No New Music

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Poetry by Stephen Philip Druce

 

No New Music

 

If there is no new music then

we must burn all musical instruments

 

If there is no new music then

we must put it out of its misery

like a sick animal

 

If there is no new music – no

fresh sound, no new movement

by the kids on the underground,

 

From London’s streets to England’s green,

from urban high rise to crop of the cream,

 

If there is no new music then

we must burn all musical instruments

 

If rock stars rich –

busking hidden gems in the ditch,

if the well connected,

the musically disaffected,

the rebels, the catalysts,

the mavericks and anarchists,

 

If it has all been done –

if there is no new music then

we must burn all musical instruments –

 

every bass and drum – bongo, conga, kit and steel,

keyboard, washboard, glockenspiel,

cello, banjo, oboe and spoons,

drum machine, tambourine, pipes and bassoons,

trombone, saxophone, xylophone too,

clarinet, castanet, didgeridoo.

 

Forlorn at the funeral pyre

we mourn the death of the

genre’s last breath, as

it flames the fire on the smoking

wrecks of choking guitar necks – once

held by innovative fists, now stand the

crying artists that must concede – they

were good enough to follow but never to lead,

 

If there is no new music then

we must burn all musical instruments.

5 August 2016