Snatches of song –Lyle Lovett
into Nick Lowe into David Crosby
into Zeppelin into…God knows what this
song is, and only God knows — it’s still
in God’s head, only I can hear it now;

it beats on me, segues into words;
substitutes “sexy” for “smooth” and
rubs “rough” into “avarice”
so that the language hurts my head;
I don’t get what this means

but I strain mightily to do so
and the ribbon of meaning that connects those
strains right back till I settle into a chair
next to my own guitar that I don’t dare play
just yet, just in case I know a spell

that I’ll play inadvertently
and make the world explode, my world
anyway; do you follow me? Do you know
a thing about this?

My mind is something else; some other thing
inside it; carnal, carnivorous, a carnival —
you see what I think of? I put my head down
to weep. I put my head down to eat
my words, hope they stay down this time.

Outside it’s cold in this part of the world;
in other parts it’s warm as hell. I put my intentions
into these poems and they laugh at me
warn or cold, depending on where they are read.
If you do not understand them it may be

because of the weather. You don’t get that,
of course, because of the weather. So:
my head is down, I am hungry, Lyle Lovett
makes me feel good, I’m not open to change.
Sexy, avaricious me. I’m really, really gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T