Here's another taste from Something About the Blues. This particular selection is from a poem entitled "The Blues Don't Change." There is a sense, almost, of the Blues being not only a persistent undercurrent, an elemental force, but indeed a kind of trickster figure.
And I was born with you, wasn't I, Blues?
Wombed with you, wounded, reared and forwarded
from address to address, stamped, stomped
and returned to sender by nobody else but you,
Blue Rider, writing me off at every chance you
got, you mean old grudgefulhearted, table
turning demon, you, you sexy soulsucking gem.
It's difficult to quote only a part of this poem. The whole thing is so powerful, works so well, is so necessary, that plucking a sentence or fragment out of a stanza just seems wrong. But the one stanza above can meaningfully stand there on its own.
