Collection

Man gave names to all the animals... in the beginning... in the beginning...
Five years old with clunky Koss headphones strapped to my head
Dreaming to the sound of Dylan's voice
Singing about Man
About naming
About sin
Relishing the drag and drop of needle across grooves
The sweet smell and curl of heated vinyl
I learned to love records as friends who never betrayed
Companions who never turned
I bought my first 45 for $1.49 at Radio Doctor
Hello, is it me you're looking for...
Slotting it onto the angular adaptor in the center of a suitcase system with detachable speakers
My first lp at Atomic Records
Only love... can make it rain... the way the beach... is kissed by the sea...
Music was deep and wide and warm
Lps to tapes to cds to MP3s
Concerts to festivals to backstage and tourbuses
I have danced myself to ecstasy
Sung myself to sleep
Wrapped myself in songs
Shredded my heart on the words
And as the record winds down, into the last hiss and pop
My last request will be a sweet voice, deep and soft
Singing me
To sleep.

The Day Words Failed

I don't remember where I was the day that words failed me...
What I was doing when lips and tongue fell still--
Somehow it got past me,
A moment almost beneath notice.
One day I was 15, with spiked hair and black eyeliner,
Scribbling poems in the margins of notebooks to the droning
Of teachers and bureaucrats,
Clinging to words as though somehow they could save me, Make me whole,
Set me free.
Then I was 28, deep in the throes of Saturn Return,
Living in an 80s vintage Peugeot--
An existence fed on love an poetry...
Believing in the magic of words
The angels of an impending apocalypse.
And then, somewhere on the road, I dropped my words on the floor,
Fell silent
And walked away
Now
Teetering on the edge of 40,
I'm remembering what it was to believe in magic,
To crave freedom,
To adventure with language tripping across lips and tongue.
I'm reaching, once more
For the words to make it real.