Bob Dylan: I Am Tangled Up In Blue And Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

I. Life ain't no rock and roll song
Even if it sounds like one.
I took off
And never came back
Except once
For a funeral
And that don't count.

II. I gave all my money
To a bartender
In a whore house
On the border
While I watched
Rain fall through a window
A girl asked me
What's wrong?

Did you hear that?
I asked.

Come with me
She said.

But I had to go
So I stole a horse
Rode north
Toward the mountains
And something else.

I didn't know what
At the time.

It turned out
To be nothing
But

III. I'm at peace
With my so-called
Wasted life
And that's gotta
Count for something.

Melvins

As I walked out

I thought
I saw
A flying monkey.

It was a bat.

I am never coming back.

While a radio played
Casey Jones
I hummed the chorus
And thought
It's too early
For bats
To be flying around.

A pretty girl walked by.

Do you see any bats?
I asked.

She pointed at the orange
Metallic
Spray-painted
Sky
And said
That's a bird
Dude.

What species of bird
Looks like a monkey
And sings like a bat?
I asked.

Are you okay?
She asked.

It's not that simple,
I said.

X

There is a Los Angeles exit
on the freeway
five miles from my apartment.
I've taken it all the way
once for a Love concert
at a theater in Hollywood.

When I think of LA
I remember a man with one leg
hitting a home-run in the World Series.
A sky hook and a no look pass
Charles Bukowski and Phillip Marlowe
Hacksaw Reynolds
and a black and white album cover
of the letter X burning
in a field at night.

Steve Earle Is An Idiot

I do not need
a fat
ex-jailbird
ex-junkie
high school drop out
lecturing me about politics
or anything else.

That said,
I love the songs man.

Giant Sand

I saw Giant Sand in the Mason Jar
(a gay bar now,
when I told Tom it's a gay bar
he laughed and said
it always was)
with Danny.
I yelled Barrio
and they stated to play it
and forgot the words
and said we can't play it.

I read about Giant Sand
in the music section of New Times
about twenty years ago.
I buy their records
when I can find them.
They are hard to find
like perfect sea shells
or good poems in the New Yorker.

The other day I was listening to
Ballad Of A Thin Line Man
when Penny came home from school.
I could tell she didn't like it
so I turned it way down
and then off.
Giant Sand needs to be played loud.
Giant Sand is not for everyone.
Something exceptional rarely is.

Golden Palominos

I love the name
Golden Palominos
And when someone
Asks me
Who my favorite band is
I tell them
And they look at me funny
And say
I never heard of them
And that doesn't make me feel
Smart or cool,
Just a little weird
And kind of lonely.

For A Stupid Conceited Bitch

The weirdest thing about you standing me up
Is I was more upset about not giving my brother a ride home from the golf course
'Cause I was supposed to have something to do than I was about you not showing up.

My sister in law came and picked him up.

That's what made me feel stupid.

Well Rounded Afternoon

I was reading a book
About Francis Bacon
As I watched a football game.

The Packers got killed.

According to the book Bacon was kind of a genius.
For what it's worth
The pictures of his paintings
In the book are pretty good.

The text was hard to understand
Yet I kept on reading
Like a malfunctioning machine
That I couldn't turn off
unplug or blow up.

Traffic Jam

Tall
Blue
Glass
Building
Against a backdrop
Of lighter blue sky

Shadows
From another building
Turn
The blue
Gray
On the corner
Of Third Street and Earl.

When The Cloud Disappeared

I counted
Seventeen thousand stars
A bunch of trees
Too many birds
Twelve beers
You
And me
And Anna Lee
Sitting beside a fire.

Our fire broke camp

And swilled around the trees

And painted everything black.

The last thing
I remember
Is laying
On the grass
Laughing
At the moon
Laughing
At me.

Last Laugh

I had a lot
Of time
On my hands
In 2008

While

I was
Flipping houses
And banging
A stripper
From the club
I went to
Almost every night
To have a few drinks
Watch a little basketball
And listen to club music.

Alas

She was
Too good
For me
And we both
Thought that
At the same time
And she smiled
And I laughed
And handed
Her a purse
I picked up
At the mall
And we were both
Happy for a while
But nothing lasts
And she eventually
Had enough of me.

So I started up
With a lesser stripper
Until the boom
Busted
And I left the city
With my head up my ass
And a million dollars
In the bank.

One Thousand Years Ago

I lost you in a train station
The year before I was born
While I looked for a cigarette machine
You rolled away.

I found you in a cornfield
Ten years after
I was shot in the neck
And bled out on a frozen rock
Burring from the middle out
In both directions
How can it do that? You asked.
I didn't know.
Follow me, I said.
We ran into the woods,
Hopped a creek
And got attacked by mosquitoes.

One thousand years before
Everything happened
I think it happened again.

Marlboro Light

I couldn't
Figure out
How to turn
Desire
Into art.

I took
A drag
Off of
A cigarette
And threw it
Into a lake.

I hit
A perfect
Golf shot
And felt great
Until
I missed the putt.

If I knew
The answer
I'd ask.
I don't.
So I don't.

Poetry

I read this shit twice.
Three times.
Sometimes four.
I don't understand much.
A sentence.
A phrase.
So why do I read it?
Because I want to understand?
But why?
When there is so much that is easily understood
And as good or almost as good
As this shit
I pore
Over
And over
All night
In my cab
Thinking
What the fuck.
I could be reading
Lonesome Dove again.

Less Is More

On the breezeway
Whatever that is
But it sounds
Like a nice place
To sit
(If you have a warm jacket
A nice hat
And fine leather gloves)
And read
A long book
About the IRA
On this
Quiet
Starless night
I watch a stripper
Or a naked girl
I have no idea
What she does for a living
Dance to the sound
Of birds long gone
South for the winter
Of my discontent
Chirping like
Charlie Parker
Wailing in a bar
A long time ago
I resolved
To never
Look a gift horse
In the eye.