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Audio Tape
March 19, 2005    File under: Tapeworm

road trip relic, back of the office drawer, white spool
eyes blinking back when I rattle: half an hour's scour
to find the retired machine, feed this black plastic

biscuit to its robot mouth: and then: caterwaul and
case noise, three generations of tape to tape to tape
and the howl keeps getting better: Howlin' Wolf baying

to the Alabama moon, honeysuckle sweet moonlight
sticking in the Spanish-moss trees, wind backing like
tape hiss or high-hat dish, harmonica and sharp guitar

piano's off-tune tone the gasoline kerosene carb-spray
coctail of the littoral wind, stomp of petal on the floor-
boards of a Mustang or marina lot, thin tin walls what

keeps me from the water on this river road or what
keeps me from the river in the fishing shanty where
the whiskey's passed in jars, fine evaporate leaving

its sugars on the rim, passed mouth to mouth like rumor
or song, the lyric old as anyone knows: Ooooahh My baby
been cryin' — Ooooahh she want me to come home —

You been gone so long: too long: the tape unspooling
black slick to the stainless head, an ear to the noise
and pattern laid in waiting as tired catch each smooth

and rough laid in tar and gravel blacktop concrete clay:
I'm running now 60 on the curves on the bluffs high above:
I can cut the tape, catch radio from Memphis or New Orleans,

Chicago if the wind kicks in, heat lightning lighting up the
summer sweat: pilots high above worried through the night:
Mr. Airplane Man, can you fly down to Jackson, Tennessee

for me? I want you to find my baby and give her this message
for me: beyond: the hills quiet down, Sumlin on the chorused
strings of his Stratocaster, cymbals hushing as I curve into

town: who I am is elsewhere, still driving in rare solitude
blank the quiet I hoped would take impression as well as
give: If you don't find me in the heart of town, I'll leave

word where I'll be: down by the river the herons
fold in early light, the long wings having shadowed homes:
curves flats scalloped water static wash requested song:

Posted by Jake Adam York at March 19, 2005 11:54 PM