Just Listen to the Music of the Traffic in the City

At an anodyne franchise cafe,

Menus from corporate headquarters

Specified choices, and a pop song

Recorded some six decades ago

Streamed over the standard sound system

At an obligatory volume.

One of the two folks in a booth said,

That’s the first hit song I ever heard,

Or at least that I remember hearing.

At home we only listened to hymns

On evangelical radio,

But I was playing at a neighbor’s,

I think I was maybe about four.

It was just me and the other kid

And his mother somewhere in the house.

We were playing with plastic letters

With magnets that stuck to a white board,

A pretty boring activity,

And a radio was on somewhere

And I heard that voice soaring, you know,

“Down-town!” over and over around

The lyrics that meant nothing to me,

And to tell you the truth, I was spooked.

To my ears it sounded so eerie.

It still sounds eerie, eerier now

Since it’s that same exact recording,

Just falling out of the air somewhere.