H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of
A l l e n G i n s b e r g
N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
DAVID COPE
Blues for Frank
Young Man Blues
Leaning
over the guitar, eyes intent
on
skeletal fingers, strings leaping
with
young man fire & long nights
burning those notes in the blue room
of
dreams, to get past the half moon over
the
broken city, the lost loves, to sing
thru to boom boom
dawn running from
home
& somehow find the tune that
salves the soul & sings free of the
many
chains that break us all—taking the dark
dream
within,
living with it, not denying it,
when the sky is crying & there’s only
a pigfoot
& a bottle of beer & a shaking
money
maker to find some way to work
thru it, transcend it, burnish our
hearts
with the suffering none can escape.
The gift taken
When
the M.S. took his fingers & silenced his guitar,
he sang among blue-gummed skeletones of providence—
he
sang & would not be still.
Lost
to his great gift, he was still able to pluck out
“Camptown Races” on a banjo, that a young girl
might
find a song.
In
later years, even as his body curled against him
&
left him abed, his angel Fran kept him that he might
sing
& sigh with a friend.
Joining the chorus
Here's
to Doehler-Jarvis workers coming home from the long
shifts,
to Sicilian beauty and elegance silent
presence in every gesture,
here’s to Woody Guthrie, to Bobby Dylan,
to Spider John Koerner
and Robert Johnson, to Mississippi John
Hurt and Doc Watson, to
Son
House and Hank Williams, to Bert Jansch and John Renbourn,
to the 10,000 anonymous pickers &
singers still in the blue dream,
to Grandma Josie whose recipes Sue
learned by watching—
no measurements—to his many loves and
his fierce friends,
years of running wild with a harp and a
bottle of Southern Comfort,
yakking until 3 a.m., passing out and
yakking again, with no
particular place to go and no end in mind—his
old National Steel
&
Martin guitars weathered classics silent, still now forever—now he’s
free in the rent party rag wang-dang-doodle where all careless
loves now rest, no police dog blues, hellhounds sighing beneath
the table with hambones and the wild
women singing like Bessie
in every kitchen—let the freight train
rolling thunder midnight
special wail down those tracks, trumpets
blasting out every window,
free now in the blue chorus of wailing
angels, free picking free
when the last deal’s gone down and where
indeed we shall not be
moved, not be moved, not be moved, hang
it on the wall, brother.
—for Frank Salamone (1947-2012)
Mayday,
2012
[Originally published in NHS 2012,
http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs12/.]