The weird tune

I had a taste once
for the popular stuff
but it's gone now
and my cravings have turned
to stranger things.

There is a body
of music
so old and so queer
as to sound
made by creatures
we would not recognize as human
but perhaps
some species that
dragged itself
from caves or
from deep in the sea
and just began to wail
a song that was later
taken up by billy goats
who rose upon their hind legs
and sang like men,
their songs later
embraced by toads
chanting like monks

The weird tune

at the bottom of a well
and finally
adopted by men
who had to fashion instruments
from intestine, seaweed and bone
to reproduce it.

Once you have heard this
your ear turns
and deforms
and develops its own cravings
that cannot be satisfied elsewhere.
One spends one's hours
rummaging through crates
of discarded albums
seeking markings like
secret glyphs on a map
identifying the contents,
perhaps there will be a word
found only in a dreadful song
or there might be a hat
favored by singers
who have spat out strange sequences
of sharps and flats
and whose mouths
cannot be reset
to the modern shape.

You buy the album
and the clerk looks at you
with a knowing raised eyebrow
and you say nothing
but nothing needs said
in this cult
of the weird tune.