A therapist told me it was okay
to be angry, to express my anger,
just in non-violent ways,
but if I had to be violent
to use the gym or the sidewalk
or the trail that climbed the hill
near where I worked.
I met all these angry people
at the gym, on the sidewalk,
walking up and down the trail
expressing their anger
and their vitriol
but just not hitting anything.
Most of them anyway.
What happened to moderation,
gentleness, sublimation
of selfishness into altruism?
The word violent made me start
to dislike the sight of the words
violin and viola, as if the hourglass shape
mimicked the human, and then
I began to dislike guitar,
with those strings and the hole
in the middle like a mouth
that cannot close
but keeps on echoing.
I began to see harps as enormous
blades for cutting a sausage
into thin slices in one fling,
a trombone as endless jawboning,
a trumpet as narcissism,
a piano as a brisk dismissive.
I began to see America as a symphony
no longer playing the same piece
but all blaring, strumming, sounding off
while wandering about the stage,
the conductor with that little baton
whipping it madly
like a child attempting to instruct
a kite how to fly in a gale.
Music made me angry,
especially the unheard music
that was playing in people’s ears
in the gyms, the sidewalks, the trails,
even in just one ear at the coffee shops
as people carried on one-way
conversations with each other.