Jack Ketch's Midnight Crossroads Blues

(A glow-tipped cigarette

                     blows smoke rings under street-lights

bleaching out a harvest moon)

 

 

 

The sparkle of a starlet’s borrowed diamonds

and the shine upon her shoes

take me back to Winslow, Arizona

and the road to Whitey’s blues.

 

The devil’s at the crossroads

with a contract and a pen,

I’ll race the Lil’ Bastard

‘til we three meet again.

 

I’m not sleeping, I’m just dreaming

and not of lost Lenore,

but of boats against the currents

and the stranger on the shore.

 

The past belongs to anyone,

‘is’ ‘was’ will one day be:

it’s always today in LaLaLand,

but tomorrow belongs to me.

 

                                                

                                                (The wide-mouthed water-drains

                                                                 suck down matches and soggy filters

                                                                                                             in widdershins spirals)

 

There’s a song,

the one you hear before waking,

it has three chords

all of them lost

like you.

 

It’s a tune,

like one your mother sang you:

it has no words

just one long line

of sobs.

 

(Each night-time scene is shot

in Ektachrome with vaseline                            

                                                           on a cracked lens)                                  

       

      Audio here