Need to cross
a crazy, busy highway,
twist an ankle getting
to the other side.
Need to break a window, cut myself,
enter a forbidden place. I miss
that kind of pain — that adventure pain,
that how’d I get here pain –anything but
this salty wounded routine
I live now. I know how this happened.
I know what put me achingly
here. I know what keeps me
cowering here: the calendar, the clock,
the skull-grin ahead of me I could always see
but far off, far off…Need to invite
that boneface valet
to come closer. Need to let it
brush me when I reach for ripe fruit
on the farthest, thinnest branch
I can get to. Need once again
to blow that smiling mistake a kiss
as the bough breaks
and I fall.
Daily Archives: May 22, 2016
Need
Big Joe Turner
Originally posted 6/13/2012.
Big Joe Turner
could palm a jump blues
like an egg,
handle it rough,
never break it.
“Shake Rattle And Roll.”
Big Joe Long Dead smiting us
with the soft club
of his voice.
Big Joe I Wish To Have Seen You Just Once,
how it must have been
back then: discovery
followed by imitation
till the fakers squeaked out loud that
they think they sound as good as you did.
The shell fragments
and the sticky yolk on their hands
say no.
Big Joe Founder,
they are starting
to forget you
and all your kiss curled
imitators too.
Big Joe Turner,
thank you for
the musical ache in our bones,
the unbroken eggs
still hatching.
