The gibbon hurls its accelerating call
Oua oua oua chit chit chit chit chit chat
Like Aphex Twin’s bouncing ball
I make sounds make sense before sense
The saxophone’s foo fur na na na
The orchestral dit dit dit dah
The singer’s blue moon you left me standing alone
Gorgeous like intoxicating perfume
Like an embrace in full nakedness
No wonder Frankenstein son of Victor
Or Henry as he was also called
Tries to catch in his hand
The notes of the plangent violin
If they’d been butterflies
He would have crushed them
But they drifted onward and drift to this day
Perhaps we would have been better off
Without inventing the violin
That squawks and screams in early days
Until petted into submission
And oh the awkwardness
When the left hand doesn’t know
What the right hand is giving
And the pain of pressing upon the strings
Perhaps we should just raise our voices
And clap our hands
The instruments our bodies give us
Remain with the gibbons
But then we might not love Itzhak Perlman
Let Nina Simone soothe us with her rage
Let sweet Hendrix blow our minds