A poem about the blues. Winner of SugarCube's Weekly Random Contest July Weeks 1&2 2019. |
Summertime The Blues? Hey I'm no expert Speaking of shady dives And midnight wailin' singers The soulful notes Of a lonely sax Or broken dreams Down in New Orleans These I never knew It's how you grew And where More than any lack of insight Understanding lives within What you know And anguish plucks the same strings In Manhattan And Baton Rouge But I do recall In the land of my youth A certain song that says it all Musicians my age White guys yeah And what have they to do With singing Summertime? And yet And yet they did And bent the knee of rock Before the Blues Electric sounds Honed to the freight train whistle They dragged it out And laid it down And all for her As well they might Though they could not know How the years would bring her silence They did their part Big Brother And his Holding Company Mere backdrop For her agonies Oh Summertime And the livin' is easy The saw-edged voice Impossible In one so young She holds the heartbreak note Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high She cannot know The sun burning on a breaking back And the dirt raw in the mouth Of the daily round How can this be? She draws the longing through you Wrings the tortured ecstasy From souls of plenty Hovering on the bounds Of understanding She takes them with her Oh their daddy's rich And they want for nothing But she speaks the empty yearning That brought them here And draws them on In silence Only listening Now the aching voice Rises Mounts to a crescendo Loosing the pent up hunger Tears the humid atmosphere Cuts and stabs at innards Rasps against the skin Reaches in and wrenches Guts and veins And glory Now pours out her anguish ragged Empties out her desperate void In sounds of anger Pain and loss. Sing it, Janis Sing it. Line Count: 82 |