In Praise of Listening to Music Loudly

in praise of listening to music loudly

would be the name of this poem

if I named my poems,

but I haven’t done that since eighth grade

and now I’m even more of an adult

than I’ve ever been, living alone

for the first time in 18 years

and doubling down on my principles

like a lucky man happily laying down

his last quarter in a casino.

in my first year of college

I used to blast music in my small dorm room

through the shoebox-sized speakers

attached to my stacked, multi-component stereo

while I gripped my pen as I am now,

bent into a shell of feeble protection

from the palpable push of the sound waves

― usually from the jesus and mary chain compilation

“the sound of speed” ― as I fled deeper

into the completion of a writing assignment.

yesterday as I drove home from safeway

I cued up the album version of the killers’

“read my mind” ― a song so good

I once built a mix tape around it

and its acoustic and electronic variations ―

and I rolled down my windows

to be able to comfortably exist within

the volume I was subjecting myself to,

the rain acupuncturing my face, as I raced home

to check my mail like giddy kid.

and now, today, here as I’m finishing this

and earlier as I drove around the westside

to go to a movie and do errands,

it’s been “dark storm” that’s been on loud repeat,

an early jezabels track that gallops like an escaped horse

through the surf of my thought process,

causing me to turn the tide into a corral,

and I’ll tame the strident song of my recent life

the same way, by grabbing it when it nudges me

toward change I can accept, then riding it triumphantly:

“In Praise of Listening to Music Loudly”