once was pink
there’s that word again
about time too ’cos
nothing clangs any more
it’s all compressed
in that acronym format in which
the algorithm reduces
what you expect to hear and preserves
the difference
the complex timbre that reminds
some old dude of childhood
or a passage in a novel he forgot
he’d read at dusk
500 years ago in exile far inland
press PLAY and it reproduces
every nuance they recorded
of sax and chord and reedy
susurration in their state of the
art studio
and if you concentrate about
halfway through track ten you’ll hear
that word again
it rhymes with silence
and if you tap it with the tip
of your middle finger regularly
it resonates with shadows
like the hum of a fast car at night
gliding between drizzling fields
where naked humans forage one of them
looks up and is dazzled by the hovering
chopper’s spotlight
there’s that word again
burnt into his brain drenched
with kilowatts sweetly shocking loud