Tabdao
The singsong chords of the skinny balladeer
and the asthmatic harmonica from the swing on the porch
bring the dust bowl refugee back from where he went
during the seventies and especially the greedy eighties
and we don’t want to recognise his song
or the fact that he rededicates it to us.
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Why are coyotes and roaches and suburban foxes
outnumbering their parents and taking their trade
over the highways and by the all-night-open malls
down the rivers of solvent and all the future
yesterdays? Why is the volume so loud?
Guitars gutted, of all their strings and hope,
understudy being drums and learn,
too easily for ease, the old tattoos
he used to use to summon us from sleep;
rising tides lift our garbage from the beach
in foam thicker than anyone wants to remember,
ensconced here on the edge, of the darkened porch.
