Not Guilty

The days are dog-eared, the edges torn,

ragged—like those pages

I ripped once out of library books,

for their photos

of Vallejo and bootless Robert Johnson.

A fine needs paying now

it’s true, but

not by me.

I am no more guilty

than that thrush is

who sits there stripping moss

off the wet bark of a tree.

A red fleck, like his, glows

at the back of my head—a beauty mark,

left by the brain’s after-jets.

I would not wish for the three brains

Robert required

to double-clutch his guitar

and chase those sounds he had to know

led down

and into a troubled dusky river, always.

Three brains did Johnson no earthly good,

neither his nor Vallejo’s 4 & 1/2

worked right exactly—O bunglers,

O banged-up pans of disaster!

Crying for days, said Cesar, & singing for months.

How can I be so strong some times,

at others weak? I wish to be free,

but free to do what? To leave myself behind?

To switch channels remotely?

Better to sing.

Not like the bird, but as they sang,

Cesar & Robert—

with the shocked & seeded

sweetness of an apple

split open by a meat cleaver.

Source: Bewitched Playground (Graywolf Press, 2000)