I am a young man sitting
on the end of a bed in a
Motel 6 in Pensacola Fl.
holding in my hands a mask
carved by a decade of echos
of America’s proselytizers.
The mask is difficult to put on
for it is shaped by each
prophet to their image
and from second to second
it changes. It is the image of
Elvis. I am Elvis, bloated
like an infection. Now I
deflate into a strong
black woman. I am Nina
Simone stamping her pain
into the piano. I am Einstein’s
greatest discovery: Leadbelly,
the homicidal harmonizer.
I am Dylan when he loved
being hated, sending himself
electric. I am Son House;
and Nick Cave; and Rowland
S. Howard at all ages and times,
but especially since his
death. I am Johnny Cash;
and Shane McGowan
before he got his new teeth.
The mask is glued on with
whatever I can find. Tonight
it is a cheap rum and ——
In the background plays
Bellringer Blues. Tonight
I will play a show nobody
will care to listen to
at a bar I don’t know the
name of. Nobody knows
who I am, least of all
myself, for I can never
tell how the mask will fit.
*
I am a middle-aged man
sitting on the end of a bed
in the penthouse of the
Chateau Marmot being
pumped full of prescriptions
to rise me above the weather
so I can walk on stage tonight
for the fourth night in a row
at the Hollywood Bowl
and become a God.
I am living my version
of somebody else’s life.
No longer do I have to worry
about masks. There is no
mask, it has calcified
onto my face so that I have
become what I always
wanted and now I cannot
be anything else. I dream
Nick Cave’s dream of
pushing Elvis’s bloated
body up a mountain, like
Sisyphus rolling my
influences’ influences up
and up until they fall back
upon me and crush who
I was. I rise
and am no longer me:
I am a God on stage
at the Hollywood Bowl
and I’m not sure who
that is for no man can know
God and I cannot
be anything else.
on the end of a bed in a
Motel 6 in Pensacola Fl.
holding in my hands a mask
carved by a decade of echos
of America’s proselytizers.
The mask is difficult to put on
for it is shaped by each
prophet to their image
and from second to second
it changes. It is the image of
Elvis. I am Elvis, bloated
like an infection. Now I
deflate into a strong
black woman. I am Nina
Simone stamping her pain
into the piano. I am Einstein’s
greatest discovery: Leadbelly,
the homicidal harmonizer.
I am Dylan when he loved
being hated, sending himself
electric. I am Son House;
and Nick Cave; and Rowland
S. Howard at all ages and times,
but especially since his
death. I am Johnny Cash;
and Shane McGowan
before he got his new teeth.
The mask is glued on with
whatever I can find. Tonight
it is a cheap rum and ——
In the background plays
Bellringer Blues. Tonight
I will play a show nobody
will care to listen to
at a bar I don’t know the
name of. Nobody knows
who I am, least of all
myself, for I can never
tell how the mask will fit.
*
I am a middle-aged man
sitting on the end of a bed
in the penthouse of the
Chateau Marmot being
pumped full of prescriptions
to rise me above the weather
so I can walk on stage tonight
for the fourth night in a row
at the Hollywood Bowl
and become a God.
I am living my version
of somebody else’s life.
No longer do I have to worry
about masks. There is no
mask, it has calcified
onto my face so that I have
become what I always
wanted and now I cannot
be anything else. I dream
Nick Cave’s dream of
pushing Elvis’s bloated
body up a mountain, like
Sisyphus rolling my
influences’ influences up
and up until they fall back
upon me and crush who
I was. I rise
and am no longer me:
I am a God on stage
at the Hollywood Bowl
and I’m not sure who
that is for no man can know
God and I cannot
be anything else.
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