Where the Music Runs

LOOKING AT SINGERS

IMMORTALIZING OUR TIME

WHILE LISTENING TO THEIR SONGS

WEARING HEADPHONES

Miles turns his back.

Miles says to John,

Take the horn out of your mouth.

Miles gets angry

just thinking about Jack Johnson.

Merle Haggard's wavy hair

Uncomfortable before praise,

I don't have a clue about

his true feelings for Oklahoma.

My friend saw Johnny

walk out in that black suit,

it hangs here beside him

singing his death song on video.

After I bought my Navajo pipe

with Mountain Smoke in the Canyon

I listened to native flute sounds

for three thousand miles.

Not a Star War fan, I just

walked a different way.

That concert for Bangladesh

shook us up when we were young.

Did you dance the Stroll

to Fats singing in 1960?

Did it change your life?

Did you end up somewhere else?

Clothes of old rockers

glare like flashing police lights.

Those jazz men in suit and tie

cross into gospel-riffing solos.

Signed harmonicas

That small picture of Janis.

Jimi asking where you've been

Both twenty-seven.

We were raised on blues.

We would never go back to others

Even when mirroring them in dress

We would always be found out

Sheet music Ella looked at

with her own eyes, held in her very hands

When I took that photograph

How I listened is how I belonged

Cante Jondo y Lorca

Camerón de la isla

Lagrimas de gitanos

Who's singing? What's the name

of the band? Stone Ponies

Transfigured 50 years

Different drum had me believing

I knew Thoreau. Stone Ponies.

I would return from war for the song.

Richard Johnson taught me what

I carried in my body was the blues

when he played The Thrill is Gone

The thrill came back. From as little

as this, I learned how disease

stores itself in the body.

We'd just moved out west

from North Dakota, I was ten

or eleven. My cousin, three years

older, knew what was going on.

Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog

and the Elvis Christmas Album

with I Believe and Precious Lord.

I still thought Thomas Dorsey

was the trombone player.

I knew that hat the minute I saw it,

Stevie Ray's black leather jacket

with shells. My son brought me

to Stevie Ray Vaughn, connecting

him to Jimi. But I didn't know

about those boots. I don't know

if my son did, either. What skin

do you suppose that is, goat?

I knew songs, but not the music

of George Benson. The photographer

Darwin Evans also made guitars.

Benson showed me how smooth

Jazz could be, how that guitar,

plugged-in, carried family tradition.

When hip-hop hit I wondered

what would happen

and I said, No. At the same time,

I knew about the Dozens

and how they worked. I took

H. Rap Brown into the classroom

and showed the kids how

they broke you down

Stevie Ray Vaughn's boots

and then built you back up.

That all made sense. Bad

language taught me once more

how to turn the world upside down.

Twinkie and Tommy Dorsey.

Precious Lord. Mahalia,

The Bessie Smith Collection

wild as the Mississippi River.

Jim Bodeen

26 Nov--7 December 2017

Museum of Musical Instruments
Scottsdale, AZ