Poem: My Guitar Version 1.0

MY GUITAR

She’s got scratches, dents and nicks.
The neck’s been broke a time or two.
The strings are silver,
Stained with age and wear.
The pegs loosen up sometimes
In the middle of a song.
Maybe should get a new guitar,
One’a those electrical things . . .
Hell, I can’t play this guitar
The way she should be played.

Guitar’s damned flexible, she can cry and sing.
Self-taught, the fingers fumble on the strings.
Never went to school, maybe played the fool
But always had to make new mistakes,
Always had to trip and stumble into joy.
So don’t, can’t play like Dylan;
But he never touched the songs
That this guitar can play.

Don’t play for someone else
Nor to hear the people cheer –
Play ‘cause there’s something inside
That has to come out,
Either in the song
Or snarling, bloody-clawed,
Carve it’s own birth canal.
No, don’t play no pretty songs
Like McKuen and the boys;
Nor yet the heavy metal sound
That gets you high on noise.
The score ain’t right for none’a these.

Maybe should’a got a different Muse,
One that don’t wear combat boots;
But no one else could teach me
The songs I have to play.
So I sit here and fumble with the strings,
Watch the Muse’s face, an old road map of Hell;
The eyes alive with fire, like blood on a lover’s skin;
The hands, the claws that hold the score
A hairsbreadth out of reach.
The lips that kind’a smile, that sometimes allow
That when the fingers dance, the strings are tight
The music ain’t half bad.

Brer Wolf, copyright 2006.