A Blue Note

I don't do poetry. But, just to show that I'm unpredictable, here's a little something I wrote to annoy a poetry competition a while back (needless to say, it didn't win). It may mean nothing if you haven't heard the lady sing the song but, if you have, I think you'll know what I mean.

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.

Technorati tags: The Blues; Janis Joplin.