No blessing brighter than
how sterling the crash
of music writ loud on the ear
can become, silver slivers ringing
afterward, sheer cliff of sound pressure
pushing you back from the stage,
the subsequent vaccuum
you rush to fill leaning forward,
the fascination with its circuitous path
from first note to last,
the ultimately unrejectable nature
of compulsion to ROCK, the lyric
a second thought, the lyric’s sudden turn
into the only important thing, the beat
of wild drum as the only remaining thing
to connect us back to the start
of the evolutionary chain, to us as we were,
to the Basic, the Clean, the
thankfully Sacred UnCivilization
inherent in loosing the body
into thrumming communion
with the rest of the known
and unknown world.

Isn’t it a beautiful
Saturday night
in the city?

A punk fan
spits up on a classic rock fan
in front of a disco
as a car banging rap slips by
and a country fan turns up her nose
at the hard, hard house music
her date seems to prefer.
The jazz fan hurries past everyone
because no one likes a jazz fan
except for the reggae fans — they
love everyone, mostly.  Mostly —
except for that guy
with “Tosca” leaking
from his earbuds.  Meanwhile
on the corner two surprising kids
are committing a bluegrass murder,
hoping for spare change in the hat
and getting some
while there’s a hint of bhangra in the air
and a hint of merengue in the air
and a hint of calypso and soca and mento
and someone’s got a ska torch lit too;

isn’t it a beautiful Saturday night
in the clamoring city,
isn’t it making you wish
you could play everything
whenever you close your eyes?

There are unnamed beings in the world
that no one wants to acknowledge.

For less than 100 years we have locked away
legions of sub-gods in favor of a brighter world

and the world has gotten darker
in their extended absence.

Tired of wating for less boring entities
than vampires and zombies

to become trendy enough
to move freely about the popular imagination?

I say it is their time… 
our time.

Hpw shall we free them?  
It’s not like they’re fairies:  they need more 

than kid applause to stay mobile and flexible
and free.  A little fear to feed on, to grease gears.

So, strike: strike an anvil, take hard exception,
strike up a chord progression in a key to a passage.

Something about distortion, overdrive, sustain…
something about sounds unheard ever on Earth less than 100 years ago.  

Something about making those sounds…
about the freedom to make such sounds.  

To know how.  To know how to do it in more than one fashion.  
To make them at the perfect time.  

To get that it’s still music even when it is
dissonant and discordant and atonal and out of strict harmonic standards…

To meet the eyes of others who also get it as you are playing it
and settle in and lock down and ride it to the Other Side of Right Now,

the unacknowledged side, the dismissed side,
the Dionysian flight side…

Skies of steel, lead, aluminum, iron, gold, silver.
Bronze, copper, tin; the malleablilty of these,

their clashing and clanking; sheets and bars and ingots falling,
breaking the door to where the sub-gods have been kept.

When they break out, when they rise singing,
we rise singing.  When they roar up to view,

we roar up to view.  Is it any wonder we 
stir inside when we hear

distortion, overdrive, sustain,
the tone breaking up regardless of the headroom?

Is it any wonder that we close our eyes
and surge inside?

Fuck a ukulele
for being a ukulele.
Fuck a banjo for being
a banjo when there are plenty
of outlets in this messed-up world
to set a musical instrument on fire.
Fuck a gentle instrument, fuck everything 
except drum and bass and the rumble strip
on the highway. Fuck the whole notion of simple
and easy.  Fuck a depression outfit and a plunky-ass sound.  
Fuck a turntable for refusal to stop being an instrument. Fuck anyone 
who calls it out. Fuck music in general for being a thing someone wanted to make
and someone else wanted to hear. How dare we stop?  Fuck musical people who are not
blessed with a desire for silence right now.  They’re probably sitting home in non-silence. They
have a banjo on the wall, a ukulele on the knee, a respect for the simple things, and fuck-all to say.
Ten years ago they talked a good game  about something else.  Fuck them for being bad prophets.

Back up,
rock a little,
turn a foot to the music,
turn an ear to the ground,
turn around and see the behind,
turn around the rock, rock
a little more,

how long has it been
since you turned to rock a little
or a lot, backed up into 
rocking, one foot to the drums,
one foot to the bass,
hips to the drums, arms 
to the horns, eyes on the
prize, ears to the moment,
back it up back it up
back
it
up,

just a little, enough,
there, right there, 
rock that, a little bit harder now,
hold it, a little bit longer now;
now ease on back away from that beat,
getting Joe Tex on me now,
don’t get ahead of yourself,
ear to the ground,
foot to the beat,
mouth to God’s ear,
hum to the angel,
shout through the devil,
getting Jerry Lee Lewis
on me now, 

the Gospel as done by Hell’s chorus,

sing me up,
rock back into
the mouth to God’s ear,
black cavern with the light inside,
get lost in there, back it up,
lost nightclub, blacklight cavern
with the neon outside,
the flyspecked windows, the 
beer signs, 
getting George Jones on me now,
late for every gig, unfaithful
to everything but the music,
getting Buddy Rich on me now, 
rock a little more dominator,
your mouth to her ear, his ear,
getting all up in the reason beat came to be,
getting Brenda Lee on me now
with a broomstick temple censer going on ahead
while you rock behind, rock a little more headlong
into Saturday Night And Sunday Morning,

and damn, it surely has been a while.

the hands 
are the instrument,

are the guitar,
as the lungs and lips

are the horn, as the heart
is the drum and

the teeth are the keys and
the core equivalent is

the dark bass.
as is the gut the woodwind,

as is the voice
a wingless angel, seeking.

how is this confusion?
how is this not the greatest clarity.  

how true is the nature of music
that it cannot be better said than this

except as music.
except as itself alone.

are best grooved to
while you sit
on the front lawn
in your kiddie pool

while cars pass by
blasting them
from open windows
every ten minutes
for two seconds 
as they pass

or while the neighbor
trims hedges with a radio
on somewhere 
maybe from the kitchen
or set out on the porch
with the cord stretched
all the way from inside

while your fat ass is shaking 
in two inches of water
your bald head is bobbing
in two inches of sweat
you look like a cautionary ad
for heat stroke and the danger
of summer hits

some of which
will never be heard again
BUT

summer is best grooved to
with them
in fact summer needs them
like you need a tallboy
while you groove
sitting ridiculous and cool
in that kiddie pool
all season long

it never held tune
it never sounded great

it broke
again and again

i would toss it then
fish it out

tighten the bolts on the neck
restring it

it was blue and chipped black
an outrage to be posed with

when I was fifteen that
was all that mattered

it got me close enough
to close enough

to rock and roll
for the first time

Mike’s banging the strings right now
and certainly getting some original noises
out of that ancient, worn out,
catalog-origin, shitbox
frail-necked banjo.

Many marvelous errors are being made
while his hands walk toward
the transcendental possibilty
of the greatest song ever, 
and thus we are at
his mercy, at the edge
of awful and awesome
which by all accounts
is where we ought to be tonight:
wrong or almost wrong, often;
but focused entirely upon those moments
when someone pushes beyond the
best possible rightness.  

Mike may not get there tonight or ever
but we can see it from here
every time he plays with his eyes closed
and the odd chord falls off the banjo
into the room as perfectly as a little bird
spotted singing in a bush on a river bank
in the moonlight of our grandparents’ courting
long, long ago.