“You must earn the right
to sing the blues
“No high school chorus,
the hurt you choose”
To wrestle with your demons,
no safety net in place
Often times it’s zero-sum,
a blood trail left to trace
You hum those Irish ditties,
or sing like Junior Wells
When you want those notes to fly,
you usher them through hell
In the end it may not matter,
the ending seldom does
What counts is how you stitch that wound,
—its scar now yours to love
(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2017)