Sunday morning Irish music
on the radio. Been this way
for many eons. I don’t do church anymore
but ritual matters to me — for instance, 
a soothing shower and then a bowl
of thick white bean soup
during a snowstorm after shoveling.
So it is with De Dannan, Teada, Altan,
and so on. Something foreign enough
to feel strange, homey enough to feel
safe. I grew up with this around me. 
I took it in with air and water.

This is Sunday for me. Once upon a time
I went to church on Sundays. I used to hate that.
I was forced into that ritual. I don’t hate this one
because I’m free to change the station,
though I don’t. I never do. It’s Irish music
every Sunday morning. It’s a bittersweet
religion as foreign to me as it is homey,
which is, I think, what religion ought to be:
a deep familiarity, a sacred oddity
embedded within you of your own free will.

There’s a common guitarist’s saying:
your fretting hand shows us what you can do,
your picking hand tells us who you are.

I spend half my time trying to decide 
what that means for me, and half my time
working to make it true,

hoping that by doing that,
I’ll understand it at last. It’s all there is — 
fretting and picking

all night and day in a dream
of one perfect run that explains
me to myself. Not that I’d then

set it aside, of course;
I cannot imagine such a pursuit
leaving me unchanged.

I’d have no choice
but to start again and find out
what I could do, who I was now

as a result of learning those things
an instant before. Fretting, picking,
listening. Who am I? What can I do?

Saw a reunited punk band last night

they did an old song called voodoo economics
a bootstrap trickle down call-out
and it didn’t sound dated

they did a new song called scab 
about a liar snake class traitor
and it didn’t sound new

it was a band called The Proletariat
and I wondered how many in the crowd
knew what that means

before them was another old punk crew
called Neutral Nation
they did a song called apathy

lead singer said
you better not be apathetic
this coming election day

nobody responded

some people say
the greatest thing that ever happened
to American punk
was Ronald Reagan

The Proletariat have a song
called Options

bend my ear
twist my arm

show me the options

options
options

still looking for options
but while I’m waiting let me say
I’ve missed this
even though I’m afraid its time
has come to pass again
has slouched around again

with one Gibson one ego
and ten live genius fingers

flying across the desert
toward the next show

where he’ll be paid
in cash for a precisely timed set

with a local pickup band
who had better know every song

and there had better be
a girl backstage

fit for an icon’s status
and predilection for all

to bend before him
because this is what 

this brown-eyed handsome man
can get away with now

though he didn’t always
get away with it

but ten genius fingers
a Gibson and an ego

dropped into the right place
at the right time 

wrung a new world
out of an old one once

and once that happened
even people inclined to hate 

a brown-eyed handsome man
felt compelled to shout for him

saying go go
go be good

or bad-ass as fuck
brown eyed handsome man

on a plane
aimed at the next show

next bag of cash
next nameless band

to stare at his backside
contracted to kiss it if he asks

and who would have dreamed
that would happen 

back when he started
back when it all started

Teddy Pendergrass tonight — 
man oh man, Teddy on the radio, singing
“The Love I Lost.” Singing
“Wake Up Everybody.” Years ago

I used to drive right by
the spot where he crashed on
Lincoln Drive.  Liked to take that
deadly road through the park

on my fastest and most
reckless wheels.  It was
that kind of road I used to love
best — the kind that could

kill you with
joyous curves and narrowing
surprise lanes, assassin 
trees, radio roaring over

the hurricane of blacktop noise
and the occasional tire squeal
when you cut it too close
and had to back down from the rush.

I could use some more Teddy tonight,
but only in a fast car.  I’m awake and
longing and hearing it in the quiet house,
lying here so still listening, isn’t

cutting it quite the way I’d like;
not wanting to suffer what he suffered,
though, I’ll just dream of the road
as you might expect.  If you don’t 

know me by now, I should tell you
that I’m just the right age to talk big about
former ecstasy and do nothing 
to reclaim it — nothing, that is,

except listen to Teddy.

The best sound you can find
while playing your guitar:

your slide finally
after brief teasing
landing in the sweet spot,
coaxing forth the note
you want. That resolution

puts a small damper upon
anxiety you sometimes feel
when playing, even when
playing by yourself in 
a lonely house: the fear

not so much of being wrong,
but of not doing justice
to the Work.

The best sound you can find
when playing your guitar:

that one note
that tells the entire story
of the Work, includes
every Worker to that point,
assurance that this is
the Work they did too —

and then, the sound disappearing
back into the Work itself,
its last message

catch me if you can,

so you begin again.

Your eyes are drawn
across the dance floor.
A couple is shimmering there, 
fluidly rolling in and out of the crowd, 
spinning, disjointing,
reconnecting in mid-spin. 

You’re not mesmerized alone.
Everyone pulls back
to make room,
the crowd transformed
into a ring,
the darkness around a fire:

they are a fire now.
They are the fire now.
Flushed, whirling, aware of all
but unconcerned.
They know they’re the ones
giving warmth and light, the ones

glowing like
the entire history
of the tribe.

Does not matter
how many instruments you buy
how rare they are
how odd they are
where they’re from —

if you are
that sad kind of player
who twists fingers
lips and lungs
into knots trying
to transcend
by sheer mechanics
the spirit of the maker
the spirit of their time and place
the blood in that soil and 
the tears and joy that fed it — 

if you’re that player
take a seat 
and learn first to sing
Make yourself over into
instrument
Seethe and roil with
your own blood

Then go back
Untangle your parts
from your head

Play now
sad player
See if you have stayed
the same kind of sad

“John Barleycorn Must Die”
comes on the radio before dawn.

I play the guitar
because of that song;

when I was a boy I heard
the fingerpicking before dawn,

and I could not die
without having at least tried

to play like that before dawn,
sitting alone in growing light, 

imagining I could pull the sun
closer toward the horizon with every note,

then break
into a hard and glorious strum

as it cleared the distant line
looking just as glorious.

It took me years to even come close,
and by then I knew how foolish

it was to think that I could make
things happen. I’d been like

the men in the song
who thought themselves strong

but ended up vanquished by 
what they thought they controlled.

Like them, though, I’m still drunk on
the myth, and this morning

my fingers woke before the rest of me,
before I fully knew what I was hearing,

and they moved
as the light in the bedroom grew.