Poetry comes in many forms and from a variety of sources. I have been repeatedly listening to Steve Earle with the following lines from his song "Guitar Town." It's on the iPod, Pandora, Last.fm and a CD in the Element. As a song, the rhymes and the meter work really well — especially when punctuated by shouts of "Hey!" And since I'm not a good memorizer, I played the following several times on the way home from school today to force me to learn the lyrics. I wondered how it would play without the music:
Hey pretty baby don't you know it ain't my fault
I love to hear the steel belts hummin' on the asphalt
Wake up in the middle of the night in a truck stop
Stumble in the restaurant wonderin' why I don't stop
Gotta keep rockin' why I still can
I gotta two pack habit and a motel tan
But when my boots hit the boards I'm a brand new man
With my back to the riser I make my stand
What first caught my ear were the last two lines. Each time, I envision pair of scuffed cowboy boots slamming down on the oak floorboards, kicking up dust. In superhero fashion, the guitar player comes to life — jolted out of limbo. He rises. Fiercesome and powerful. A warrior demanding to be heard. Stomping and shouting, confessing to the urgency and daring others to respond to the internal call: "you know it ain't my fault." In a way, he's out of control but in other ways, he is in complete control. Damn!
