This air-conditioned
room has recently
been full of Nas

and Brand Nubian.
That’s just the truth. Not trying
to make a point 

or add to my name-weight
by borrowing heft from others.
It’s just that there’s an afternoon

of 90s videos on TV and those
were the only two
that made me look up.

I don’t believe in
nostalgia.  A lot of
so called classic rock

isn’t. A lot of hip hop
went over my head
and still does. When 

a good punch lands, though,
it lands well and age
means nothing to me

or to the music. “Street Dreams.”
“Don’t Let It Go To Your Head.”
In case you were wondering. In case

you want to know more as
I wanted to know more. I wrote
those names down

in an air-conditioned room.
I turned them up. I looked them
up and watched them again

alone, at top volume,
the way I listen to any rock 
that hits me right

at a given moment and makes me
want to know more. Anything that gets me
to sniff around new knowledge

excitedly, as if I was hot upon 
some original trail away from
the lonely air-conditioned room.

A pop star is filmed
holding a machete
in what I think must be
a field of sugar cane.

Is this her first time
holding a machete?
That’s quite a hat.
Where was this filmed?

I look it up to be sure.
Yes, that’s sugar cane.
Yes, it’s possible that 
she has held a machete before,

based on what little I know
from what I’ve read of her.
It doesn’t answer the question
of how these images connect

to this song. I didn’t listen
to the lyrics.  I’ll have to look them up.
Once I’m prepared, I’ll be able
to live more in the moment

the next time I hear this song
or see this video. After all
I did like her previous work.
Perhaps I will like this, 

now that I am fully informed
as to what I will be watching.
Until then, nothing.  I feel 
nothing.  

What Buddy Guy did to me
from the stage
of a college football stadium
in 1978

with Junior Wells
standing beside him
in head to toe
black leather

was an insult to all
the hard earned wisdom 
of an eighteen year old
Clapton fan

from central Massachusetts
where my early ownership
of BOTH Robert Johnson albums
had made me

King Shit
of the 
high school
blues boys

Now I had to
admit that I was
King of Shit
indeed and

I lay down on the muddy
field approximately 
sixty yards back
from the cyclones before me

understanding that
I was no longer the
center of the
universe

It was fortunate
that I learned this
so early
in the day

as
Pharaoh Sanders
was
the next act

On my rack,
a guitar the size
of New Mexico.
Tone drawn from
scraped concrete
and morning traffic.
Neck slim as
a racist’s excuse,
strung up tight and bright
to breakpoint. When I need
to write a song about white fire
rising from the caved chest
of a corpse, this flies
from its wall to my hands.

There also is
a small guitar there,
tucked behind the left ear
in a Victorian portrait
of an unnamed
woman, a guitar so small
I could swallow it and 
I do — not often and not
without choking.
It comes
without my asking
to my sleep, where
my long throat tunes it
to an open chord
when my need is for
a song that lights its own
flame. I find it warming me
upon waking; I come to slowly,
wondering at this sound within.

I cannot tell you all the names
of all the instruments that live near me;
some are ancient, some are new.
Some plant blasts,
some stick giggles
all over everything.  

Their only commonality
is that if another took them
and tried to play, I do believe
they would fall to dust in their hands
and blow away, perhaps to become
mingled with the dunes in White Sands
or piled upon the paired graves
of centuries-old lovers;
never to be played again

unless somehow 
they were to find me, bereft 
and songless, lingering here
long past my time
in dire need of
a dirge, an elegy, a tune
to bear me away.

Praise for the Hammond,
for the towering Leslie
and how it warbles, how
it can break any jaded 
weariness, how it argues
against atheism, how it
silkens lounge air 
after midnight.

Praise for the 
hollow body of the archtop,
how it has seen better days
as its scars and scratches attest,
but still chops and pops as it 
always has, how it cuts
into thick despair, how it 
tosses back a pulse like
a whiskey cocktail.

Praise for the mysteries
of the kit, how hands and feet
are employed upon heads
and pedals, how the sticks
mediate between fresh heart and 
old smoke, how brushes
hiss like summer rain, how
immediate the church of the solo.

Praise for the dark cocoa burr
of the upright bass, how it
slips its sweet oil into and through
everything else, how it marks
time with shine and weight, how
it opens the floor below to show
how profound the depths are
below its solid footing.

As for those who stand aside now
as the rhythm section holds
what was and will
soon enough be theirs again:
as for singer, sax,
trumpet, cornet, clarinet?
Tonight is not for them.
Tonight is for this praise song

to what holds them
to the spotlight.
Tonight, instead, a praise song
of foundations,
bedrock,
a landscape from which
all else rises;
a praise song for
what sounds like
home.

This bar band amps
“Little Wing” into an anthem,
and right away it is clear
no one on stage gets it or
ever did — some songs
derive their power from
the silences they carry; witness
the space around the opening
notes Hendrix played, the stand out
“ting” in the first phrase
that highlights it and sets the stage
for what follows. There is something
to be said for unleashed covers of
such songs but one must
understand them first to begin such
delicate rework; here we have
nothing like that.

I am no critic.
I am instead a lonely lover
who wishes only
to hear Jimi sing about her
walking the clouds as I imagine
my distant former love may now be,

so I can only sit here and stare
into the last ring of head
on this sad beer and wish 
for a simple jukebox with 
only the exact versions of songs
I want to hear, much as I wish
only for my former lover —
no new version, no cover —
I will not tilt my head back 
and sing along.

My tongue’s thick as 
a vintage guitar neck.
Speech scented with whisky,
the Devil’s sweat. Give me any topic
and my opinion comes out
with bent notes. My whole world view
is a flatted fourth string,
a little bit of matchbook in its nut-slot
to keep it from buzzing against the frets;
pawn shop tickets in the cheap case
tell a story of loss and gain. Put plain:
I’m a man of blue words and I don’t think
a thing has gone wrong in my life
that twelve bars and a crossed road
couldn’t fix or at least make pretty.