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.