and allowing that <br />records only record what’s recorded – <br />that’s, written records – the sounds are something else - <br /> <br />the records say <br />that for most of your waking life <br />you were out of this world on drugs <br />or when you weren’t, you behaved <br />appallingly; excepting when you sang and played, <br />when, all agreed, you were ‘out of this world’.. <br /> <br />and yet, you wrote an autobiography <br />or should we say memoir, that is, <br />what you might remember, which <br />is a catalogue of innocence, of purity, <br />of life as good, well lived… <br /> <br />so I would not like to be <br />your prosecuting counsel, taking you through <br />this litany, each deed, each word.. <br />I don’t think I could bear the pain.. <br />was it what you really thought you were, <br />or what you would have wished to be? <br /> <br />I’ll settle for the love you whisper <br />in the ‘standards’, convincing us they’re holy writ; <br />pausing just where truth itself would pause; <br />and blowing the truth that finds and speaks itself <br />between the lips and lungs and trumpet’s mouthpiece; <br /> <br />like some ancient seer or sibyl, shaman, visionary, <br />speaking, singing, truths which yet you do not know <br />or have forgotten. It seems that genius knows <br />the greatness of the art of which it is <br />(apt phrase) the mouthpiece; and all else <br />is of this world; subservient.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0027-that-baker-boy/
