At three AM
“Diamonds and Rust”
won’t leave my head
or hands. Sitting in 
the far room
on a desk chair
that makes more noise
than an unplugged
Telecaster can.
Fingerpicking
my way through,
not singing as it’s
three AM and
the dog won’t bother
to come in if I
can keep it down.
My love in the next room
won’t be disturbed if I
can keep it down.
I try not to move
so the chair won’t squeak.
I try not to sing
so my eyes don’t leak.
I concentrate
so I do not fail
the near silent notes;
so my hands don’t feel
the pain they do
when I am simply
walking around
through daylight chores:
stiffened; full of rust and 
broken nerves while
the sharp diamonds
of my past
are carving me within. 

“then we move like tigers on Vaseline”  — D. Bowie

Guitars waiting on stage:
trees around a clearing,
glorious hazards
waiting there. 

Evokes
a forest rife with
stealthy predation,
camouflage, danger on ice.

Suggests
the existence
of a treated 
jungle floor, 

big cats
disturbed but adapting, 
beginning to enjoy
gliding about.

Regret nothing,
pray for no one here.
Sliding about in darkness
is freedom.

have you danced 
too much already, beloveds?
did it all when you were young
and had the legs for all night music,
the lungs to scream and raise your arms
toward the summit of your favorite song?
haven’t you aged into rest and being satisfied 
to have the dark bright memory
of how you moved along the walls 
of the basement club with the dirt floor corner,
the college bar with the lights out
on the long unused top floor,
the unlocked stairway up,
the corner full of the mushroom scent
of lovemaking and trepidation? 
haven’t you danced yourself to a point
where you don’t need to dance any more
than maybe one more spin 
through one more memory
of fresh human touch 
filled with the expectant danger
of rejection, or maybe just your body
not being able, not being close
to able to shake your leg or your ass
as you once did, the ecstasy of fast,
the ecstasy of slow, the ecstasy of 
memory, the replacement of current
sorrow with a memory of sweat?
beloveds, don’t you wanna dance
all the way to the end of your time?

I owned
a tenor guitar
once
for three months.

Four strings
over six seemed a 
novelty, a downgrade 
back then.

It tickled
something in me
to think of mastering
the antique. Soon enough

I gave 
the guitar away
to someone more excited
than I was to try.

This morning
found myself humming
Ani’s “Little Plastic Castles”
(which is played on a tenor guitar)

and memory,
all this memory, came
rushing back
and now I want a tenor guitar again,

longing for
four strings I can’t play,
rebooting since
I can no longer play six:

my hands
full of recall
but unable to execute;
the desire for music

stronger now
as a way through this 
to something
newly perceived as fresh although

I have
been here before:
more than once, with old guitars
and fancy pens, blank notebooks

and blank people,
things I bought or faces I found
that seemed to promise
surprise, any kind of surprise

that might
break the hard walls
of the hole within and give me
a chance to climb out and be new and free. 

(like it was yesterday,
like it was the first time again)

to “Keep Yourself Alive”
and the chug of Brian’s 
guitar throughout 
and especially
the creamy and climactic ascension
of chorused notes following 
the back and forth lines
between Roger and Brian
before Freddy kicks back in with them
for their final
exhortations.

I first heard this song when
I was thirteen or fourteen
and it hit like a religion
and made me want to shine forth.
Today
I don’t think 
there’s any god in there
or anywhere
that cares much whether or not
I feel the same and
I’m thinking now

I should have listened more closely
all these years
to John,
remarkable anchor
too often unremarked,
as I’ve involuntarily
lived my life
more often in
the background
of whatever cosmos
I have found myself in.

suppose you stop snickering
and get shut of the need
to scorn those folks over there
fingering slipcovers
in the discount aisle
talking only to each other
when they speak of
perfection and how well
these would go with 
the drapes in the front room

and suppose
you quit sneering at those
who proclaim their love
for the Beatles as you cannot
distinguish between
an emotional bond to their
soundtrack of a lifetime
and your own decidedly
up-to-the-minute
lasting-maybe-a-minute
enthusiasm for whatever minute
you find yourself in
(unless
of course
it hits you
RIGHT THERE
like a never-ending
cryogenic block
on your future)

and suppose
you get your head
out of whatever fragrant
arrogant nook
you keep it in 
and see yourself
years from now
dressed fifteen years 
too early for retro fashion
choosing from cheap mirrors
in a bargain aisle
while humming
yesterday’s
greatest song ever written

Inside this music
is an ocean
with tides that sweep
into then away from
where you’re standing

bringing you mysterious
objects then taking them back
before you can fully understand
what you’re seeing
and now and then

something washes up
to your feet still alive and then
it’s gone again and you
end up on your knees before
the pulse of the sound

praying that you yourself
could be swept away 
and then back again holding
all these secrets you’ve glimpsed
long enough to understand them

so you can then release them
back to the ocean
for others to find
when they face
the music and pray

Listening to today’s
pop music:
how comforting
it is to hear

music not written
to privilege
who I am, who we were.
How glad it makes me

to be at last
completely comfortable
with being un-affected
in any strong way

by the hits.
To be able to
decide with no sense
of being dragged

by the emotions
into debates
and passion
about this one’s 

merits and that one’s
evils. I can listen and say
that arrangement is 
interesting, how do they

make that sound, 
the production on this
is wonderful, is boring,
is cluttered, is clean;

then I walk away
back to my own guitars
and songs, taking
what I need

back to the forge as fuel.
When now and then 
something new does
set its claws, does

dig in and seize
the means of emotion,
I count it as a late-life gift.
Sometimes I even discard

something I used to love
to make room for it
in my chest where
favorites live. And

the next time I reach for 
my guitars and my songs?
It’s there. I am open for
new business. I’m alive.

Woke up 
singing Eddie Cochran’s
“Twenty Flight Rock” 
No idea why

At once I thought 
of seeing Ry Cooder
play it — solo acoustic — long ago
at the Newport Folk Festival 

I’m not much given
to nostalgia which feels
to me to much like 
lusting for ghosts

who can only feel
what they have always felt
Why do that when
there are new things

to be felt
Why repeat yourself
endlessly with the same
old same old movements

going back again
and again through one
life two lives three
lives four 

Although
I’m starting to drag
and soon enough might be
ready to sag

I’m not yet ready to
say things were
so much better
before when

I could look at Ry Cooder
playing a song from his own old days
in his own splendid fashion
and say I could be him someday

So fuck the ghosts
who crowd around me
demanding obeisance
to their past

when I am still learning
to play not like
Ry or Eddie
but like myself

No matter how far
I have to climb I swear
I will only go to bed
when I get to the top

If I say “Chopsticks” is
my favorite piano piece
will you think I am being
facetious or simply 
and incredibly stupid about
how much great piano music
is out there that I must have heard
at some point and yet here I am
championing something
almost anyone with fingers
and a memory of hearing it
can play with little thought
once they are shown where 
to begin? If I tell you
that the reason I claim
such a thing is for 
that precise reason —
how accessible it is and 
how it connects so easily and
how much delight one may see
in the eyes of a new player
of any age — how the sound of it
might make even a seasoned pianist
ever so slightly nostalgic
for their earliest days upon 
the ivories — would you think
I am being facetious then
even as your own fingers
begin to twitch and beg you
to let them try?