The Gospel Record

I was rotating somewhere in the background,
running a long fingernail along the worn grooves
of my forehead, waiting for the music to come.
"You take requests?" asked a voice from up on high.
It was a girl, riding upon her boyfriend's shoulders,
waving a flaming lighter beneath the heavens.
"I'm not a house band," I said. "I'm more like
a home theatre system. I need to be programmed."
"I see," she said, and I watched as her blue flame
disappeared against a stretch of uninterrupted sky.
As night fell, the voice and the light were replaced
by the murmur of white noise constellations.
Above me, radio signals were loose in the stars,
muttering for release from the cluttered ether.
"I know the songs have always existed," I said
solemnly rotating in the darkness. "But all I ever
receive is blank static - like the rise of water around
an island, or the rush of wind inside a tunnel."
"You can't complain," said the girl, who had just
reappeared, only this time standing upon the
shoulders of her giant boyfriend. "Inspiration,"
she explained, "is a murmur loose in your brain."
As my audience wandered off a second time,
I noticed that the ground beneath me was worn.
I had been rotating for so long that I found myself
unwilling to seek alternative grooves to inspiration.
So, I vowed to observe my patient rotations
whether I was delivered the music, or not.