for Jimi Hendrix
Even your sorrow whines like a heavying
Arrow stirring, wildly, that lonely whistle
Devils can lure from the mouth of a reed.
Gods post at the bridge of your song,
Bleeding from your talisman of string.
Even sorrow rhymes with the buried.
Every morning the autumn rain falls
Across gardens, sheep clothed in wolves,
Daring the weak to finally eat their masters.
Goats, cows, they play in the morning fog, yet,
Belly-up, gutted like a calf, a demon laid still,
Except its teeth, longing for those who near.
Evil sleeps often at the doors of our paradise.
At noon, it can hear its songs over the hills
Doubling to a pitch the hell-dogs howl under.
Goddamn, if Evil could roam all kingdoms,
Bluesmen would frequent our pains, hum
Elegies and crowd the graves of the slain,
Erase names engraved on the faces of stone.
All men created equal, beneath reddened sod.
Dogs prowl your farms. They smell your
Grief buried in the grass. Is that how you
Bring music out of wood; cry shovels into the
Earth until the darkness of worlds scream?
Ever to confess in the Blues, means you
Are flooded with knowledge. Most men
Die from that. Most men die thinking, singing—