The Dylan Sutras

The Dylan Sutras
(in memorium: David McFedrin & Scarlett McKeachern)

I

last night i came across Bob Dylan, in the alley
playing poker with mah-jongg tiles
and a cellar of kosher salt, and he explained
how to cure meat, and all the sins of man
with just a song, and where to find the forgotten
Rites of Spring;

and as the light
beneath the East River emerged into morning
the children sang,
of Truth and the times before Man’s cruelty
had made the Earth fallow and
unproductive.


II

this morning in the River’s light
i saw and heard Bob Dylan screaming & stalking
out of the alley, throwing a fit and the stolen mah-jongg tiles
back at his childhood friends, sitting drunk
on stolen wine and the follies of youth.

he swore he was fed-up with humanity
and its heinous addiction to death and war,
and power; he snapped every pencil on Earth, broke
every lying instrument of musical denial,
and skulked-away, muttering about the Failure
of God and All Light.


III

i found Bob Dylan sitting at a card table
munching salted mah-jongg tiles, mushrooms and bitter
(Russian folk songs and) fruits; he wept, right there, for hope
lessness, and lectured on the curing of meats, and
the recurring itch of war,
and of the need for love, and then, of the pain of living.

i left him there in the rotting stench
of uneaten garbage and the Fall of Man;
and i went looking for the bus to daylight,
the Lost Tablets of (all-Powerful) Stones,
and the last day, when all guns were memories,
and when school teachers taught First Aid, and
common decency.


IV

i am Bob Dylan and my centuries’ old bones
can no longer hold the shape of man
erect or a stringed instrument of any kind;
“i cannot write”, i said, “one more song
to tell of a past full of Sunday morning light,
or warn of the poison pellets (once more) flooding Our
waters”.

“i will not even try, ever-again, to save
this planet from the cancer of Man,
will not give hope to one more generation
or new-born child; No, i will never again sing
of a dove in the sand, or a Man
of peace, or love.”


V

when i got to heaven, God
was Bob Dylan, with (just about) Everything blowin
around in the Celestial Wind (which is, in fact) what we call
Time; every mah-jongg tile ever carved, or struck is
on the wall behind Him, in their Absolute order, and Every
soul, of Man has been cured; and each and Every moment was filled
with music, echoing, “...you’ve gotta Serve Somebody...”

the demented smile on His (not)face belonged
in an interview, in an airport, in SanFran, in the sixties,
and i, was, paralyzed as Every single fact fit into perfect
place and the Son smiled as well, seeing deep in my eyes
the same startled (incredulous, suspicious, but no-longer-stuck-
in 3D dichotomies) light of revelation that every soul
before me had worn; able to see, finally, the Whole Picture.

and we sang of peace and glory, of love and complex Simplicity,
we sang the final song of Life.