Ominous Music Rising
By Al Maginnes

says the caption on my screen
as another daredevil rookie cop enters
another alley, so dark only
illusion could make it, as a finger
pauses over the red button we hear of
in presidential debates and movied
aimed to make us more afraid
of the world ending, a reality
most of us have walked under
for so long we forget it’s there.
Like cancer and car washes.
Leprosy. Loss of the one you love.
Cue the dark music, each note
another step down that alley,
each cello drone or synth chord
a drop of blood rolling down a wall.
Mornings, I drink coffee, watch
as much news as I can stand.
That’s when ominous music should rise,
men drunk on power and greed
murder the ones they hate, starve
the ones they rule, smirk when
they are caught because
their belief in their own rightness is
deep as their fear, no matter what burns
on their watch. I no longer wear ear buds
when I walk, why I keep
the windows rolled down in the car. When
ominous music rises,
I need to be listening.

 

For A Drummer

i.m. Roy Haynes

How imprecise
the world’s noise
for a timekeeper
who feels pulse

 

without effort,
rhythm carried
into all he does.
How hard to make

 

sense of the chaos
of noise piled
with noise until
he wonders if

 

true rhythm exists
or if it is a fragment
dreamed one night
between gin-sleep

and dawn. Then
he stands, steps,
and everything rests
in place, just like

 

it’s supposed to.
His sticks rise
over the drums,
news waiting to be heard.

 

l Maginnes from US has published ten full length collections and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently his new and selected poems, Fellow Survivors (Redhawk Publications, 2023). New poems and reviews appear in Offcourse, Arkansas Review, Rattle, Lake Effect, and many others. He is retired from teaching and lives in Raleigh NC.