Each nighttime’s stopping
A valuation,
A ritual passage
Of validation. 

Finding that truer voice,
Making that better choice,
Keeping that range on pitch,
It's so hard, such a bitch.

There isn’t time
For many a song
That deepens faster our being.

Dad asked me to kill him yesterday,
To make him not be there.
His hand I held, not enough,
His chest for once quite bare.

Are houses found or
Are they alternate spaces
Forever
Living in another universe?

The challenge of balance
Propels each day.
A constant questioning
Tightens the way.

Am I presumptive  
To plod through each variation 
No Glenn Gould,
No architecture of sound?

We cannot pause to mourn.
We cannot stop to cry.
No longer time for gentle ripples
Scaling rocks in pools of progress.

Should I accept what happened,
This full frontal attack on posterity,
Or search out Monteverdi?

Might not now the Child be born—
He who is kept in abeyance,
Questioned by authorities,
Denied due conveyance.

Who can find value
Among the valueless?
Who can spot meaning
In the meaningless?

The mountains west still beckon
As the oligarchs plunder and burn.
The opioid-riddled legions,

Reject the earplugs,
Listen for once brave,
Rejoice in the music,
Sounds to savor, to save.