The symphony of a city is discordant noise,
ragtag orchestra of
patchwork instruments,
where flutes and piccolos trill circles in parks
around clarinets that
talk too loudly and ignore
their fellow woodwinds’ cries
of “focus on me, it’s my solo now”
and oboes that disapprove of every clarinet,
“you’re doing it wrong,”
while pushing tuneless whistles
and tuneful recorders.
Turn the corner.
A mandolin and an accordion are arguing again,
same ones every day, same fight –
mandolin parties on Fridays,
invite all the banjos and guitars
and lutes and they’re much too loud,
accordion can’t sleep
and now the entire street can’t either.
Walk down the stairs.
Broken drums beg money, play a dazed solo
that stately pianos ignore,
shuffling the sheet music
they hold, mute, on the way to
something and somewhere better, waiting
in the wings with harmonicas and cymbals and
harps and didgeridoos and xylophones and
saxophones and violins and cellos,
all creating the glorious song of the city.
Board the train.
Curtain goes up on
an earbud audience I was once
a part of, refusing to listen,
and though the tuba sings,
the maraca chuckles, the bass wails,
it prefers piano and piano, homogeneous,
a note of violin like how
they take their coffee, same way I used to.
Train stops.
I want to hear the world through its cacophonous
melodic speaker, in its spontaneous glory,
when the imperfections all
blend into beautiful concordance.
I exit.
I will breathe in the sound,
capture it in my lungs like oxygen and disperse it
to every part of me so that I can become
all humanity in a single heartbeat.