Originally posted 3/18/2012.  

The overnight radio’s playing
Nick Drake
at exactly 2:04 AM again
as if there were not other options
by the score to choose from.

Tonight, I refuse
to let him do
my work for me.
I’m not going to torture myself
listening to him
while I contemplate my desperation,
all the while envying
his fingerstyle technique;

I always end up
forgetting the former
and pissed off at the latter, usually
while holding a guitar.
Afterward I’m always still desperate
but looking forward
to getting that tuning right 
tomorrow,

and the whole point of desperation
is to get past
looking forward to things — 

so let my soundtrack not be
Nick Drake.  
Let it instead be
Jackie DeShannon’s “Put A Little Love
In Your Heart.”  
God, yes.  That works

perfectly.  I start picturing Iggy Pop
singing it all Morrison-spit-take gruff
and no one believing
a word of that song ever again.

Chase it with ABBA or something —
here, let me
get the dial —
candied oldies
of a different stripe.  Perfect music
for the darkest hours

because if you actually sing
of despair, you know,
if you can hold its kite-lines
and wrangle it into song,
what you get is not in fact
despair;

what you get instead
is triumph,
even if just for a moment
and even if you later
succumb.