blues before sunrise.

 

 

 

"Blues before sunrise, with tears standing in my eyes.

Nobody knows what shape im'e in" John Lee Hooker

waylayed from the Delta to the North side of Detroit.

But normally religion and Jesus can bail a man out.

That old preacher said that if a man prays long enough

and hard enough, the colors of the weathered textures

are forgiven.

 

Hay becomes a bedding, a cool place to hide warm pistols.

Negro mornings, beatified by fried fish with the heads still

attached, as if sewn own by needles on a swinging pendulum.

Perch  eyes still black and bright as the irreverence of the

blaspheme.

 

Blues before sunrise? They laid me down, full jacket, on the

damp grass to sober me up before that old woman came

with her swivel-hipps and accused me of drinking,

which I hadn't been and if the transient moons of her

big a*s could tell, as truth,

I had.

 

So I layed back down in the vegetation, the velvet applique

of warp piles of insects, brightly colored with wingless females

admiring the stages of my aged apperance. A hopeless drunk

of water colored man whose small pockets, just below the front

waistband, holds what little money is left from the weak-fish

night of cards and loud talking. Or for that new hat I promised.

Nobody knows the shape im'e in.

 

My clean shirt pressed, bible ready,

to wear to the white church house.

Reviews

[writing mojo]

well this poem needs a home, in a best selling poetry book perhaps to become one scripture among the dusty shelf leaf lets; lets say next to the paper back stacks growing cold and old from never being opened again, because this one, keeps a pace not many of this world can attain, breaths a live into becoming his- story, turning over over and over until it makes a permanent smear on some distance mind season, just wanting to live permanently inside your written lines of summer southern styled vacation...amazing stuff, just in awe of you..

[sienikeha]

more of a story ..acted out .. told with a heavy southern drawl, straw in teeth and all. i like this image--> "Hay becomes a bedding, a cool place to hide warm pistols."

fdbk:
That old pre(a)cher

[Ken Simm.]

This may be one of the finest pieces of American writing I've ever read.

[Emily B]

it is as if the generations that came before, have all been absorbed by you, i felt the delta, and it isn't an easy thing to relate, the South lives in these words, the blues, the front porch, back alley sittin kinda pickin and singin

i felt this deep in my gut, maybe i've absorbed some of those generations too