Give me one more kiss, mama,
Just before I go.
I'm gonna leave this town,
Girl, I won't be back no more.
~ Song by Little Walter
Sometimes a man
can play a song like this
on an old keyboard
with legs jiggling
and fingers true
a man who can't find his way
home, who calls his daughter
a dozen times but
has forgotten how to converse,
who opens bottles
of scotch right in the liquor store
and stands drinking
until the police arrive,
a man who tells his wife
that he is terrified
and then forgets
who she is, a man
who will fall one day
on his way home
from a street festival
on Broadway. Sometimes
a man like that can
just get up from his chair
walk over to the piano
and play. That's a fact.
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A calm, relentless, rueful, clear-eyed description of a gifted, broken soul, with glimpses of what breaks around him as he moves through the world. Just a fact. Just an amazing poem.