Pretense of
black turtlenecks
and sunglasses.
A cult of jazz dogs
barking assent
to massed noise,
dense mist
of scramble
and note salad.
Deep analysis and
bullshit among the
gold…
meanwhile
the musicians smoke
in the back alley
between sets,
and talk
of baseball.
Morning ride radio.
Bird
decorating air,
Mingus
opening depths,
Trane
rarefying light,
Monk
coming at existence from
guru angles, and
Blakey
socking in a
pulse.
News reports:
bodies on
street corners,
in mosques,
churches, and temples…
then back to
music standing
up to death —
all the players having known
such casual killings
in their time, too.
How dare I claim
to be so broken
that there is nothing left
for me to say?
mixed into night Jeffery Lee
found he was more everywhere than distinct
as he had been formerly and now
that skin guitar had dipped
he saw he had been more music than flesh
abdicating his song had reduced him
he had lost his hands
nothing to grip the old salted wound anymore
missed that possibility
looked up to see star and perhaps skin guitar
if it was there it was no longer visible
Jeffery Lee dissolved at last away
back in the bar where he’d fallen into such disrepair
things went along swimmingly
mistakes were sung
now and then someone played their entire skin
host said clap and wow and blues and love
crowd said ooh and wow and where was I before that happened
at the star heart of what Jeffery Lee had bled out for
all was noted
fool said skin guitar hanging there
should not have taken life so seriously
he carried it in like a wound
he had learned to live with
sat with it infantile
wondering at untutored wisdom
then struck it
and drew forth unfiltered stream
as he played Jeffery Lee
changed himself to be Jeffery Tree
then Geoffrey Spree
exposed his nature first in slow touch with wood
then how reckless with speed
Jeffery Lee and skin guitar a blur union
the listeners sat before him in chairs
and talked of elsewhere and otherwise
Jeffery Lee stepped out from behind the mic
went outside into the night
at that point the host paused the list
for short applause and beer
no one went after him or saw
Jeffery Lee dissolve or his skin guitar
rising away
to the star
1.
Too often now I stare at a screen
and try to recall what it was like
when I could easily change blank
into not blank.
Sometimes I’d make
a good thing, more often I would not.
However it ended, at least there was
a result. Back then emptiness
didn’t stare at me like an adversary
the way it does now. The challenge now
is to survive, more or less,
while fighting the whiteness of that void.
2.
Yesterday, Aretha Franklin passed.
Today daylight is still sagging
in the absence
of her possibility.
Eighty years ago to the day
Robert Johnson passed. The moon
still hasn’t recovered all of the melody
it loaned him.
Somewhere in between them
Elvis Presley died — same day,
different song; I know people miss him
but what song we lost that day, I can’t imagine.
3.
I’m not ready yet. If I go tomorrow
the only song I’ll take with me
is a small one, a pebble in a shoe
shaken out after a good day walking,
forgotten once the immediate pain
subsides. A tuneless whistle
to get by one of life’s little discomforts.
Right now, that’s all I’ve got.
So back into the empty white I go
to blotch it up then read the portents there,
turn them into full-blown glory. I want the earth itself
to mourn me. It may not happen. I will try.
Take a second to honor
the amplifiers that made
the music louder, swung it
from parlor to night club to
theater and then arena;
commemorate the day feedback
came to be, the day distortion
came to be; salute the heat
of gain, the saintly shiver
of spring reverb, the jaw-clench
of chorus all carried
by boxes marked Fender
and Gibson, Supro and Vox,
Marshall, Mesa Boogie,
Randall and Roland; Orange,
Peavey, Hartke, and all those
one-offs and forgotten names,
tubes aglow in each
like the candles on so many cakes:
happy birthday to the Big Noise.
One hand
too sore to wash the other,
each foot biting hard
with each step,
brain on perpetual fire
in a stubborn fog
that won’t burn off.
This is how I live.
Right now I can picture
my guitar in the next room,
waiting. Can see and hear
the expectant amplifier.
Despite the example of all
those still-playing classic rockers,
they’re whispering to me
that I really should be
younger than I am, and less sore,
and depression at my age
is not romantic — as if it was
when I was younger,
as if I didn’t know that
way back then.
