MIXIN' UP THE MEDICINE...

"‘Ill let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours’--  I said that.”  -Bob Dylan


He played us only a breadcrumb

of your work in sophomore English:

you Talkin’ World War III Blues,

thereby inadvertently ‘bending’ my life…

me, a ray of light passing through



dark water… you, so deep and cool

blanching my Johnny Cashred neck

to a lighter shade of sunburn… turning

my sun from yellow to chicken and

putting Johnny in the basement

 

mixin’ up the medicine— you, yet another

gateway ‘drug’ on my cosmic down-the-rabbit-hole

treasure hunt leading me on a breadcrumb trail

down Highway 61 to creativity… to music… to

poetry— to the sudden nasal philosophy of

 

When ya gut nuthin’ ya gut nuthin to lose…

to Joplin, Cohen, and then… Ferlinghetti and that

dark existential phase I had to go through

on the way to the big enlightenment

of COOL and SPIRITUALITY...

 

and three long years later, lost in the lonely

limbo of college culture shock… my ears

suddenly perk to some far-off strains of

‘Desolation Row’ wafting down the dormitory

Hallway, and I follow these breadcrumbs

 

to someone’s closed door and knock… and

when the door cracks open and a gaunt

youthful face masked in a speakeasy challenge

peers out of the smoke, I can only blurt out

“You’re… you’re playing Dylan!”

 

and (open sesame!) ...he steps aside

and I step in… behind ‘the Green Door’

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