Paul Simon says

 

the Mississippi delta

is shining like

a National guitar

 

which is an apt simile

but if you want my reflections

on rock and roll

 

     the rock stars are dying

soloing their way up the fretboard

toward the afterlife

 

           there’s stars on 45

    & ash in Paisley Park

admittedly I’ve not ziggied

any stardust

in a while

but if Keith

              who once snorted his

            own father (!)

                  says he is clean, man

then what the hell

so am I

 

Mick says

this a poem I’d like to read for Brian

 

we decay / like corpses in a charnel

 

older than bong water

or that crusty Led Zeppelin poster

in the shed above the drum kit

  covered in dust

 

you only had to be able to keep a beat

   & 30 pints of lager in your gullet

to be a drummer in the 70s

racing to an early death

 

like hate-reading

On The Road because we owe it to America

to stick our fingers down its chauvinistic guts

and marvel at the vomit of words

 

rock remains as age appropriate

as dating a thirteen year old groupie

(Jimmy Page) 

– in that sense

    rock and roll royalty

is more Prince Andrew than Prince

 

should this serve as a symbol?

    a sign o the times?

should we not be toppling statues

out the front of concert venues too?

 

you want it darker?

     asks an album cover

masquerading as an epitaph

 

before punk

before emo

there was The Rolling Stones

shouting ‘paint it black!’

 ~ from a time when

        perhaps they meant their faces ~

 

before the Stones there was

the blues

black music

 

and before that only

black musicians tuning up

waiting to invent music

 

you can’t ignore the erasure

 the damage

     or the war

but at the very least I guess

you can change the name

like Lady Antebellum

          following a lawsuit

 

I am following the river

Down the highway

Through the cradle of the civil war

 

I’m going to Graceland

 

if male musicians treated women

      half as well as they treated their guitars

          rock wouldn’t be so synonymous

             with misogyny 

 

(this poem, not much of a requiem mass I’ll admit

   but what do you expect for a genre typified

     by a bunch of teenagers dutching out a rec room?)

 

rock and roll

I gave you

all the best years

of my life

 

don’t fear the reaper

    death comes quietly

you’ll hardly hear it over the tinnitus

 

rock music didn’t teach us

 anything

           really

 

Q: what’s the difference between a zombie

            and a deadhead?

A: the money for a concert ticket

 

popular opinion suggests

rock and roll died years ago

but the music lives on

in dorm rooms

reclining on a beanbag

coughing, holding a spliff up

like a torch above an unwashed head

as pentatonic riff

follows pentatonic riff

 

I will always admire the way

Leonard Cohen

took a knee to bow

before the talent

of one of the musicians he employed

as they played a solo

      all class

 

whereas Ryan Adams fed on the souls

and careers of younger female artists

both phyrric and vampiric

   

      prickish

 

& that’s how

the whole thing ended

sleeping upside down

like that roadie in Wayne’s World

 

long live rock and roll

 

or maybe

let it live and let die

 

rock and roll is dead

 

performing

the post mortem

post Malone