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
Well, I’m here — who have expected that I would have made it to Heaven? Here I am, though. And it’s just as it’s been described. Clouds, pink light, music from an unseen source. And yes, angels. All with two eyes, all with two wings, white gowns, plucky but serene demeanor.
Welcome to Heaven, they say without speaking directly. Flashing Morse code off their haloes. Communicating without words, communicating nonetheless clearly and directly. Welcome to Paradise.
As time goes on, I notice I’m not becoming an angel; the angels I’m seeing seem to have changed a bit — still with the wings, still the gown, still the demeanor but less serene, more morose. In fact, they’re often stock still and weeping, or twitching and wailing. The music of Heaven goes on with an undertone of that.
I’m no angel. Heaven’s full of people-shades who thought it would be joyous fun and they’re finding out there’s a death-sameness to it that gets to you after a while.
As it is, I’m holding it off. No desire to succumb to this numbing joy. Holding it off with a Jerry Jeff Walker song. “If I could just get off of this L.A. freeway without gettin’ killed or caught…” The sad wings of sad angels, beating guitar time as I hum along.
When the cat
at last stepped out from under
the bed covers,
she came first
to the dry food dishes
in the border land between
pantry and kitchen,
then into the living room
with half-lidded eyes;
sat down smack in the middle
of the grey rug
looking for all the world
like a reluctant barroom audience
as I picked with
recovering skills
at the Telecaster
not long ago set aside
for my illness,
my wrecked ability;
only recently taken up again
to bat around
as a cat might play with
doomed prey.
Unimpressed,
she turned back
to the bedcovers to dream
of blues I’ll never play again —
not in this, the eighth
of my alleged nine lives
that is also the sixth
of hers, that is the last one
of someone else’s allotted haul.
All of this is to say
that when I sit back now,
I sit at my leisure
knowing I’ve not much longer to play.
This cat who will outlast
my last poor song
can stay under the blanket.
I’ll be there as well before too long,
thinking:
Let me sleep for now.
I’ll be satisfied one day soon.
I’ll have had enough of these clumsy blues.
I’ll set the guitar down for good.
Wouldn’t it be nice
to wake up someday
and hear yourself
embedded in a love song
by someone else?
Picture yourself
on your morning commute. It comes up
on the car radio, the plain old radio:
not an oldies station, not a stream
or a CD or God forbid a cassette
or 8-track.
Let it be upon
broadcast — let it be announced
as the smoking new single
at the top of the hour — let it be
so clearly about you sweat through
your clothes. Let it
handle you roughly
all the way up the highway.
You walk into the job shining.
Nobody will understand why you
are practically untouchable that day —
you will be too busy trying to listen
to memory and hoping you’ll hear it
on the way home.
Even if
you never do hear it again,
you can from that moment on
choose to believe
that somewhere someone
is playing your song.
That they hum a few bars now and then.
That they remember all the words.
That they wonder if anyone else
knows the words, wonder
if you’ve heard it,
wonder if you know.
He’s the shit.
One of Bowie’s
original vaseline tigers.
Moving with tide, hiding
his creaks and fears;
a good snake sliding by
on fearsome wholesome
appearance and
remnant style.
He’s the shit
or used to be
and lives for that
more than is safe
for someone of his age,
and surely we should thank
some god
for that.
