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