Forty Years Counting

Duanne Allman plays Whipping Post, frapping bruised chords together from the southern earth and tying them to the crowd's thoughts in the ether, holding the moment in open-mouthed timbre until the March morning finally casts the dawn spotlight on the legendary all-nighter at the Fillmore East. The later haze of 1971 captures weary-eyed and grainy video renderings of the US invading the jungles of Laos, and Apollo 14 lands the flag in black and white with a small puff on the man in the moon. Dude, give me that. The time has disappeared from our mind, Left its hands tied on a clock on the wall, As we wandered the globe and left it behind, Myths we treasure swallowed in suburban sprawl Now the gin-and-tonic family-values guy Tightens his inside-the-beltway leather belt He's on the make and will always try To tread where others have prayed and knelt. Dude, give that back, man! Don't bogart it. Tied to our whipping post by The Man, all these years past all these years forward disappearing, the ship has no mast. Trying to reach you, trying to reach through the haze The starting gun sending us into an endless maze. All around are broken flowers, fallen towers, All around are silken shirts discarded on the floor After the game when we all fall down and cower The flower peels back to the pollen at the core. Is there any left? It looks done. The young man in the corner of the coffee-shop Plays the axe like it's god's own harp, the tunes of bliss and growing, and singing under the sun. The night lifts and 2011 shows half-paid attentions to high-definition video of pilotless drones invading over rock and sand, while the last shuttle launches from Canaveral to a sky no longer seen at night because of our own cursed brightness. 2011, The Jotter