The man on the radio says
songs are getting shorter.
He says that the average length of a billboard hit
was once a minute
and twenty-two seconds longer.
Imagine- a melody meandering
for an entire minute
and forty-one seconds.
Think of all the time spent
waiting for, what they called,
a chorus.
Yeah, the main bit!
The brain-boring tune
that we lead with.
But they endured pretense
in the form of, what they called,
verses.
Curious, I asked my dad why
they’d stall their songs
on purpose.
He smiled thin
and explained slow
that the suspense
made listening worth it.
Though I can’t say I get his
twenty-first-century
sentiment,
I know that the man on the radio says
we’ll soon strip away
every excess
increment.
And I, for one,
can’t wait for the day
when we’ve trimmed our tunes
so fine
that a single note
will be enough wrote
and each lyric
conspicuously
rhymes.
pm poetry 