Bob Zordani

rehashing this and that yesterday, the scent of ex-lovers,
the look of things we’ll never again touch –

faces and days, the yellowed pages of our dreams.
We write and brood. Dance. My friends dot the map.

I see them wave from miles off, elbows bent, arms moving
like old windshield wipers in drizzle, smearing away hello, good-bye.

If I could go back, dip into the years, I would not
change but make the same mistakes again, wear

the same path I have worn to now. You, too,
I suspect, could not wiggle any other way.

Direction is simple, friend. There is only one: the one we take.
You tell me life is good, mostly, that your daughter

now sprouts language, metaphor, sentences out of nowhere,
as if this miracle is something more – religious,

blinding. And it is. Her eyes are suns, Dominic, stars
too bright too see, blindness we sway from, toward.

Yet hope is this horizon, the swing of stars and seasons.
So tonight let’s howl at the moon, whirl among stubbled fields,

through gullies and creek beds, over barbed wire
and electric fences, whirl, whirl like gods gone mad!

§§

Filthy’s Blues

Up there on stage, our Uncle Filthy shakes

his head and stomps his feet and rolls his tongue

impossibly, as if his every note

makes up a secret code that only he

can understand. I play guitar and bass –

percussion in a pinch – but I can’t run

a single scale on my harmonica

the way our Uncle Filthy can. And hell,

it must be lonely when he’s practicing

inside that hovel of a house he rents

all by himself except for those two hounds

who howl all night and keep my wife awake.

Annie has precious little tolerance

for Uncle Filthy’s lack of etiquette.

She says it’s truly vile the way he leaps

across the stage and giggles at the girls

and draws them up beneath the colored lights

and lets them sing duets with him – off key

and out of time – before he slaps them five

and sends them squealing back into the swell.

Annie calls him a rake, which isn’t far

from true, but she can’t see that this is what

a bar crowd wants: the simple chance for some

small fame, the chance to jam, to really jam,

to kick it with the band and be a star

for once, to shine at last, right there, right then.

When I see Filthy lounging on his porch,

I lift my National out of its case,

grab the whiskey, and sneak across the lawn.

We knock off blues – old moans and buckdances

mostly – though Filthy calls for spirituals

when it gets good and dark and all the lights

around the neighborhood starting blinking out.

It’s then his boorish voice rings clear and true,

though he himself does not believe a word

of what he sings. The power’s in the tunes

themselves, he likes to say, not what they mean

to Jesus freaks. Our Filthy’s full of shit

if nothing else, though I don’t mind his blunt

philosophy the way my Annie does.

She doesn’t want me picking over there

on Uncle Filthy’s porch, especially

so late, and when she’s had enough of it,

her harsh pronouncement rattles up the block.

Last call, old men, she snaps, and shuts the door.

I clench my jaw, then toast to Filthy’s health.

Our tumblers clink. We toss the whiskey back

and pound out one more song, a twelve bar blues

in E major, some gritty three-chord thing

about a man who can never go home.

§§§§