mumbles

I don’t how it began.  I think I was born this way. not that I’ve haven’t spent years workin’ on sound. i have. I’ve made sound into a friend.  I’ve made it into something that happens when I sit down and write.   I’ve made it automatic, and not that I can even call it sound.  its not sound. most of it is irregular, the meter is like a hobo’s hum.  the tone playful, simple, and humdrum.  its the hour after your grandmother died, and you don’t know it yet, but you expect the worse when the phone rings.  Its the process of mopping a floor that doesn’t need it.  You do it because you can’t sit still.  you can’t mourn uncertainty. you can’t pace into a hole. so you clean.  you put everything in a place.  you double check, under the bed, you hang up your robe that fell two months ago.  Then you mumble “give me thousands of lovers,” maybe rock or shake a leg, or crack your neck.  you ask what’s the point of this, sigh.  Then city lights shut off. the sun comes over the houses, into your window, and for some reason, light hits your hand, and you smile, and your eyes drop a little dumb tear, and little laugh begins to fold and open your chest, and a voice begins. its says, now there was a time, oh of course there was a time,a normal time, really just yesterday, a p and j was made on homemade bread, the bread was toasted, and the j got all over and p greased the counter. it wasn’t that good, but it was good enough. the p and j is rotten. it is not fit for a last meal.  it is not a beef stick.  you call it dinner with anger, but you eat it. and sleep the same.  in the late afternoon you say, I think I was born this way. you pick up the cheap guitar and sing for hours. you don’t remember how it began.  you’ve worked years at raising your voice into a responsible companion. Now every time you pick up a guitar, a voice comes.  its automatic.   there are problems.  nobody values a voice. its taken for granted.  no one wants to hire or buy your voice. people turn the volume down.  the people want dance music, not throat songs, not blues strums, there is no place for your sound. you go into the box and color on the walls.  put pictures up, settle in, reserved to die that way. somebody kicks the box, you look up, a girl is moppin up. she’s says, i heard your song, its good, you need practice.  she climbs in the box and hits her fist into you. she sets a beat.  you look at her, hard, long, it hurts.  your sound at first is a scream.  then a melody,  then your voice falls out in hobo meter, its a tone. a vibration. a seed. a bomb, a gene, you don’t know.  you can’t say if it is this or that you don’t know where it came from or how.  you stay in the box, and let your brain thump out.