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.