Bruce Springsteen is canceling his tour
because he has a peptic ulcer
I’m canceling mine too
because Bruce has a peptic ulcer
and if he can’t go on why should I bother trying
I’m pulling back from all my road gigs
in favor of gastric peace and quiet myself
after years of having few fans to speak of
gnawing anxiety that felt like a hole deep within
and a virus-broken voice that’s ready to give out
It’s not like I listen to Bruce much anymore
Though I used to listen to Bruce all the time
I know I’ve seen my last show
Something about pushing it feels wrong to me
You ought to know when something stops feeding you
it’s going to turn around and eat you alive
I’m not saying it’s that way for Bruce
I’m saying it’s that way for me
I don’t read many books anymore
I’m too busy pretending I write them
I don’t listen to much music anymore
I’m too busy pretending I play some
Truth is I’m too busy not bleeding to death
to imagine a world where I’m healthy enough
to keep being a fan of the things that I love
I’m too frantically madly behind the times
and the hole in my gut and the crack in my voice
are too huge to fill when I finally admit it
Bruce Springsteen has canceled his tour
I never made plans to see it
but I’m shocked at myself and who I’ve become
that all I did when I heard
was shrug
These days
I can listen to a song
and not like it for itself
(whatever that means —
for the totality, the wash
of what it is and how it sounds)
but still enjoy it for how
its rhythm guitar snakes around
and under keyboards or how
the drummer’s a touch
behind the beat or what that vocalist’s
surprising choices do
to amplify the meaning
or meanings if it’s
“one of those songs
with more than one;” I can dig
its parts while not digging
the whole wrapped package.
This is how it’s been
for years now — digging
treasures out of dirt
or soil if you prefer; it’s rarely
for joy in the song or singer
that I sit back now and close my eyes.
That is in fact how I take all my joy
in these latter days;
in clumps, in pieces, not as a whole.
It does not lessen
my joy that this is true;
rather, it concentrates my savoring
of what I have dug free
from the world, what
I have unearthed.
If you see me with my eyes closed
before the beauty of some ocean
at sunset, please let me be.
I am here in the now, here to be swept up
in the sound of daylight leaving
with no promise of another day.
It’s morning, the morning after playing out.
I wake up couch-locked, cradling an unplugged Telecaster.
Not what I would have wanted, not what I’d hoped for.
But it is still a voice I love here in my arms — a Telecaster.
How far from here back to the broken heart from which I sing?
How far is it to any healing I can wring from this Telecaster?
Left hand defeated, left side numb, neck stiffened and sore —
right hand? Ready to get back to it, back to the Telecaster.
You’ll hear me one day and say, “shit, that sounds like Tony.”
The song is out there somewhere. I plug in the Telecaster.
Here, he says,
are the top ten guitarists
of all time —
right before trotting out
the same damn list
he has used for this argument
since 1977.
No one since 1977
has played the guitar
well enough to be included,
dontcha know —
or was it 1967,
surely no later
than 1987?
No matter the year he chooses
it ended back then,
music did.
It’s never been the same
since then,
dontcha know. Surely
you know. It’s fucking
obvious or it ought to be.
He has been scolding
since 1977
about
the only right way
to play
the only right
brand of guitar,
the one he used to play
when he used to play.
He’s been talking for years
about how to sing with
just a tinge of blue-white
to the voice
so it sounds darker,
but most assuredly
not too dark —
the better, he winks,
to get
the ladies,
dontcha know.
Here are the top ten
riffs of all time.
Here are the top ten
fingerings of all time.
Here are the top ten
solos of all time.
Here are the top ten
commercial jingles of all time.
Here are the top ten
imprisonments.
The top ten screams.
The top ten numbers
of all time.
Keep the lists
short and old,
dontcha know.
Keep the lists trim.
Keep your list,
I’ve got the only one
I need.
I’m not long for this,
thank God,
dontcha know.
I’m too full of fear.
Don’t make me
count higher.
The exact words spoken
that evening are unclear
all these years later
but there was something
in how you sounded —
that memory has developed
a sheen for me
Like remembered bells of
A carillon in France
Or my ears thrumming
while leaving an arena
after an outstanding concert
So indistinct yet certain
It underpins all speech
and most music now
I cannot imagine living
without love there, backgrounded
in every moment always
until it is muted
by my own ending
Not even then perhaps
Perhaps it has existed
throughout the whole moment
of earth’s long endurance
Perhaps it will last
beyond the last moment
of earth’s long existence
Still singing for us
when no one’s left
to hear that sound
Dark Matter 