Early morning, but maybe not too early. Once again, the dog knows where I belong.

Give me my pencil and a space of unused paper, a reheated cup of yesterday evening’s coffee, some music, a simple radio: listening to Muddy Waters on cassette. The sound of callouses strong enough to break glass and make those wound strings bleed a little. This is the lesson. We must practice, so we can make our tools bleed.

Bleed, ye! This is the Thursday Blues.

Try to push out of frame, for a while, the battles collecting themselves at my door, crowded next to the same old Truth. All I want is to write and be left to it, and maybe have a few small comforts. Love. Warmth. Decent coffee. I need to feel like I’ve earned my morning apple. I’d like this to include finding a way to pay bills that doesn’t suck my soul out through my nose. 

If possible, I would prefer the world not be perpetually burning. But that is an institutional obstacle.

Go back to bed, love. 
It just the house, burning.
Do not fret, love. 
Do not fret.
It will only hurt
this very little
very tiny bit.

The cassette plays stretchy and tired, especially on the bridge and guitar solo. There is a particular sound to fingers that find electric pickups amusingly quaint and unnecessary to the singing of the strings. A sound sung by calloused fingers that learned to make heavy brass wound strings cry and sing the blood songs of centuries. The cassette, it still plays, all tired and stretchy, until at some point, it will need a pencil to put it right.

In the winter of America
I am tired of the feedback loop
echoes of dead algorithms
programmed to sound like machines
running lights that themselves lie
and claim to be
long burnt out stars
still shining