My guitars make me happy.
They sing.  They make me feel
new tongues.  They teach me
clear intent and accidental
spelunking. I hope I do
the same for them, hope
they feel me, change for themselves,
open up and become more
in my hands as they age.

My mandolin made me happy.
It barked and hollered and
played puppy to my joy.  But
when time moved and we did not,
I released it to another who knew
how to raise it better than I,
and I pray it’s happy and singing
and bluegrass choir praiseworthy
wherever it is now.

There were drums and ukeleles
that I did not love but merely liked
and I don’t know where they all went;
a recorder or two, keyboards,
violin and sarangi all felt
lost in my hands, long before
they went away; were they ever
really here?  Maybe all I held
of them was the wood and the strings
and the skin.  Maybe they were always
searching for home, even as I kept them
from the quest.

Every instrument needs a lover
to hold it.  If it is unloved, if it merely
sits trophy in a corner or closet,
it wanders.  It slips away
even if you lock it away.  You’ll
be lost too if you do that, your ears
always bent for the horizon, pricked
for the come-on, the pickup line;
your hands forming the right chords
but no song coming forth, no burst
of perfection, no praise for the act
of two as one.

Put the same old notes
in a new order
and you’ll have
mad rock and roll skills.

Pile the same old notes
in a tall stack, then give it
enough of a shove
that it almost falls over
and you’ll have
mad jazz skills.

But put some notes no one knows
in either a stack or an order
and they’ll call you mad,
though you may not feel that way.

Or find one note
and sing it, play it,
hum with it, live in it —
yes, madness, yes,
you won’t even know you’re mad
unless you agree with them.

Don’t agree with anyone.
Maybe you found the note
all those skittering guitar hands
were seeking.  Maybe you blew
the note that none of the horns
ever blew.  Maybe you’re not
mad enough yet
to be called skilled —
maybe it’s all too new
for it to be known how you did it
yet,

but don’t agree with them.
Instead, blow mad, pick mad.
Hum like a lobotomy saw
and see what happens,
see who starts humming with you.
Mad skills, you see,
take their time in fruiting.

To fingerstyle
is to put your prints
on the string.
To fingerstyle
is to lay your warm
against the cold.
To fingerstyle
is to say
a picklength is too large a distance
to put between
my instrument and me.
To fingerstyle
is to say
I’m not as loud but I’m
just as full.
To fingerstyle
is to answer the question
“who are you” by saying
“this is me
and what’s behind it is
me too, and together
we’re more me than
we are apart.”
To fingerstyle
is to let callus
do the talking.
To fingerstyle
is to say
the pick’s fine and dandy
if you want to be heard above
but the fingers will get a listener
to lean in.

I made a choice to play
fingerstyle
and it says

not too close
unless you’re inclined
to be that close
for a while

as the fingertip
covers first
and the nail strikes after
and together
they make one sound:

damn,
who knew that was in there?

Here’s King Curtis playing
“Da Duh Dah.”

What’s this — snake-
driving rhythm, 
sizzling drums,
complex lines?  Where’s
“Yakitty Yak,” how come there’re no
‘Retha rips?
Can’t be the same guy…
but it is.

How many players
did the same, filling in
on Pop
to fund Jazz,
back when the former
began to eat the latter?
How many still do?

Maybe they saw it all as music
to be made. Maybe I’m enforcing
falsehood by even commenting,
noticing.  Dichotomy
is the devil’s crowbar, 
after all…

and we all got to eat
if we’re gonna approach
the stars — need 
a belly full and a head
screwed on straight
and steely to get there.

Loose, lonely. Sunday morning,
I never go to church. Don’t want
that stuff at all.  Put the blues on
instead — devil music.  Good for
what ailed you last night.  Good for
a bit of the hair of the dog buffet
soundtrack.

There was a fight I remember, 
a drink or nine, a big tease, bad late food.
Blues night means a blues morning.
Different blues though, no dancing
or hip swing; sit around on the still ass
and be loose, lonely, alone.  

Stop
breaking down, song says.  Stop
breaking down — hell knows I’d like to
break upward but it doesn’t work
that way.   I’m no wave
hitting a cliff.  I’m no uplift fan
and I don’t need a Jesus to call me
to rise again.  I’m used to resurrection
on Sundays.  And I harrow Hell
on Saturdays, so a bent note feels right,
like the plow hitting a rock or bone
in its passage to make a fertile ready field.

