John Cage is Dead, Solo Performance for Air and Rooms

A man takes music
from the world, calls it his,
crying I invented this,

throws a relic metronome
into the dormant pit
of violins that whittle it down

to an integral of dust
and meter, assumes
the office of his baton

and opens his hands
in a dexterous language.
He revokes the audience,

their voices gated
in victimless crimes
scaling up and down as effigies

for sounds he cannot harvest
from his own body. Discrete
and terrified instruments

sealed in evening gowns,
cummerbunds, arrested expressions
and comminuted smiles

fixated to the moment of a pendulum
swung but unwilling to betray
any complicit sound. Wait

for the conductor to drop
his arm, for the sound
of breath resurfacing

in a hundred throats
like a gasping crucible
spitting ingots of silence.

Wait for the answer. Let the exits
swallow them whole if they try to escape.