That. He has that
thing I need.
I think I knew him before I could think.
With these first three chords only his ghost could have
guessed,
touched so tenderly, spaced so at liberty, like the twelve
year old
who sings straight out of a 1920s woman who's seen
what a child can’t know, this boy who fingers in front of
us
nameless notes composed by senses
we can't name, who shakes his head no, closes his eyes,
spills blood in form, and sways to some other beat—he must
hear
something else, been to a frequency not heard but tapped,
and there he must have met the flamenco woman who utters
the duende that follows Van Morrison like a black dog, hates
haste
and floats in silence-broken vocal fry, breathes minor chord
breath.
This. This is the place he’s been, of excrement,
where love has pitched his mansion. He grabs a fistful of
crescendo notes,
holds the crux so tightly in his gut and I don't speak French
but Paul Verlaine
is telling me all I need to know as fortéd anarchy is
spewed
across keys and released in minor d and then—now grows
tired
in an afterglow of faucet-dripped arpeggio as he
reclines,
fades a niente one octave higher, tilts his jaw upward, spent,
his fused hands our only reminder of an instrument.
Marissa
Stockton
Marissa Stockton loves Americana/Folk (like
Mandolin Orange and Valerie June); she also listens to T.I after
she drops her kids off. She would love to hear from you: Marissa.Stockton13@gmail.com.
