22, I'm so behind oh my goodness

The Young Musician (for willie)

His youth is striking.
With the arrogance of the unpublished, he doesn't believe them when
they tell him he can't save anyone, he's damn well going to try.
He wears his insecurities like a banner draped across his victor's chest
Lovely, manic eyes alight with possibility and when he sings, the mountains strain to listen.

(if you were a singer in your own time and place, you would sing those stones to weeping
but magic died with Brahms and you are trying for something alive)

And the arch arch in his back as he bows telegraphs this as good as a smirk,
he's got this shit down to a science.
That trill remind the listener of the numbness and purity atop glaciated peaks,
that crescendo evokes the magnificence of faith.
This is as calculated as chemistry.

But all these academics are a metaphor for the vagrants
that tramp along the highways tucked in the ventricles of our hearts.
That dirty thing called love,
love and joy and how sometimes i'm better before you get to know me
and the way you sometimes feel about a girl you just met
how you want to put her fingers in your mouth and memorize all her cousins' names
right now, this very instant
but you don't, so you won't.

This is what I think about when I hear him sing.
This is strange and good, and very, very much alive.