A NOTE ON MUSIC

by Peter F. Crowley

There are regions of earth, shrouded in coconut and royal palms and warm-colored umbrellas, where one can go when the Sisyphean boulder begins to roll backwards. It is a place with duct-taped smiles of the brown servers and secured by towering walls. There is a diamond-shaped swimming pool, saunas and hot tubs with tennis courts as far as the eye can see. If a guest wanted, they could take a bulletproofed shuttle bus to a verdant golf course with guards stationed around the perimeter.
     In James Hetfield’s mind, this should be music. And, perhaps, in quieter times, it shall. But when the sea is rough like today, and the heart, lungs and brain have all been thrown overboard, perhaps music should paint sound waves with quivering strings, immersing the listener in roiling lava as it descends from mountaintops towards villages, making the populace realize that the only way for the world to survive is to resist. 

Peter F. Crowley is a prolific writer from the Boston area whose work spans short fiction, op-eds, poetry, and academic essays. His writing has appeared in publications such as Pif Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, RavensPerch, New Verse News, Common Dreams, The Galway Review, Digging Through the Fat, and The Opiate. He was a finalist in both the short story and poetry categories of Adelaide’s Award Anthologies, and his work has been nominated to Best of the Net. He is the author of two poetry collections, Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, as well as a short fiction collection, That Night and Other Stories.