Not Guilty

The days are dog-eared, the edges torn, ragged—like those pages I ripped once out of library books, for their photos of Vallejo and bootless Robert Johnson. A fine needs paying now it’s true, but not by me. I am no more guilty than that thrush is who sits there stripping moss off the wet bark of a tree. A red fleck, like his, glows at the back of my head—a beauty mark, left by the brain’s after-jets. I would not wish for the three brains Robert required to double-clutch his guitar and chase those sounds he had to know led down and into a troubled dusky river, always. Three brains did Johnson no earthly good, neither his nor Vallejo’s 4 & 1/2 worked right exactly—O bunglers, O banged-up pans of disaster! Crying for days, said Cesar, & singing for months. How can I be so strong some times, at others weak? I wish to be free, but free to do what? To leave myself behind? To switch channels remotely? Better to sing. Not like the bird, but as they sang, Cesar & Robert— with the shocked & seeded sweetness of an apple split open by a meat cleaver.