the process of killing a new favorite song

and so you’ve stumbled upon a new tune,
a new beat,
a new assemblage of lyrics & distorted guitar,
beat & lyrics,
twang & acoustic guitar
all meshed together &
you cannot get enough of it.

at first you hear it somewhere that you had not
planned,
be it on the radio, the television, at a friend’s house,
or any number of the ways in which people can
consume music via the net these days,
legally or illegally---
all the same,
you now hold the song in your possession,
so to speak,
downloaded somewhere in your presence,
pc, pod or phone,
or maybe if you can still find it,
burned by that laser onto those fossils that are called, um,
compact discs.

the melody, the riff, the hook,
buries itself within your brain
just behind your retinas & it
stirs, it dances as you agree in kind to
memorize the lyrics &
encrypt the rest inside the walls of your skull,
tattooed on your heart,
flowing within the veins of your body
beating like the heart
throbbing like an orgasm
electrified like some unlucky wanderer who got stuck in an open field in the middle of a
lightening storm.

but you take it with you on the train
you take it into work
you listen to it on your lunch break
you listen to it walking home
you listen to it fixing dinner
you listen to it during dinner
you tap the vein & shoot
tap the vein again & shoot
drive the needle in
drive the needle in
drive the needle in again
cranking the volume more than the last time
like a junkie whose high is dwindling
like a whore/john who just can’t feel anything anymore
like a soldier/cop who no longer cringes at the sight of gore
produced by a violent kill.

desensitized & lost alone in a room with a melody that no longer means anything---
closing your eyes &
staring down within at the death of
a song you only just stumbled upon a few
days ago.