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.