Thunder Sandwich #26 - Mark Hartenbach poetry

black snake moan

i'm dragging around a ball & chain. my head is

wrapped in a few yards of cloth. i'm not referring

to the old lady-i'm no longer married. i'm not

waiting around to get a good price on it-it's

not made of a precious metal. it's simple iron-

virtually worthless. i was tempted to call it a

shroud-but it's nothing more than a white cotton

t-shirt that someone's taken a knife to. i move

slowly because of the extra weight i'm pulling,

& also due to the fact i can't see where i'm going.

some cheery optimist might peek over his rose-

colored glasses & say it's a blessing in disguise,

that i'm forced to plod along-or else i might have

fatally crashed by now. i have difficulty seeing it

that way. i'm not totally blind, but i occasionally

confuse the issue, until someone sets me wise. i

thought i was being trailed by a long black snake,

& those blues were coming out of someone else's

mouth.

charlie patton

"art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."

-theodore adorno

i'm listening to recordings of charlie patton that

sound like they were taken straight off the 78s-

pops & hisses & dirt under the fingernails. i'm not

sure if these cuts were cleaned up for the box set

that came out a few years ago. the sound doesn't

bother me at all. actually i prefer the gritty sound-

the rougher the better. howlin' wolf took his vocal

style from patton. patton doesn't have the licks that

robert johnson or skip james have, but i'll take his

voice. patton was black, white & native american.

you can see them all in his photograph. it must

have been hard not to belong to one exclusive

ethnic group in the 20s & 30s. it must be difficult

today. when i hear these old records i don't need

to know all the history, a long summary of the

times that sound like they were pulled from some

school book. i don't need names, places or dates.

i know it was (& still is for many) a brutal, ugly

world then-i'm listening to it.

gary gilmore

i was looking at some drawings that gary gilmore

did during one of his stints in prison. they're very

good. there's one that's an old pair of prison shoes

called self portrait. i find it disconcerting that

someone who could draw like this, could also gun

down two young men in cold blood for a few dollars.

it's not that i think an artist is above such evil acts.

he's not the first & won't be the last. i remember in

his brother's book, he said that gary was their father's

whipping boy & also goes into the other usual

dysfunctional hell that most men in prison went

through. this is not an excuse. it's a case of cause &

effect. i suppose gary gilmore is a footnote of the 70s.

younger people probably don't know who he was.

eventually he faced a firing squad in utah, as he'd

requested-after much legal squabbling. i have a

difficult time taking a stand on the death penalty. i

know it's nearly always the poor & blacks that are

on death row. i know the law is flawed & corrupt, & if

you can't afford a lawyer then you have no chance. i

know that if you have a lot of money & good family

connections-there's a much better chance you'll get

off, or at least get a reduced sentence. a public

defender will always tell you to plead guilty. so it's

hard for me to support the death penalty. on the

other hand if someone were to hurt one of my loved

ones, my daughters or granddaughters-i'd want blood.

i probably wouldn't settle for anything less. i probably

wouldn't be able to forgive, as my faith says i should.

i guess this makes me a hypocrite. i guess this makes

me human.

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