The Gospel isn’t all that clear
to people like me
who rock between good and bad.  
It calls us,  but it calls us all sinners.  
I’m no sinner, Jesus, you nag.
I’m just loose
and lonely, trying to finish up this world clean
on my own, maybe catch
a few more hours of sleep
before dark at some point today.  

The blues is devil music? No,
this is surely some God-promised lullaby singing to me:
things are tough, tough for all,
a little music gets you through it,
and damned if a blue note doesn’t feel firm
and easier to hang onto
when you get it between
your filmy, Saturday night teeth.
Good for what ails you.  Hair
of the crossroads dog, if you ask me. 

addled
fat-ass
complaining

all the new music is crap
club banging loose doors
no dynamic range
and sex-twinkie full 

all the new music is crap
dingling guitar crash
no resolution to the lines
of stumblebum mopey gloomtrash

all the new music is crap
canned rhymes and software
no sense of uplift or history
and who are these decorative women

all the new music is crap
hats, hats, hats and more hats
no whiff of messy hair under there
and what’s the difference among them

you bad little whiner
you age-inappropriate gymnast
on the high bars of current flavor
I salute you
you patriot

because only a true American
makes a case for used to be over right now
as he tears down old homes
to build salt box mansions in defunct potato fields

only a true American 
yearns for his tradition
while spitting on someone else’s
as its getting off the ground

only a true American
bends ancient blue notes
and calls them
the latest and greatest

addled fat ass
with your watery beer
in a venerable bottle
addled fat ass
with a tin ear
on a stone head
addled fat ass
that won’t shake unless
the song’s got dust on it

you won’t admit you remember
that they said the same thing
back when you were tossing
your hair in a free swirl
and addling yourself on beat
and drugs in a field somewhere
you were young and open
but getting older by the note
but swearing they were stupid
as you did the rebel and the stomp
to something crappy yourself
and knowing it wasn’t the song as much
as the dancing in extremis
that made you

no music will save you, fool,

they told me.  no rock, no hip-hop,
no country or chamber.  you ought to know
there’s no Savior Composer, no Blessed Singer
to reach down and pull the likes of you up. I did not listen

to them.  there was too much
to naysay that.  moments when a joystring
of Afropop tugged me to my feet,
or when a tossed off bluerock 
tore me out of a dark bed to dance.

not everything feels like salvation
but enough does to let me know
how little they knew of it.  my feet
are consistenly drawn free of the ground
by simply switching on the radio.  some crunk beat
roils me, a trumpet foils my despair,
a singer turns one note — one note! — 
perfectly to one side and I rise.

it is no Personal Savior, I admit.  many
are lifted this way.  I’ve watched them
all around me, eyes closed, hovering
in clubs, thrashing against the ceilings
of their cars, air drums crashing;
my brothers, my sisters.  all of us
in the midair of song.  if we open
our eyes long enough and see each other,
we smile — those who call us fools
will never understand.
those who called us fools
are far beneath us now.

Most experiences make you deeper.  This one makes you wider.  — from the original liner notes of “Are You Experienced?”

The world was breaking.
This was
the music of pieces.

When it played
we believed in fragmentation
and eventual reassembly.

“This one makes
you wider,”
said the liner notes.

There still hasn’t been
enough Hendrix in the air
for us.

We still
lie on our floors,
listening,

certain the next time “Third Stone From The Sun”
plays it’ll happen.
This isn’t nostalgia,

we swear.  It’s re-creation.
A second chance at getting it right
the first time.

Maybe it was only his world
that expanded?  We’re going to have
to listen again

to the sound of boundaries
and memories.  Maybe
that’s our new world, rising over there.

Look
I’m a working man
I took a job in concert security
just to see some shows and
make a little pocket change
I’m just like you
so please stop making my job
so difficult
I’m a musician myself
I want to rush the stage myself
but they pay me to be calm
unless I need to bust your head
and I will do that
even though I want to rush the stage with you
because they pay me to
and no matter how great that solo is
no matter how much I want to be carried forward
on the wave of sound
please can you clear the aisles
so I can go home tonight
without having busted a head
and thus souring myself
on concerts forever