For me, my drummer beats,

      Da boom, da boom.

He rarely misses a beat and keeps up with my tempo.

When I'm running--

      Dadub-dadub-dadub!

Or when I meditate,

      Daa boom. Daa boom.

My drummer isn't just an amazing musician in a technical, metronomic sense, though. 

He can perform a lyrical piece far more skillfully than I can.

His music

 touches me,

pounding in my ears,

coursing throughout our home,

                                      giving me life to drink.        

He is my oldest advisor, my dearest friend.

 My happiness is his happiness, my love, his too. 

My drummer is also my lifeline. 

On my darkest days, he is the only one keeping me alive, his stubborn encouragement insistently rattling my white ceilings.

 I know that if ever my drummer should stop pushing, playing, believing in me, I would be lost.

I would die without his pulse.

However, I must say, he is a strange housemate.

Deindividuation or death, which is a worse fate?

Though he saves my life, he complicates it.

He is ceaselessly steady, unless he is feeling fickle.

He always keeps a beat, unless he is being surprised.

He is relentlessly firm, unless he is feeling faint.

              He throbs for old friends and seethes for old lovers.

He exalts on high when it is better to be meek.

He delights in misery and envies good fortune

He believes he can control me. 

 

Worst of all, he is lauded for all he does, and I am blamed for his faults.

 

I am not a jealous master.

My drummer loves whom he pleases.

I reason with him about consequences.

I rationalize by ignoring his feelings.

I analyze his excitement.

I monitor his predicament.

I am always logical and sequential…

 

Until I too love

                                                there are no rationalizations

or why or how or when or where

or why or why or why

                        then lost i am

lost in translation into another word

lost as heat given off as energy is conserved

lost as i transcend my gelatinous gray habitat on the left of the room divider

 

Then I steady my drummer’s hand,

so the confounding variables lessen.

After all, I am a scientist. 

I dial back some levers.

I get my drummer some air. 

I send messengers to calm everyone down.

I need to get back to optimal control condition, a homeostatic equilibrium.

Even love can be quantified.

Everyone knows that I’m in control.

Everyone knows that without even realizing it, I get him going.

Everyone knows that it’s all really my fault when my drummer finally beats his last because I could run this experiment no longer.

 

I’d love to off my dear friend, the drummer, but

            Everyone living at our house wouldsuffocatefrom the sheer silence, the severing of his flow because

They all depend on me, and I would be

                                                                                                           dead.

But now, I’m getting too emotional.

Drummer, match the metronome.

It is sounding seventy-five beats per minute,

the optimal level for this resting place.

 

Oh, what I’d give for non-mutualistic symbiosis, for life without you!