Scrapyard Blues

“My brain hurts. I need a new brain.”
Line from an old Monty Python skit.
It’s all I recall. It’s all about

the recall now. Songs on the radio —
they go from X to Jesse Wells to
Sister Rosetta Tharpe. All I recall

is that I heard them once, long ago,
and now I hear them again or so I think or
so I’m told. I don’t know

who tells me that, of course. Just another
face. “A man has no name;” just heard that one
on some show or another. A man

doesn’t need one, truly. I do need one
badly, though. Someone to tell me the songs
and their names, someone inside me

who can dart from one to another and
pluck their names and just provide them,
snap on with the fingers? I do not know him

well, the man who provides the data, the facts.
I rage at him from time to time — leaving me
out here to look foolish when I don’t know.

I sit slumped and ashamed when I don’t know
anything about anything, or so I feel. Snatches
of old songs, stray lines from movies? They

are nothing, really. Just culture’s scraps.
All I have is scraps, I guess. I ought to be happy
I have them. The man — remember him? —

turns and his coat flutters. Items worth knowing
fall to the ground. I could pick them up,
hold on to them, let them fall.

What’s real? If they fall I will smile or weep
— or ignore everything, I ought to be satisfied.
I sip my coffee and leave them to lie.

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