JOHN CAGE'S AVANT-GARDE

Today being nostalgic
in the last month of the year
my calendar goes back
to Cage's "Happenings"
in dates of the 1960's
when in Manhattan
meeting this an eccentric critic
of harmony and theory
in his sound proof studio
taking on serial or musical
electracoustic conditions
or eclectic dodecaphones
as he composes and transposes
lyrics for his compositions
in his busy life span
arranged with his choreographer
and partner Merce Cunningham
into your John Cage underground
unloosed his classical language
upon a scale of jazz notes
in his experimental sounds
even using the wonder
of a cactus fixing it
as an instrument for us
of his own chorus of one
with an elliptical music
of the  musical dance
or in notes of "Silence"
as a twelve tone field increases
in his sonatas and interludes
and "Number and Pieces"
from obscure geometric patterns
as a chance procedure increases
from his fixing of performances
as in "Music of Changes"
from rhythms of the indeterminate
as in Thoreau's "Drawings"
from a voyeur of innovations
for improvisation charts our fate
as a composer of "Branches"
or in his notation variations
of "Child of Tree"
in his creation of fine arts
of his "Ten Thousand Things"
suddenly brings back
in a lyrical departing
of my cultural memory.