As if I’d never said good bye
to someone, unsure if it was for
the last time; as if that was not
melancholic, but terrifying, every time.
Alright, say the instruments: all righty, then,
are you getting up and limping toward us
once again as you always have in spite of
all your damned pains and grave desires?
There are still places I want to go,
even if I am less and less sure
of how long it will take
and if perhaps I will not get there.
Here I come: stumbling, cursing
my wracked hands and feet, cursing
the dead weight of mood and brain.
Hello, I respond. Here I come. Yes.
While working on someone else’s work
strictly for my pocket’s improvement
I’ve been thinking all day of
cresting a deep drone tone
played on a dark electric guitar
as if it were a wave far out at sea
racing toward land overnight
across the whole of an ocean
moving toward the shore of a stage
where it will break
and alter everyone in attendance
with a drench of black sound
I don’t know how to create it
and from guilt over things undone
I’ve touched no guitar today to try and learn
But tomorrow — come tomorrow
I’ll put in less time on someone’s job
and bettering my normalcy
Instead will surf the deep ocean
riding the imperceptible wave in my ears
from origin to end to see what comes with it
from abyssal depth or strange port
as if I were a brave sailor and not
a prosaic and mundane slump of a man
worried about bills and chest pains
to the exclusion of making the music I’m here to make
along with words to ride the wave
all the way over the shelves of shore
into the high tide line
so everyone there gasps and says
they were glad to be present when it came
to be present for such a sound
My base tongue is
rock, even more foundational
than English. My dialect, punk
underlaid with classic,
smatterings of metal. I know
a few words in prog.
Old blues and country and basic folk
are a second language to me,
mostly because I have a passion for
etymology that led me to
learning them to better understand
my root and seed.
I know enough jazz to do more
than get by. It’s a language
I love; I’m swiftest to translate fusion
in my head, but nuances may
slip by if couched too deeply in bop
or swing; most excited when I hear
free being spoken, though I cannot
say a word.
Orchestral? Fine. Chamber?
Fine. I grew up surrounded,
immersed in these and opera too,
but have lost the taste for them
and now it’s like recalling
childhood as it was before my memory
was solid enough to track.
I wish I could speak hip hop
better than I can now. I know
what I love of it and how it fastens
to poetry, my first and best craft.
I am resolved to any facility
I may yet develop being
strictly rote, merely mechanical;
I am serene in knowing hip hop
is now and forever will be fine
without me.
I turn it all off
and face the world:
salsa, son, bachata, merengue;
rai, reggae, reggaeton, dub;
Breton, Irish, Scottish, English;
K-pop, J-pop, EDM, trance;
drum and bass, raga, township jive;
how much noise do you want me to love?
How many tongues can this old man learn?
Then there’s this:
somewhere on a beach
with no musicians around for miles,
the ocean, the drummer,
is still beating time
on the earth itself.
“…there is a certain amount of writing that can only come from a monastic space.” — St.Vincent
Alone. A lost tree
seeking a forest — thing about
trees, though, is they
can’t move so is it lost at all
if it’s living where it’s
been planted? Perhaps
solitary is a better word
if it is a happy tree. It stands by
itself, seeking best words.
All of its time caught in a web
of slow growth and searching.
Speaking of best words,
happy doesn’t enter into
a lone tree’s vocabulary.
Say instead it’s self-contained
and always fixed upon
what it grows from: it grows
from matins through lauds
to vespers, morning prayer
through to night prayer. Speaking of
St. Vincent, musician and not
saint, it is always possible that prayer
may become song. Speaking
as man and not tree, I refuse
to see difference between those
words. Speaking as a solitary,
i am not ashamed to grow bark,
resolve to be rooted,
settled without patronage.
St. Vincent non-musician was
patron saint of poor people and vintners.
Never an extra word for poets. I am
poor and I am drunk on my assets:
I speak of course of words, prayers,
songs, monastery walls,
vows, oak, bark, and bite.
