Raised on bad music,
Echo chambers, drippy lyrics,
Raw grind of the hurdy-gurdy,
My adolescence lingered
Long past my thirties.
Where was the gift for pain
That pure musicians harbored,
Grand decisions hammered
Into chords? Guitars
Twanged, singers stammered
Out there blue-eyed verities
Hiccoughed, gulped, & shouted
Feckless tonalities. Love
Was wholly transistorized,
Radios blossomed in the leaves
& never fell. Girls shrieked
At phantasmagoric hips
& shifting navels, moaned
For Eustachian nonsense,
My generation necking,
Petting breeding, to a beat.
At night, in convertibles,
My soul hugged triteness
Like a whore, eased itself
Into a tepid sweetness.
Oh I loved it & can mark
My age by an age’s titles,
A decade’s mellowed song
When lips were wine & no one
Was broken-hearted very long.
