Bob Dylan's brother, David Zimmerman, taught the children in my neighborhood how to sing!

Bob Dylan's brother, David Zimmerman, taught the children in my neighborhood how to sing! He was the music teacher at Sunny Hollow Elementary in New Hope, Minnesota. It is well known now that David Zimmerman contributed to the re-recording of Blood on the Tracks in Minneapolis (Christmas of 74).

Bob apparently spent some time with his brother at the grade school. After David Zimmerman worked with Bob on the album he decided to leave teaching. With Bob in tow, Mr. Zimmerman visited all his students, all of the classes. During a question & answer session, my brother Rob (age 7) asked this unknown visitor if he knew of the poet Billy L (my middle name is James). Bob said no but that he would have to check this "poet" out. I did not know about this conversation until later (my brother, after all, was 7 & really had no idea how famous Bob was; I was 17). When I heard the story a few weeks later, I was thrilled.

At 19, I studied for a semester in Rome, Italy. There was a copy of Blood on the Tracks at the University of Dallas campus where I stayed. I listened to that album every day, over & over again. What an education: The Confessions of Saint Augustine, The Sistine Chapel, Agamemnon's tomb in Greece, the Louvre in Paris (Leonardo, Botticelli, Giotto), Sophocles & Bob Dylan.

Happy birthday Bob!  


My lyric, vocal, guitar below...thanks for the inspiration Bob

He sang a tune or two in a one man band

Then hopped a train to a distant and nameless land

And in a boxcar he heard someone say,

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’.

There are rumors of war; there are holes in the sky

The dead line the roads but no one hears them cry.

The living are throwing stones into an empty well.

Their houses are bare; they have nothing left to sell

I hum along to a song that I know and understand

As I trudge toward that distant and nameless land

And in the darkness I hear someone say,

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’

Stranger On A Dark Horse

alternative version


I see a rider on the horizon
He rides a dark horse
He’s a stranger, he’s way off course
The mob outside my window makes do
With a hangman’s noose
They devour lies, 
There’s darkness in their eyes
We hobble through a world of faces
Someone blows a lonely horn
Everything is smashed, our hearts are torn
We're locked in a box with no key
No one is true, no one is free
I see a rider on the horizon
He rides a dark horse

Plato Takes Notes

They would never understand, she tells herself.

She could have been a revolutionary. She could have been

Homecoming Queen.

Punk girl, she poses in a bikini for a fanzine.

She shows off her latest tattoo.

In front of the camera, the pain diminishes, but the whirring blades

in her head spin unceasingly.

There is no pill that will fix her.

The stars hang crooked in this universe.

They twinkle, they glitter.

Facts are toxic for true believers.

The propaganda machine is always on.

It has wings. It is made up of nightmares and dreams. 
Conspiracy theories abound.

The lie detector in the other room measures feelings but not truth.

Socrates suffers from dementia while Plato takes notes.

A Mad Woman Puts A Knife To The Fire

A mad woman puts a knife to the fire and the world gasps for air.

Sirens wail while firemen in oxygen masks

rock back and forth beneath the weight of their gear 
and lumber into the blaze.

Eyes inspect me and then look away.

I walk free in the haze. I wear no mask.

I float in the fumes and drift. I’ve forgotten how to breathe. 
I’ve forgotten how to talk.

She justified all that death with words, 
with rationalizations.

She sent a memo to the sun as an apology.

She perches high above humankind and eyes her prey.

She targets all that she can grasp.

She is voracious. She eats virtue and innocence.

Her voice is old and hoarse.

A mad woman puts a knife to the fire and the world gasps for air.