Bug Zapper

Let's workshop this poem about a self-doubting artist

Bug Zapper

In bed he sighs with doubt as to whether
it had been right to devote his life to this, 
to composing pieces from the music of life:
faucet drips, cupboard creaks, street traffic; 
keyboard clicks, dog sneezes, vibrator hum;
cassette-tape hiss and vinyl-record static; 
videogame controllers in agitated usage; 
squirrel feet scurrying through the attic;
and all the other unsung gems. Should he 
just have done medicine like his father?

Do his fans enjoy the work they wine-talk?
Or do they just want to be deep, different? 
Might they, as perhaps many who praise
poets of plums and wheelbarrows, claim 
to love his “avant-garde art” mainly since 
they feel they could pull it off too (thereby
blocking out that desolation that blooms
standing before true genius like Bach)?
Was he opium for the mediocre? What
fucking instrument does even he play!?

Buzzing pops outside, bug sizzles in blue,
knock him from his sleepless absorption,
demanding he go out with the recorder.
Bareback below his neighbor’s new zapper,
arm up in grin, this “sign” of his calling 
eradicates his worries (now seen as silly).
That he is wired to capture such sounds
does not make the worries unfounded
(or even decrease the odds that they are).
Yet, somehow, people have to get by.

This poem is unpublished

Photo: bestadvisor.com/bug-zappers