Mon Frere Thierry

I live in Vicksburg, Mississippi, now,
but I remember snow
falling on the campus of Purdue and you
and I were thin as sin, 

drank gin and grinned at winter Indiana.

Sandy still plays her violin
and I still can't sing worth shit
or play an instrument,
not even spoons -- but you
were Pan's right hand, the man
who touched the keys of spring,
whose voice caressed
the robin's wing,
and a single feather
like a whispered secret
fell.

And summer is a-coming in,
you sang. Summer is a-coming in
someday.

Valentines for the Vampires

Your kiss tattooed my face 
with the thin calligraphy of love,
said the queen of vampires.
Every vein screams
how much I love you.

Sweetheart, said the king of vampires,
you caress my soul with a serrated knife.
I want to sing every song
the Flaming Lips recorded in 1989.

She said: Oh, my dear,
you grow old. You grow old.
You make me
want to slip on my white dress
and slice
the tips of all your fingers.

He sang: Come dance with me,
my lifeless queen, come dance
until tomorrow. I waged the moon
you'd rise a star
that fell a flower.

The queen of vampires moaned.

Oh, my black-eyed lover,
let your bloody fingers
jackson-pollock my white dress.

When Joe Pass Plays Guitar

I was thirteen 
when she laughed at my voice,
the choir teacher, that
sexy broad who gave me
my first hard-on.

I sang a scale
I wouldn't learn for seven years.

She laughed at me.

Fuck music
is what I learned from her.

I wanted to blast bass
for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
or bust drums for DNA.

I quoted Rimbaud for the goats
I milked every morning
before the school bus arrived.
When I squeezed those tits at night,
I quoted Walt Whitman.

The barn cats
moved like Miles Davis.

Oh, when Crockery Creek
topped its banks in April,
I ran naked through a third-
growth forest,
swum like Adam in that
muddy water.

I jacked-off on spring lilies
and slept on new moss.

No shit.

Herbie Hancock taught me to sing.

I purged my soul
on the clay banks of a little creek.

I tossed the ultimate question
to a suicidal Santa Claus,
spitting soliloquies at Mars
before I knew where the music ended.

I saw the fiberglass arteries of Orion,
the pinstripe suit of Ezekiel.

When I was nineteen,
I heard the horn of Miles Davis
before he took a chariot to the other side.
I saw him on the stage,
and he refused to look at me.

Where is Joe Pass on guitar,
my girlfriend said to me.
Where is black-angel music
when God says
make a joyful noise,
she said.

Fuck music,
is what I said.