The struggle to bypass the pain
of pressing strings to fretboard
is too much to bear now so maybe
it’s time to stop the music
long enough to allow
for an amputation of my
left hand if only to see
if the ghostly nerves 
of the missing piece
can play without pain

I’ve been told this
makes no sense but sense
has never guided me
all that well in pursuit
of my absolutes

and if anything is
an absolute 
then the need to play
is as absolute as 
the need to write
and speak and 

there are other needs
and surgeries to consider
but first things first
First the music then
the dance

Wondering

if I start at the base of the neck
to cut myself free of all ailments
will I become whole and if not
what parts will remain alive
and for how long
 
What will my music become
What will my dance become

Who shall take up my guitar 

The place where I begin my work
rises from blue in sound and hue. 

I ease its lock open each morning
and go into blue shade and blue whisper.

Sometimes I cannot leave until
the stubborn lock releases me. 

Those days I cannot leave until
I agree to leave a portion of me there.

The place I go to keep working
might be brighter, might be — not.

But it will be blue, too. 
A progression forward, a run upon a fretboard,

a waiting for the light to change. It may blaze
or sputter, but it will be blue. 

The place I go to rest is dark enough
to let me sleep. It’s deepest blue

in pang and and riff, deep enough
to shake me through and soon

I am up and pulling
on work clothes, looking for

the key to the place
where I begin my work, the room

of blue, of sound and hue, of pang and riff,
of everything I thought I left here yesterday

and the day before and the day before that:
things whispering from concealment in the shade.

The dishes from
last night’s dinner
fill the sink and
whisper, “lazy…”

Blankets left
unfolded in a basket,
waiting to be put back
on the couch to protect

the upholstery from 
cat hair and spills and warm you
as needed; there’s a cat already
sleeping on them, of course.

Just this once, maybe,
leave everything as is? Sure.
That’s you. Unfinished business.
You are that. Guilty as charged.

You are the One
grounded in worry and incompletion.
Every letter of your writing is unfinished. 
Your hands quit on you

long before your guitar did.
Your bridges smolder but look
safe enough to recross. Of course
there’s a government to topple

and a culture to unlearn
but with furniture to protect
and dishes to do where will the time
come from? Not from anywhere,

it appears. Chop wood and carry water,
then drop the armload on the way
into the hearth and home and
spill the water where it will leave

the biggest stain. You have
formed around looking at
leftover chores and saying 
it’s enough to have started,

but you know better even as you
lie back and close your eyes to it all. 
You know sleeping will heal nothing.
It’s been forever since you made it through the night.

At the dried up lake bed
from the end of prehistory

you stand looking across the flat.
You can’t believe what you see

is former as it feels like an overflow
of now. Look at that, you say

to a companion no one else can see.
That’s where we are headed, 

into a flood of memory
that neither dries up nor cries out. 

That is right, the Other says. 
No one but us can see it, of course.

They call us mad for thinking
we can swim across. We won’t be,

of course; how could we?
How we get to the other side

isn’t for us to choose but we  
must get there. 

We drift into the space
hoping not to drown.

We drift out over the ghosts
who fill the ancient lake.

On the other side, a small banner:
“Here Is The Start Of History.”

We can renew and refresh there,
you say. Do it right this time.

That’s what they all say,
says the Other.