Woodstock
I lost track of them
on the dance floor –
Did Cocker sing Hitchcock
Railway at Woodstock?
(You Google it!)
Did these two stay for
Hendrix?
They’re here tonight
for last call
at about the time
teen center used to end,
girls dancing together still,
one even wearing fringe –
the other, a neat new tattoo –
having the time of their lives!
Fringe!
(Daltrey!)
White Ray Charles
(almost)
bops them up
from the table, their
grays – wearing light blue! –
stay down, a little pissed
they’re here and have stayed
this late, talking
Freddie Gray or, now,
Lor Scoota –
“Did you watch the video?
“Fuck, no.” “Read the lyrics?” –
or Lofgren’s early work with Al Kooper,
g-kids’ whatever,
any and all ball-busters,
only these guys
damn miss hearing
“executive producer dick wolf,”
the beloved 7 day forecast,
a bowl of cherry ice cream, and
their nightly prayers,
forever ecstatic
mom and dad moved them
out of the city
when they were boys
so they could meet
these cool white girls
at CYO –
where Motown ruled.
In My Life starts up –
“There are places I’ll remember” –
Rubber
Soul.
Peace, Dallas.
Peace, Baltimore.
Lucky
Rilo Kiley was in town
but I had never
heard of the two early groups
and could imagine only
endless-energy one-note bands –
I’ve heard a lot of those,
and liked some,
their meaninglessness
so endearing and poignant now –
but it can be so ear-busting loud
and the crowd so
young and summer-nighted,
and it was a little more expensive,
the divorce and all,
and Rilo Kiley
I’ve never totally been into,
I think they should be better,
the writing,
as I like bands
fronted by women
(lamenting Amy Winehouse)
so instead I go hear
the symphony, the
Brandenburg Concertos,
and the playing was fine but
softsoftsoft; for me tonight
I’m in a different mood
so the music and its presentation
here – in the era
of the dying
of the well written newspaper
(Yeah, I included that. And this:
Fuck you Sam Zell.) –
was a little bit of drag but
lucky for me
one of the violinists is this foxy
Asian woman in whose
hands the violin
looks like a whiskey bottle –
can she play it by blowing into it? –
and the luscious non-white skin –
Baltimore is so loaded with good-looking women –
a symphony marketing director’s
dream
as the performers here barely move at all
and the rest of the stage appears
as the mouth of the whale
when a white beast of little distinction
says of the NY t-shirt I’m wearing:
“Boston colors,” (You could use
a little color yourself, man…. Boston!)
which makes me wonder
how the Orioles are doing tonight
as I board the thing from outer space
to take me into the city sky,
the giant Borofsky sculpture
that has landed in the middle of here –
we still don’t know
what to make of each other –
a combination of Omar Little’s
boyfriends standing tall
and the first girls to play
in the National Football League
dressed something like
Diana Ross and the Supremes –
Male/Female in Hairspray? –
way on up
past the slumping orange
construction barrels
that look like sleeping lions.
© Bernard Haske
Bernard Haske is a graduate of the University of Baltimore and retired from the Baltimore Sun. He was previously published in such journals as Cake Train, Off The Coast, and passager. In 2014, through CreateSpace, he published his first collection of poetry, The Color of Humans; “Lucky” is a selection from that collection.
The Loch Raven Review 