Poetry for Open Mike, Yippie Cafe 4/13/13

In This Generation
Standing at the mic
Not making a sound
Everything is amplified.
His face resembles a mountain,
More than it resembles the album covers.
Rock & roll with a folk music attendance.
Myth held together by band aids and rusty guitar strings.
He plays on the postage stamp
Until the music hits a wall.
Electricity stops running through the guitar cable, broken and useless.
Alone, abandoned, by his tools and toys,
He steps up to the microphone, naked
Parting his lips

And trusting that,
with the song
There will be Electricity.

Basement Helicopter

He wanted to build things.
At the end of his life,
Sit in an empty room
Nodding sagely at the oak panels
Driving by buildings
Monuments to the richest man
Build with your hands
Because what you build with your voice
Fades into the air
And he was sane enough to build a helicopter in the basement
And crazy enough to go to architecture school
just in case


Do you pronounce the H?
In your long, ethnic, real last name
that you hear as clearly
As I can hear you say your stage name.
Not a blessing.
And the mystery of
Your middle name
Echos your last name, shortened
How do you say your name?
Your grandfather
Your father
Your daughter
As a nod to
Your grandfather
Your father
And the pieces of you
You leave silent and unsaid


Pictures Henry Didn't Take
Focus on all the before and all the after.

Before:
The rehearsals before the publicity,
Trope of the struggling band
Autographs on the contract.
Your trip to Venezuela,
and the worlds strange to you.

After:
Who you were when freed.
Poor and sleeping on the floor with your one year old,
The new stranger in in business suit and beard.
The cartoon singer making guest appearances, alongside monsters.
1977, sitting in the middle of the road, drunk and despairing.
The camera, snaked through your elegant nose
Finding the cancer,
The plum in your throat.
The last morning on the horse called Czar,
who rode him into oblivion.