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D. B. COX
friday night in the drunk tank floating over the drunk tank hum a voice at the back of the holding cell demands a phone call warm blood begins to move back into my numb hands from cuffs—too tight tiny shards of glass from a beer-bottle bar fight embedded in my blood-matted hair crystal ringing in my brain like a beautiful girl’s name left eye swollen shut thirteen dollars stashed in the soles of my old dingos not enough for bail— another friday night in the city jail for trying to make something out of the emptiness that crawls along this boulevard of half-remembered things top of the world matty killed his ragging father with a 1959 Les Paul FlameTop— he tossed the body into the back of his band’s equipment trailer & dragged it down to the 39th precinct now he’s playing air guitar in the day room of the mental hospital drugged body confessin’ the blues as doctors & social workers look on confused about what’s wrong manic depressive? sociopath? or just another pissed-off air guitarist— duck walking—like chuck stroking, SRV-style behind the head behind the back right-arm windmills frazzling the air like the sad man behind blue eyes screaming over & over… hey pop— look at me top of the world hey you, writer of shadow work & simple rhymes living in a shabby motel on a blue highway chain smoking counting stitch marks in old wrist scars has solitaire turned your character to stone? are your sanity markers scattered like vandalized headstones in an abandoned churchyard? are you down to scribbling mama—love—god on restroom walls?— no longer a part of the picture do you count ceiling cracks when the lights come on? do you count the number of times you said you’d never slide back? _____ well— maybe your parts are just in backward light, where dark should be dark, where light should be we have everything you could ever want right here—you can cry here or quietly die here after all has been said & unsaid done & undone forgiven & unforgiven we can help you beautify your personal landscape right now—today D.B. Cox is a blues musician/poet, originally from South Carolina. After graduating from high school in 1966, he did a four year stint with the U.S. Marines, then moved to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music, where he eventually found the blues circuit. He loves writing for the same reason he loves playing the guitar-a way to communicate how he feels at a given time, on a given day. He now resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. His writing has been published online in Zygote In My Coffee, Remark, Underground Voices, Dubliner Quarterly and others, and in print in Aesthetica, Snow Monkey, My Favorite Bullet and Open Wide Magazine. |
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© 2005 Underground Voices |
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