Brand new to the charts
Number 15 with a bullet
Nice beat, you can dance to it
I give it an 85
It’s the perfect length for the radio
The perfect summer single
Perfect prom song
Perfect driving anthem
Perfect club banger
Perfect navel gazer
Perfect for throwing the horns
Soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing
Soundtrack to fall in love by
Soundtrack for your next party
Soundtrack for a breakup
A song to get crazy with
Song to rage with
Song to slit your wrists by
Song to beg for one more chance by
Song to conjure memories with
Song to conceive a baby by
Music for boning
Music for running
Music for revolution
Music for a wedding
Something to day dream on
Something to set your toes tapping
A little something to brighten your day
Something you might remember
Here’s a blast from the past
Here’s one from the “where are they now” file
Here’s one from the vaults
Here’s one to get you thinking
What were you doing when this was all over the airwaves
What were you doing the first time you heard this
This was their biggest hit
Rising to Number 3 on the charts
Here’s a remake of their biggest hit
Here’s a remix of their biggest hit
Here’s a sample of their biggest hit
They just don’t make them like that anymore

Bones
of a possibly popular song
are bleaching in my hand.
I can’t do anything
with this now.
It was alive once,
a tale of a perfect moment: 
surely it might have been
as perfect a moment
for someone else
as it was for me
but I did nothing with it
and after a while it died
though I kept it close.
I sing what it was a little
now and then,
though it’s not right.
I never thought it was right
and so I never let it go,
and now it cracks
in my impotent fist
like old crackers
no one could dream
of choking down.

the point
as far as I can tell
that it rolls
as it rocks

comes in
off center
from what I
thought I knew

except it somehow
centers me
and I don’t
understand

how that’s possible
but I feel it
so it’s real
and understanding

seems less critical
than what I feel
(or perhaps
it’s a different kind of understanding)

so please
continue my schooling
as I crack the books
on the one

Thank God there’s a subwoofer
in the new car
to help me
study

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.