With you there
at the piano making
music. Your pudgy
fingers somehow

impossibly stretching
to reach the chords,
the sure way you find
the correct keys.

I sit there
between jubilation and despair
inside — a brief pilgrimage
from one mode to the other;

a move from great joy
to an envy almost as great,
my senses slipping and bleeding
between the two.

Meanwhile you continue
to play. You seem oblivious
to my swinging to your music,
a beat behind the tones,

looking like a failure to
the outside but knowing
I am in there, right there
with the swing.

I continue to hear it
I find the beat for a few seconds,
no more — and as I connect
and make right with it

you do not see but continue
to play. We are in sync
for a few seconds and God
feels it and touches me at least,

if not you, though your playing
seems to agree and for that moment
when we are in sync,
it feels like the world stops turning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T

I wake up. Gentle guitar, sweet voices of three women
in harmony…what is the point of listening
to this on this morning when my own voice
is raspy and leather-skinned, when
my own thought is so roughened by the night
that I am scared to sing of anything, even
my own shadow? Do I try to fall into
them, do I let my life rise into theirs?

I wake up. It is a long weekend
for some, an average weekend for me.
For some, it’s not a weekend at all —
they work through the three-day stretch
and it’s barely a change.
They long to sleep.

I wake up with them, thinking about going back
to sleep: how peaceful
the long sleep of death might be, if anyone
had come back to tell of it; the tales we tell
mean nothing except falsehoods, maybe,
of heaven, of hell.

Or maybe — there is nothing?
Who knows,
and who tells the truth
about knowing?

I wake up, finally, and decide to stay awake
at least long enough to find out, finally.
No one will come around, anyway; even if
I come to and sit up someone will deny it.

So I stay awake long enough to set it down
on paper; a lie or the truth — it doesn’t matter.
The roses will still burn, the tinder will still
not ignite. I’ll sigh the last sigh.

I will go into the mystery;
sweet song and gentle voices
behind me, my agitation will be
finally, at last, gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

I turn off the radio
as soon as Ella finishes
her final verse —

scatting fluidly like I wish I could,
like I wish I had at some point
in my life —

but apparently
that’s gone now
All I can do

is sit back with it
filling the room
on an unseasonable day

in Spring
and love the warmth
of the day and the swing

of the song and regret
nothing that brought me here
and accept what will take me

away
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

onward,
T

Singing for the country,
the world; a song of
terrific promises unfilled,
song of parts unified wrongly,
song of tatters stitched crazy
but holding tight;

I am girded
with a black snake leather belt
and a floppy faded black hat; no one
trusts me if they can even see me
standing on the corner singing
so loudly.

Damaged as I am,
it’s easier to stand apart from the
song, the singing even,
let the crowd walk by
not hearing; the outlandish clothes
notwithstanding I am invisible
to the crowds surging silently
forward, backward, every way
available.

I don’t care if they see me, if they listen,
if they even hear. Singing for
the whole country, the whole world;
who gives a damn if I am heard
or not?

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

Radio: a guitar, words,
talk, play. The coffee
is rich and
I’m in crappy morning clothes;
I am listening to the radio.
I’m tired already and no one
gives a damn but me.

Suppose I die this morning,
this week. The sun’s
not up yet; could be today,
could be tomorrow or one day
after. I vote for a day yet to come
with some excellent guitar playing
and words, better than these,
maybe better coffee if it is possible.
I am damn sick of my life,
everyone is sick of my life.

Still, I am going to live at least
until the song changes
and I shake this off. Somewhere
it is sunrise over the earth
and I would like another cup
of coffee and maybe pick up
my own guitar and stretch my fingers
to its strings and see what comes.
I will not die sick of this life;
no one gets to be sick of it except me
and I want to leave them murmuring
about what song I was playing
when I gave up and went into the sunlight.

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

The bands I used to love
don’t love me anymore —
what am I saying, they don’t
even know me, they might miss me
one day or else they won’t;
they might tune a guitar my way
or sing a note my way but it will
not be the same.

The bands I used to love
grow static to go with the radio
and moss up. The members
grow moss and static up
with marriage or real jobs and they abandon
the music like the texture of the rock
it’s built upon.

The people I once loved to see
play their music don’t care
as I’m gone, as gone as last night’s
gig fee to beer and weed and perhaps
to food — or the odd pedal
for the odd guitar more likely;
they don’t care —
and they shouldn’t.

Their music remains behind
in spite of them. Half the music
is left in my head to fester
or to be preserved more or less
until it decays and changes to my own.
The other half gets lost in the shuffle
until I don’t recognize it except to say
I think I heard it,
once.

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

In a Stevie Ray mood, so
let these fingers fly around and sting
slow gems on “Lenny,” fiery speed
on “Couldn’t Stand The Weather,”
imagining my own clodhopper fingers
doing the work instead of what they can do:
just plodding through a change here,
a letter here, a phrase there and there,
change a single note to change the world
or my world perhaps; damn these meathooks
as what they are; unfeeling sharp slabs of metal
past the changes, too fast now and then too slow
as they regiment and stumble over ground
Stevie claimed lomg ago — still I try
now and then, up and down and maybe this time
I will strike one note well and then will try again
and over and fail after the small success of the one note
that suspended itself — a cold shot, singled out
in painful example one time after a hundred runs,
trending toward a thousand until I finally
fail utterly and turn back to the Word.

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

I wish for
so many things
real and unreal —
I wish

the spin of the planet would stop
for a split second and that I could
be alive for the split second
before the shift of schedule slew me —

I wish a beaver would enter the room
and discern a palette in the wood
and discourse mightily and learnedly
about the nuances of grain on the tongue —

I wish all floors would drop off their posts
and there would be minutes of wonderment
at the warring senses of floor beneath my feet
and the tempered joy of nothing there —

I wish for no more plodding or trudging
between meanings in the course of one day
as I tried to muddle through weariness and
dread and plain ordinary feeling —

I wish light had a sense of purpose
I wish light had a rumor of coordination
with the dark and the in-between
I wish light had a mission worth understanding

I wish I was OK
I wish the senses and the sensibility aligned
I wish I recalled how to cry out
I wish joy and its counterparts knew how to tango

as if in a dance or in a dance
where the keys started and stopped their playing
to the leg lifted tight along the other leg
and neither fell

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