ox Tongue
Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative
ser-
ration. Cutaway run, cutaway arrest . . . Thus was
our music no music I did say, say’s default on
sing such as it was . . . We called it history even
so,
insisted it, the it crowding the corner of eve-
ryone’s eye. None of us were not crept up on,
none not required we sing it, say it. Thus was
our
say not
so
________________
Beginning again for the muleteenth time,
we counted off. It was our muleteenth
breakdown, muleteenth new beginning . . .
Brass
rubbed off on our lips, reed rubbed off as
well, string steel left on our fingertips, stick
wood
left on our
thumbs