Like Playing Your Life Savings on Pull-Tabs

I’ve been waiting 

so long 

for this moment.

Through Mondays cramped with meetings.

Through Tuesdays of unending paperwork. 

Through Wednesdays of pointless errands..

Through Thursdays too scattered to think.

Through Fridays filled with anticipation.

Through evenings too tired to raise the remote.

Past chores that double into the infinite,

and boggle the mind at their insignificance.

I’ve been waiting 

so long 

for this moment

and now I feel it

running out; circling

like brown toilet water,

before clear water

fills it again.

But the odor lingers.^

^Eat your fucking heart out, Emily Dickinson

Photo by Bradley Stemke

If Beethoven Owned an iPhone

his symphonies would number not 9, but 2 

(perhaps 2 ½, leaving one

“Unfinished” like Bruckner did). 

He would check his Twitter mentions 

after every performance, scroll

the BBC Music app with each album dropped. 

Ghost vibrations would leave incomplete

his Opus 70 Ghost Trio. 

Fretting about his branding, 

he’d compose and orchestrate his LinkedIn bio.

If his Heiligenstadt Testament 

were leaked to Buzzfeed, he’d need to release 

a PR video on YouTube,

sit down with Terry Gross, 

post pics of his semicolon tattoo. 

Conducting his Triple Concerto from the piano, 

he might butt-dial that Soprano 

he collabed with once, six years ago. 

He would totes tote his Zelfie-Schtüken

on his daily walks around @RathausPark.

#NeverNotComposing

He would force his niece 

to post TikToks of herself flossing

to his latest mixtape. 

On death’s stoop, he’d doomscroll

in a darkened room, puffy undereyes,

shock of iconic hair cast in a sallow blue glow, 

pressing the speaker end to his deaf ear,

volume full, feeling fomo 

for his protégé’s Première.

#yolo