Rank amateur or
undiscovered prodigy,
he jangles strings, chords bouncing off
tiles
of the gritty subway station a few levels
above hell.
The guitar case is open, and at the end of
the day
thirty pieces of silver and a few dollar bills
land on its soft green lining like leaves
from an invisible tree.
Even Judas likes to listen to a little
rhythm and blues
or a rock and roll riff and the tapping of
Goodwill shoes.
Sometimes he parries and thrusts his own
compositions,
an undiscovered poet who thinks that if
Dylan could do it,
then, well, there ya go. It ain’t no use
to sit and wonder why.
Other times he rolls with the peeling set
list—
Little Susie woke up in the house of the
rising sun—
taped to the waist of a guitar as cheap as
Mona Lisa wine.
He can pander Pure Prairie League or the
Rolling Stones.
Hell, he can do it all even if thumbs have
worn away the buffalo nickel shine.
Every fifteen minutes, a silver bullet
with gang graffiti takes his music
uptown or downtown, where a studio exec might
say,
“Ya know, I heard this guy busking out
novenas today,
and maybe something lies beneath the dirty
jeans and mop-top shock of hay.
The busker closes shop, climbs the steps from
Purgatorio,
and shuffles through a melody in his head,
notes littering the street
to the applause of sparrows in a purple
twilight tree.
Somewhere during the night in the throes
of an electric dream
still pulsing from the twelve-bar subway
line,
an angel dressed in white lightning and downlow
leather lands the jump.
“Here, write this down, you crazy son of a
bitch.”
Love ain’t love until you’ve thrown it all
away.
“Been there, right?
Your penance is to play for the moonstruck
mix shouting for Barabbas,
for ticket holders, turnstiles, and cave
paintings at New Lascaux,
to busk from dawn to dusk, to play and
play and play.”
~William Hammett
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