"The strings are cold on the blue
guitar" Wallace Stevens
1
A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The moon heard it echo. The wind heard it
cry.
The clouds changed its sound.
In another country, it fell from the sky.
Unnoticed, it fell to the ground.
There are words only heard in the dark.
There are stories only told to strangers.
We dance to radio signals warbling in the air.
We change our faces daily.
We change our faces daily.
We turn the world over. We sleep when we
can.
2
They wear masks of tin; they glitter in
the sun.
Their rockets blaze; they build warheads
by the ton.
They talk of peace but it never comes.
A cloud descends, the lies resume.
Their minds are empty; their hearts are
blank.
We walk and stumble along a darkened
wall.
We hear a whistle. We hear a call.
But we can't be sure. There are so many
before us,
so many bodies pushing and shoving,
hordes of them. We become confused. We
fall.
3
The boy adored the blue guitar.
He made a kind of shrine.
He bathed in the light of that star.
The world glistened and shined.
He was born again when he heard the blue
guitar.
They are flying drones way up high
(UFOs whiz around in the dark).
A robot pushes a button and lives vanish.
Out here in the white sands of the
desert,
after the blast, the dead disembark.
4
At midnight, the world turned to stone;
and with it, the human head was reduced
to bone.
The mountains turned purple, the sky
turned gray.
Rivers and oceans froze, the land filled
with snow.
The world went to sleep; the world turned
to stone.
Architects silently put their tools away.
The shape of things had become an empty
hole.
The boy feared his dreams might stop, his
vision fade.
The boy feared he would turn to stone.
The boy feared he would be reduced to
bone.
5
In his mind, the boy made a shadow box
of all the things he had known and seen.
He made a shadow box of violet, blue and
green.
He remembered oceans, clouds and ponds.
He remembered all the things he had known
and seen.
An X marked the houses of the dead.
Bloated bodies floated down Canal Street.
The Superdome was in total darkness.
The lights were out; there was no turning
back.
The boy painted his fingernails black.
6
Folks waved white flags from rooftops.
The president did a flyover.
He kept his distance, his view was
blurred.
Only Kafka could invent something so
absurd.
A man went up into the clouds.
The man traversed an ocean for love.
He could have been an astronaut, he was
so far gone.
He was lost in the air.
He whirled and tumbled and when he came
down,
his wife was not there.
7
The man examined the clues.
The man had a bad case of the blues.
The man made a trip to the Pale Horse
Tattoo
parlor. He wanted to commemorate
his years of clandestine service
in the company of shadows,
when Peter Lorre was his avatar and
guide,
when the world was dark and blue.
The man heard the thunder roar.
The man was weary of war.
8
Children are gathering in the dark.
An idea forms and we begin to bloom,
almost invisibly but not quite.
Think of the resurrection as a kind
of second chance, as a kind of
blossoming.
Some died by fire, some died in a blast.
Some vanished like a vapor, some died in
a crash.
We let go of our secrets
but our voices seem strange.
We must move beyond this phantom feeling.
9
History has abandoned us.
The old world fades but the ruins remain.
We breathe in its dust and it changes us.
We have no need of sleep.
We bloom like flowers in the night.
We know what it is like to shiver in the
cold.
We know what it is like to stumble and
fall.
But our eyes were opened. We heard the
call.
We followed the light of a distant star.
We heard the sound of the blue guitar.
10
A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The moon heard it echo. Constellations
heard it cry.
On another planet, it fell from the sky.
The clouds changed its sound.
Unnoticed, it fell to the ground.
There are words only heard in the dark.
There are stories only told to strangers.
We dance to radio signals warbling in the
air.
We fly by the light of a nameless star.
We dance to the sound of the blue guitar.
