He won't like what you tell him

to save face, or is he brushing off his theater mask?

With ostinato notes drying under that monocle,

all those radiators in June

dripping their threads from that thread

that ocular nerve,

a clothing line hugging a soaked composition
set to foley lively as an astronaut's old
breathing—
with the stage presented, the makeup

scratched in,

he'll hear praise like a bat

and pick up his wingtips, up his brogues, and quit.

You don't need to pay him.

He's jumping just to walk.

The sound guy always quits.

That guy's been practicing
on Hindu scripts. He sparked a homemade graham
cracker pyre just for the crackling
to scratch a mosquito's ear.
He'll sublux senses till static
wears away
and the gondola lifted on yo' screen pops, feels crunchy.
The sound guy has skill,
but he always quits.

His choir's pressed hotter than new coins.
You can't throw garbage at him; he'll turn it into an aria.
He'll mop the tiles with the tails
of his snoring nemeses,
one light finger on a level.
He'll take all week about your night vision,
he'll sew together a room
until the stitched walls are a soundtrack and the needle's a-spindling,
then slip away while you're all laughing.
The sound guy always quits.

You must have found him at the Ritz.
Animated cats were feeding him linguine.
They surrounded him leaning on
a dumpster outside Reno
singing in a bag of Cheetos.
Faced with Santa Claus and Liebowitz,
any sound guy always,
inevitably
quits.

The cats must have known the sundogs were coming.
Through the filter of a straw you're strumming and thumbing,
you core into the Everglades.

You say:
"Atop the paper umbrella in my liver a lark is slung
and 'neath my suede phone cover a dial is bingeing."
You must have kept the Seminole rerouting and waiting;
they must have etched up newsprint for the Union.

If you ask him to review the war,
if you hope he'll even out your score,
if you invite him to costume up and rob a store,
if you implore him so lazily to stone a peach,
so's not to hear the other shoe hit,
the sound guy almost,
no,
the sound guy always quits.

Across the world a steeple's racing, waving in sleet,
holding up ten middle fingers.
Across the world nothing's trending.
Across the world his daughter's son's daughter's waiting,
so the sound guy obviously splits.
Across the world a bazaar's thronging and the hearts are gonging,
so the sound guy, the soundest of the sound guys
quits.

If you ask him to make sure it's yours,
if you ask him not to bore an in-law,
if you ask him to say what's more,
as a sounder guy knows,
the soundest guy
always quits.

Until the day a raygun quakes phonons,
the sound guy always quits.

Until the day the Red Sea snips,
the sound guy always quits.

Across an ocean too bright with butane fire for casual fishing
just 'cause the hamster in the moon's eyes're brimming,
Alexander's skating with spilling breakers
scattered to nettles in breeze.
While swirling up the dew of nepenthe
in electric simplexes
from some sumptuously bumped pitcher plants, the cataract
is shifting,
pear to pomelo to quince.

Next to the world on brave bereft calendar squares falling
off cubes,
depending on slick oxidizing rings of borrowed slices of Saturn,
digging up the last era's half-eaten burrowing cities,
we know the sound guy's gotta turn it in.

The sound guy always quits. Quits quitting, that is.