Jerry Garcia
Breakfast Woe
Morose morning pages
spill decaffeinated information
to those who isolate deliberately
in a crowded sidewalk bistro.
They experience pleas for attention
like packs of barking hounds
that terrorize miserable shreds of conscience
and chasing prey over manicured lawns.
Hunters lay in wait to take aim at their wits.
Typeset rips through paper like peritonitis
splits the gut.
Bleeding local news horror,
memory twists watch-spring tight,
disdain clamps appetite.
Coffee rings turn fragile words into pulp
as cadence of crouton chasing birds distract.
Reaction waits like a passenger
flagging down sentiment.
Feelings scatter like crumbs from bulgur wheat toast
in a gust of malodorous March wind.
He loves her
the way a 16 year old boy loves
the Les Paul Electric Guitar.
Polished chrome
glossy jet black paint
humbucking wet dreams
hot lights and stadium crowds.
Day dreams and classroom scribbles,
Pee Chee folders caked with ballpoint ink,
her stylized name blotted on blue-lined pages
of his Big Five composition book.
Stage door
to the alley behind the Music Center
between sound check and concert
he arrives with puny supermarket daffodils
busting her dinner escape.
Dark glasses of entourage
push him aside like a turnstile.
But she swirls
cotton lace and patchouli breeze
stops his heart
“hello”
slightly accented
like not from California
not like any girl he knows.
He stammers she smiles
chauffer takes the flowers.
Showtime resonates
performance hall too small
to contain such a static and roar.
Frenzied crowd squeals against layers
of Hammond B3 organ keyboard fingered
guitar notes sway like palm branches
in an island breeze
stage lights bleach
undulating translucent gown
blonde guitar slung goddess
Thirty-three years
since she first blew stardust
at the gawky teenage boy
constellations still flicker
in his eyes,
though some stars are faded,
the poet dares to whisper
“you turn me on.”
Rock Star
