John Robinson - Late Roommate
He would moan sad blues
late into the night
the words welling up
from deep in his throat
from deep in his gut
out of tune, out of phase
with reality, that too-distant drummer.
Loyal romantic, neurotic
frantic about the relentless current
of years that swept him downstream -
psychotic, ever further
from that island of clarity in ’65 -
Gina
whose fine chestnut hair
he mentioned incessantly
his first love - his only -
in that Yugoslav summer
when he should have done more
should have stayed
should have spent, he lamented
in that jewelry store
his air fare home
for a present -
those tortoiseshell combs perhaps -
to capture her love
to capture that now-lost present
to cast him up calmly on livable land.
Swept over the falls in ’72
groaning gut blues into black
plunging many stories in a vision
of tortoiseshell combs come home
to the hair of his loved one.