The problem with
three chords and the truth
is always that third chord
When the first one
lays it right out there
where anyone can see it
and the second one
simply points
at what the first one did
why do you need one more
when all it does
is nods at the first two
and brings you
right back
to them again
Maybe it’s in
the nature of truth
that we find the answer
that it’s not as much about
how three chords fill the void
better than one or two
than it is about
which three chords you choose
to carry which truths
You reach out endlessly
for the right ones
with two or three fingers
on keys or strings
and end up hearing either outright lies
or mere cartoons of that truth
and then you reach out again
and this time you find
a truth you weren’t expecting
which you follow and
there you go with those chords
and that truth
but the one you started with
gets away and one day
you come back to it
and stare at it and say
was this ever true
You puzzle out three new chords
and try to answer that
until one day that truth
blares out of a car radio
flying in on three chords
you never even considered
and it’s a hit and you shake your head
at how simple it should have been
to do this and then
you crank it up
regretting nothing
of how this mystery passed you by
as you shout and you sing
and try to figure out
that third chord
that was the key you never found
I wanna write a pop song
For half the world to love
Wanna write a pop song
The other half can loathe
Wanna write a pop song
That lifts an easy load
A pop song
A pop song
That takes a simple road
No one cares for pop songs
The way they used to
When the words and music shook the earth
Out from under you
Wanna write one like a fast machine
That rolls out over the air
Runs over all that came before it
Feels like it was always there
Wanna write a pop song
Like the ones that came before
A pop song
A pop song
Like no one’s heard before
Wanna write a pop song
Don’t care if it doesn’t sell
A pop song
A pop song
From one hit wonder hell
A pop song like a small machine
That floats across your ears
Sticks there till the next one comes
Then disappears for years
Although no one cares for pop songs
The way they used to
Words and music that shook the earth
Out from under you
Maybe that’s just me
Maybe I’m just old and tired
Maybe some still feel this way
Maybe some still get inspired
By a pop song
Hey all…this is a link to a story about a big special project my band was involved with. I’ll let you read it for yourself for the details, and there’s a whole playlist of all the contributions you can listen to.
We’re in there with covers of “Danger Zone” and a solo performance on guitar and vocal by yours truly on “Flashdance.”
Hope you enjoy it.
That open D turnaround
we’ve all heard forty thousand times,
the Chuck-riffs done to death,
the pentatonic lockbox…
did you forget all were designed
as magic spells? Don’t blame
the weak impact
they have upon you
on anything but weak magicians
weakly casting them.
Last night I heard a master
play everything right out of
the text book of how you are
supposed to do it,
and it wrung me out like a rag
sopping sweat from some ancestor’s
forehead between sets;
I long now to stay home
and sit over my Telecaster grimoire
through as many midnights as I have left
in the hope of getting beyond
just getting it right
once in my life.
1.
Early afternoon
and I’m glad I’m unheard
tunelessly humming
a current popular song
as if I liked it or it had
meaning beyond
its currency on all
media when in fact
tomorrow afternoon
it will be displaced
from the odd cranny
where it has lodged itself
by the next hot tune
or turn of phrase that
offers a sense of immediate
connection among those
who hear and repeat it
(although in my case
nothing could be less true
as I take its presence here
to be a sign of how I have failed
to resist the dicatorship
of the official soundtrack
of these days) even when
no one’s listening as
is happening now
2.
No one is listening
as I hum this ditty
which is likely for the best
as I carry the shame
of knowing it
better than I carry the tune itself
3.
This unheard song
of mine is not mine at all
but was likely crafted by
committee
across continents
via the Internet
with the sole aim of
ensuring that it would be hummed
in all quarters
by all people who hear it
whether they want to
or not
not in response
to an emotional need or
appropriate situation
which would bring it
obviously to mind
but instead
simply because
repetition and songcraft
have stuck it into
so many places and
so many ears that
to hum it or sing it
becomes involuntary
even if it is hated
by the one
humming it
4.
Imagine what else
a committee
capable of such
manufactured taste
could make you do
and you may understand
why I am tempted
to slit my own throat
when I realize that I
am humming a song
whose name I do not know
only because it has driven
all else from my head
and I don’t know what else
is in there
hiding behind it
Dark Matter
