No-Good Blues

I

I try to hide in Proust, Mallarme, & Camus, but the no-good blues come looking for me. Yeah, come sliding in like good love on a tongue of grease & sham, built up from the ground. I used to think a super-8 gearbox did the job, that a five-hundred-dollar suit would keep me out of Robert Johnson's shoes. I rhyme Baudelaire with Apollinaire, hurting to get beyond crossroads & goofer dust, outrunning a twelve-bar pulsebeat. But I pick up a hitchhiker outside Jackson. Tasseled boots & skin-tight jeans. You know the rest.

2

I spend winter days with Monet, seduced by his light. But the no-good blues come looking for me. It takes at least a year to erase a scar on a man's heart. I come home nights drunk, the couple next door to keep me company, their voices undulating through my bedroom wall. One evening I turn a corner & step inside Bearden's Uptown Sunday Night Session. Faces Armstrong blew from his horn still hang around the Royal Gardens—all in a few strokes, & she suddenly leans out of a candy-apple green door & says, "Are you from Tougaloo?"

3

At the Napoleon House Beethoven's Fifth draws shadows from the walls, & the no-good blues come looking for me. She's here, her left hand on my knee. I notice a big sign across the street that says The Slave Exchange. She scoots her chair closer. I can't see betrayal & arsenic in Napoleon's hair— they wanted their dying emperor under the Crescent City's Double Scorpio. But nothing can subdue these African voices between the building's false floors, this secret song from the soil left hidden under my skin.

4

Working swing shift at McGraw- Edison, I shoot screws into cooler cabinets as if I were born to do it. But the no-good blues come looking for me. She's from Veracruz, & never wears dead colors of the factory, still in Frida Kahlo's world of monkeys. She's a bird in the caged air. The machines are bolted down to the concrete floor, everything moves with the same big rhythm Mingus could get out of a group. Humming the syncopation of punch presses & conveyor belts, work grows into our dance when the foreman hits the speed-up button for a one-dollar bonus.

5

My hands are white with chalk at The Emporium in Colorado Springs, but the no-good blues come looking for me. I miscue when I look up & see sunlight slanting through her dress at the back door. That shot costs me fifty bucks. I let the stick glide along the V of two fingers, knowing men who wager their first born to conquer snowy roller coasters & myths. I look up, just when the faith drains out of my right hand. It isn't a loose rack. But more like— well, I know I'm in trouble when she sinks her first ball.

6

I'm cornered at Birdland like a two-headed man hexing himself. But the no-good blues coming looking for me. A prayer holds me in place, balancing this sequinned constellation. I've hopped boxcars & thirteen state lines to where she stands like Ma Rainey. Gold tooth & satin. Rotgut & God Almighty. Moonlight wrestling a Texas-jack. A meteor of desire burns my last plea to ash. Blues don't care how many tribulations you lay at my feet, I'll go with you if you promise to bring me home to Mercy.