Stream
(For Earl Snipes)

Days have passed.   Some without moving.
Greensboro '73, a microsecond
in terms of eternity.
Galax, Starpoint, Chapel Hill.
Wives and kids, mine now grown.
You, exactly the same.
Me, old man, alcoholic.
You, with mixing board, gone digital.
Me, with computer.
Each and both, dreamers possessed.

Last night, Tom Waits.
I read and re-read.  Finally,
decided to accept at face value.
Realized in 1977 when I bought NIGHTHAWKS
because I liked the cover,
that fruition of 1950's sad, spontaneous, creative, genius
had been realized in California.
Selectively shouted from the rooftops,
"Here he is, you bastards!"
Subsequently put on my clothes
and proceeded to ball field,
umpiring to help make the payments.

"Yowwwwwwww!  Za Za Zoooooooo."
Sax, piano, and drums crying out to me
like primitive native ritualistic Beat.
"Bass players oughta be chained up somewhere,"
he said as I picked up the bass.
It was then that I truly realized
I had returned to PUTNAM COUNTY.
Cynicism in hand, I walked the streets,
sometimes singing, always whistling.
Remembering teacher from past
at God College seeing me, hearing me,
walk by on campus with standard
work fair uniform and hair.
"There goes a whistling fool,"
she remarked and looked me in the stoned eye.

Such a feeling, out of place
during physical observation of suburbia.
It's now me, trying to sound like Ry
singing Woody.  "If you ain't got that do re mi."
You, just removed from Carolina,
but not in your mind, playing,
listening, collecting, a true musicologist.
I was flattered from the beginning.
So out of place, I seemed, in world
of artists creating and rendering sounds of joy.
Too intelligent to be a groupie,
Too limited to participate.
Still somehow I felt my place,
to be secure.

Tuesday night, this past,
I listened to old tape of Chapel Hill string band.
Voice from heaven reappearing
with HOLLYWOOD WALTZ and Ralph Stanley.
Guitar in background always sturdy, always great,
signs of perfection in each song.
I imagined you being Eddie
having left the Cruisers for this band,
for this music.  So many notes exactly right.
Other guitar residing on new shelf
placed above my mantle against chimney.
No future fires to be lit.
I talk about you with ghost.
Me, still drinking.
Him, no longer needing to.
I can remember his asking frequently,
"Where'd you hear about this record?"
"I called the bank,"  I would reply.

All bundled together in a package
bound by reminisce, so many stars
erupting and lighting the skies with
fiery points of commonality.
Waits still in my consciousness
singing live songs in scat Germany.
The piano's drunk and it ain't by itself.
Guy Davis in the mail yesterday
with William Carlos autobiography.
Great doctor/poet who taught me first line
as Brautigan propped himself up
against street and road signs.
I can see a raccoon, but it ain't Rocky.
Wayne and Garth in music store,
no STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN.
Back to your disc and Hendrix Cream.

Cautiously interrupted in vision
as sudden regression implies past countenances.
Montreat, too sterile for me.  Too much money
old and unearned as brother, yours and his,
woke up to bottles still blocked from fetal route,
but at some point returning to sleep.
Too cold in mountain winters with no woman love
or pats on the back.
Too scared to lay it on the line,
his dream becoming his demon.
What did the New Year represent to him?

I grab another beer as Tom continues.
This time singing about cleavage.
Images, pictorial and word, consume me
as I become disoriented in my own consumption.
I want to ask you at that moment
if you'd rather play with Junior Wells
or Fathead Newman and I want to know
if it's always been such.
I want to know about your druthers
at every point along the way.
Was that what you wished to play
or was it simply the best opportunity available?

Just as suddenly as it began,
the scenario adjusts itself and the movie
becomes one of adolescent, teenaged you.
Parentless from some point in time,
you became survivor, the characteristic
that we most share.
Unwillingly, I return to last Saturday.
My own father, near death,
summons me for final serious audience.
"The things I want to say before I die."
Or, could it be titled,
"The final bashing?"
My armor untarnished, unlike his memory
which can't realize who sat beside him
dying, while he lived.
One final plea for me to change
from anti-trophy of his own failure.
One last attempt to reduce me
as he did in the past with
beatings, humiliations, and guilt.
"It's too late," I tell him,
a crease of a smile finding my face,
"I'm already happy."
"Too bad," he replies wordlessly
while staring at his disappointment.

I rise from my chair for smoke, tobacco.
Another beer awaits in the fridge.
I look at the stereo in need of the blues.
Kick in Buddy and J acoustic.
Imagine you playing every song.
Me singing and sometimes making up words.
Can actually feel that we are doing this.
The screen emerges in my mind
with me, much thinner, and seeped in sweat.
You, again, the same always,
smiling and nodding except during the breaks.
Could it be another Cumberland Blue.
I realize your characterization
and how things will be
when Jerry and Joe travel
to fictional High Point,
the final lesson for the boy,
and you will teach him Freddy King
in route to graduation night
where you and Jerry will bail him out on stage.
And maybe some day the manuscript
will be found somewhere long after
the music's gone, and they'll worry themselves silly.
Wondering who we were
and what was in our minds.

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