A smooth jazz blast from the musical past:
The confused ethnomusicology,
The pleasantly discordant riffs and
Jingles of "Hiroshima"—
The band not the bomb site—
Whose fusion sound
Evokes an insane sextet
Granting membership, inexplicably to
Schroeder-- the Peanuts loony tune—
Hitting only the black keys of his piano,
His miniature keyboard
Sour, melodious & pure.
I am reading Ayn Rand’s
"Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition"
Of The Fountainhead, 1993;
An important 20th Century novel, I am told,
A book first copyrighted—
That’s copyrighted spelled without a W—
First copyrighted in 1943,
A copyright renewed in 1971,
By Ayn herself;
An important book--
Whether you’ve bought into her
Man-worshiping atheism—
Or not.
I write these words on the back of a business envelope,
The only paper to be found in this house,
Not ironic, while pondering
A wireless laptop charging,
Plugged in far away on a kitchen countertop.
Lying on a couch in northern New Mexico,
It is an Ides of March 2014 mid-afternoon.
I am 64 years old.
Old enough to know better;
Growing more conservative each day,
With Ayn, I celebrate he who never gives up,
“By spitting in one’s own face,
And damning existence.”
The Fountainhead:
She called the book a “GUIDEPOST,”
A reminder of man’s noble vision,
Proclaiming man in noble glory.
A Sartre you were not, Ayn.
How interesting to think of
The two of you, co-temporaries,
Aspirating the same Earth atmosphere.
This fact itself, an astonishing example of
"Weltanschaung" polarity.
No wonder the world is so ****** up.