How to Love a Musician
You strum and hum and weave and low
Body in position twisting around a guitar
Your fingers move across like a lover
Your face made up for ecstasy
Stringing girls all in a row
Cockleshells and marigolds
And clematis
Giggling and bobbing beneath you
Your voice the wind driven rain
You heave into them, plown fields
And taste nothing but grit
In your hands they are soot
You can feel them under your nails
And other places
Is that why you wait to wash?
Penance or vanity?
Whoa is me, whoa that’s me
What is left as the tub drains
Sooty dirty gritty water and brown suds?
Do I taste any different or am I
The same old soot?
The girls in the back row
Take long hot bubbly baths
And touch buds, torch stalls
Cry out your name for the neighbors
Imagining your cry is the same
High and shuddering and vulnerable
You are silent
You, without your guitar and stage
Look smaller and less bright
Your eyes are tired
Your breath is foul
You are nothing more than a man
Am I an agentic creature, at your command?
Defunct fascination.
8/15/99
