Dr Paul's Poetry Pages

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Singing Machines(After Dryden)


Each Morning the white sign calls to me
as I ride by on the bus.
What is kept in that cinder block
building,
What is promised by the sign:
'singing machines?'
Ah, music to beguile:
sampled ecstasy,
A peep show of the mind perhaps,
All to make the vipers drop from the day perhaps?
Or 'tis all a Karaoke format,
digitized and well mannered;
touch someone through an amplifier,
sing myself a letter.
But we can sing better than those promises
and let the snakes drop
into a figured bass.
We are the singing machines.
Each day others ride by on the bus,
pass the sign
wondering, wondering.

Copyright © Paul Decelles, 1991, 1999