It’s not a mistake
to reach into
the little you know

of how
a piano
works

to use
a metaphor about
the music

of a felt hammer on a wire
to describe
your own work

How by itself
each sounded note
rings enough for anyone

who hears
to speak of it 
as music

but to truly
let it be all
it could be

these words should
have been sung
by someone better

Then it swats you
across the face
You are the only one 

who could be the type
of better needed 
for your work to be perfect

so sighing
you bend back to it
before sleep and death

hoping one day you sing it
as it should be sung
It’s not a mistake to reach

for perfection past the limit
of your own grasp of the song
It’s not a mistake to try

Here’s to
the follow-up

The one-hit wonder’s
second release from
the same pocket
that held the first

The one that sounded
enough like the hit
to garner some attention

but not enough
to be called a hit

The one that years later
is recalled by a friend
at a party after the horde
of guests has gone and 
only the diehard beloved
remain 

No one
knows the title
but when
the friend starts to sing it

someone else goes
OH YEAH — whatever
happened to those guys

You look around a room
where no one knows the answer
but everyone’s grabbing
their phones and pretty soon

you all know the title
and you can move on

It reminds you
that you were seventeen 
and knew every song
on the radio from just one
note and you were
you at the utmost 
you thought you’d ever be

What happened

You know what happened

Looking around
you think it’s alright

At three AM
“Diamonds and Rust”
won’t leave my head
or hands. Sitting in 
the far room
on a desk chair
that makes more noise
than an unplugged
Telecaster can.
Fingerpicking
my way through,
not singing as it’s
three AM and
the dog won’t bother
to come in if I
can keep it down.
My love in the next room
won’t be disturbed if I
can keep it down.
I try not to move
so the chair won’t squeak.
I try not to sing
so my eyes don’t leak.
I concentrate
so I do not fail
the near silent notes;
so my hands don’t feel
the pain they do
when I am simply
walking around
through daylight chores:
stiffened; full of rust and 
broken nerves while
the sharp diamonds
of my past
are carving me within. 

“then we move like tigers on Vaseline”  — D. Bowie

Guitars waiting on stage:
trees around a clearing,
glorious hazards
waiting there. 

Evokes
a forest rife with
stealthy predation,
camouflage, danger on ice.

Suggests
the existence
of a treated 
jungle floor, 

big cats
disturbed but adapting, 
beginning to enjoy
gliding about.

Regret nothing,
pray for no one here.
Sliding about in darkness
is freedom.

have you danced 
too much already, beloveds?
did it all when you were young
and had the legs for all night music,
the lungs to scream and raise your arms
toward the summit of your favorite song?
haven’t you aged into rest and being satisfied 
to have the dark bright memory
of how you moved along the walls 
of the basement club with the dirt floor corner,
the college bar with the lights out
on the long unused top floor,
the unlocked stairway up,
the corner full of the mushroom scent
of lovemaking and trepidation? 
haven’t you danced yourself to a point
where you don’t need to dance any more
than maybe one more spin 
through one more memory
of fresh human touch 
filled with the expectant danger
of rejection, or maybe just your body
not being able, not being close
to able to shake your leg or your ass
as you once did, the ecstasy of fast,
the ecstasy of slow, the ecstasy of 
memory, the replacement of current
sorrow with a memory of sweat?
beloveds, don’t you wanna dance
all the way to the end of your time?

I owned
a tenor guitar
once
for three months.

Four strings
over six seemed a 
novelty, a downgrade 
back then.

It tickled
something in me
to think of mastering
the antique. Soon enough

I gave 
the guitar away
to someone more excited
than I was to try.

This morning
found myself humming
Ani’s “Little Plastic Castles”
(which is played on a tenor guitar)

and memory,
all this memory, came
rushing back
and now I want a tenor guitar again,

longing for
four strings I can’t play,
rebooting since
I can no longer play six:

my hands
full of recall
but unable to execute;
the desire for music

stronger now
as a way through this 
to something
newly perceived as fresh although

I have
been here before:
more than once, with old guitars
and fancy pens, blank notebooks

and blank people,
things I bought or faces I found
that seemed to promise
surprise, any kind of surprise

that might
break the hard walls
of the hole within and give me
a chance to climb out and be new and free. 

(like it was yesterday,
like it was the first time again)

to “Keep Yourself Alive”
and the chug of Brian’s 
guitar throughout 
and especially
the creamy and climactic ascension
of chorused notes following 
the back and forth lines
between Roger and Brian
before Freddy kicks back in with them
for their final
exhortations.

I first heard this song when
I was thirteen or fourteen
and it hit like a religion
and made me want to shine forth.
Today
I don’t think 
there’s any god in there
or anywhere
that cares much whether or not
I feel the same and
I’m thinking now

I should have listened more closely
all these years
to John,
remarkable anchor
too often unremarked,
as I’ve involuntarily
lived my life
more often in
the background
of whatever cosmos
I have found myself in.

suppose you stop snickering
and get shut of the need
to scorn those folks over there
fingering slipcovers
in the discount aisle
talking only to each other
when they speak of
perfection and how well
these would go with 
the drapes in the front room

and suppose
you quit sneering at those
who proclaim their love
for the Beatles as you cannot
distinguish between
an emotional bond to their
soundtrack of a lifetime
and your own decidedly
up-to-the-minute
lasting-maybe-a-minute
enthusiasm for whatever minute
you find yourself in
(unless
of course
it hits you
RIGHT THERE
like a never-ending
cryogenic block
on your future)

and suppose
you get your head
out of whatever fragrant
arrogant nook
you keep it in 
and see yourself
years from now
dressed fifteen years 
too early for retro fashion
choosing from cheap mirrors
in a bargain aisle
while humming
yesterday’s
greatest song ever written

Inside this music
is an ocean
with tides that sweep
into then away from
where you’re standing

bringing you mysterious
objects then taking them back
before you can fully understand
what you’re seeing
and now and then

something washes up
to your feet still alive and then
it’s gone again and you
end up on your knees before
the pulse of the sound

praying that you yourself
could be swept away 
and then back again holding
all these secrets you’ve glimpsed
long enough to understand them

so you can then release them
back to the ocean
for others to find
when they face
the music and pray

Listening to today’s
pop music:
how comforting
it is to hear

music not written
to privilege
who I am, who we were.
How glad it makes me

to be at last
completely comfortable
with being un-affected
in any strong way

by the hits.
To be able to
decide with no sense
of being dragged

by the emotions
into debates
and passion
about this one’s 

merits and that one’s
evils. I can listen and say
that arrangement is 
interesting, how do they

make that sound, 
the production on this
is wonderful, is boring,
is cluttered, is clean;

then I walk away
back to my own guitars
and songs, taking
what I need

back to the forge as fuel.
When now and then 
something new does
set its claws, does

dig in and seize
the means of emotion,
I count it as a late-life gift.
Sometimes I even discard

something I used to love
to make room for it
in my chest where
favorites live. And

the next time I reach for 
my guitars and my songs?
It’s there. I am open for
new business. I’m alive.