a clocktower in a city in a country of imagination

calls for meditation,

so I drop a needle on Tanya Tagaq’s immeasurable breaths,

offer evening salutations to The Halluci Nation,

ruminate on the Saul Williams album I adore but can’t rap to

for the same reason I can’t order Danez Smith’s Homie by its real name,

am made cosmological by Sturgill Simpson and Alice Coltrane,

Tamikrest and SOHN, could say goodnight to Spacehog’s “In the Meantime,”

become feral to “Wolf Totem” and Bassnectar remixes, howl

to “Blood // Water,” to P!nk, to Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You,”

tear out my own heart and consume it to Kawehi’s cover

of “Heart-Shaped Box” and cough it back up to Sia’s “Alive” -

the blues is holy, punk is holy, rock ’n roll is holy, olde timey is holy,

shoegaze is holy, R&B is holy, hip hop is holy, trip hop is holy,

the British invasion is holy, Appalachia throwback is holy,

the yawning pit of the full orchestra is holy,

bagpipes are holy, throat singing is holy, koto is holy,

grand piano is holy, a lone harmonica in a boxcar is holy,

verse and chorus both are holy, improvisation is holy,

a voice that used to be beautiful is holy, a voice that refuses beauty is holy,

the crowd singing louder than the speakers is holy,

the lullaby for the already-sleeping babe is holy,

the first dance is holy, the sock hop

and the mosh pit are holy,

the whole swinging and swaying collection of humanity

in and out of time, each to their own beat, is holy -

and the prayer ends but the clock keeps whirring -

chime alarm, chime alarm, watch these hands

move apart

JeFF Stumpo is a regular at Slam Free or Die in Manchester, NH and has been the featured poet at some of the oldest slam venues in the country. His full-length collection these are the waterfalls in my head won the 2026 Granite State Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Yas Press (University of New Hampshire) in April. He has a (poor) website at www.JeFFStumpo.com.