The Electronic Lounge

Always the search for rituals,
Groynes against the drifting sands,
Mirrors reflecting back death:
Here, in my cave, I paint the walls
With deer and bison, and ,beating the drum,
Sharpen my arrows for the hunt.
Airs and perfumes tease the senses,
Harmonics infiltrate the mind,
Tints and tones ineffable, exquisite,
Omens absorbed into the skin.
Whale-songs echo through the ocean,
Javanese music filters through the rain,
Reverberations of the gamelan,
Of South Seas sailors beached in dream.
In the gardens of the water castle
A dancer moves at the flute’s command,
Seahorse lilting over coral.
Perhaps the world has already ended,
And nobody noticed, just carried on.
Weightlessness is the game,
Picking up sounds from radios and satellites,
Egyptologist of the soul,
Deciphering hieroglyphs in the night.
We are in the realm of spooks:
The rock gong resounds in the still,
The voice in the spider’s egg whispers,
The African mask booms and hums.
Koi carp in a Japanese garden,
I turn restless circles in my pond,
With the chanting of the sutra,
With the blowing of conch shells.
Minute is the sound of the water chime:
Through the bamboo listening pole
Hear the pure sparse bell tones of random drips
Ringing in their underground chamber.
Your mind is walking on rice paper,
Making not the slightest tear.
Sea sounds are interstellar dust storm,
The sound of mosses and lichens thinking,
Chinese calligraphy emerging from the white.
I fly like a bat through confusion,
Sounding the cavernous depths,
And the lutist’s strict fingers compose
A crane dancing in a deserted garden.
Walking on the singing sands,
Seduced by green reflective sea,
You are the vanishing nightingale,
The Mozart of the Amazon.
Eerie hoots of gibbons, echoing across river gorges,
Gregorian chant rising in the cathedral,
Reverberations in the railway station,
Fill the lunar desert of a mercury drop.