prose poetry/lyrics; Leaping Dog Press, Chapbook #1, Raleigh, NC, June 2005, $9.99, Companion to X-Country: Touring the Nation...

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Excerpt from What We Got Against Tyranny

Conjurin' Jimmy Rodgers//Waitin' on a Train/Blue Yodel #9

Come in, Singin’ Brakeman, I conjure you, Jimmie Rodgers, through orange radio cylinders in the stillness. I invoke the roustabout rapscallion who’d play with just about anyone, jaunty hobo, rune codger, artful dodger---with the Carter Family on one tune, Louis Armstrong the next.
Come on through, blue yodel crooner, “T Is for Texas” so make the Akashic Record to de-complex us sooner: I summon the original hipster with cool eyes for hard times, street wise & country born. I dunno what the Dead have told ya, but I’m still playin’ “Waitin’ for a Train” on the old Victrola. If the blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ ill, you’ll pardon me for bein’ crass still, but would you kick Nashville in the ass for we’ve had our fill of phony trash & hair-do disasters so let’s get back to real roots music & leave the demographics to the hustlers & the fascists.
It’s you who’s begettin’ a million musicians electin’ to be forgettin’ star-maker machinery ‘cause all they wanna do is act naturally. It’s you who still makes us swoon to tunes we hum along to in lonely depots for the dispossessed, the shared cigarette lit in the backseats of our ridin’ machines, your yodel’s spooky reach into the hearts of love everywhere at play that keeps you livin’ in us a hundred-plus years young today.