Tom Lyford has original poetry books and memoirs for sale on-line, and offers poetry readings and workshops in northern New England...
  • Home
    • MISSION STATEMENT
    • MISSION RESTATEMENT
    • LIJAH
  • Hometown D-F
    • Dover-Foxcroft: the BORING FACTS yadda yadda
    • D-F IMAGES
    • DOVER-FOXCROFT...?
  • Poems
    • D-F POEMS >
      • THE ARRIVAL
      • FIRE AND ICE
      • GOOD OL BOYS
      • MASONRY
      • MERRICK SQUARE MARKET
      • PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY
      • THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
      • THE PLEASANT STREET PHANTOM
      • MASONRY
    • CEREBRAL SIMILES >
      • EASTER PARADE
      • ALTERED STATES
      • TELEPHONE POLES
      • GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
      • MEMPHIS BELLE
      • THIS BODY?
      • THE BIG CHILL
    • JUKEBOX POETRY >
      • 102.5
      • INVITATION TO THE BLUES
      • JUKE BOX JOHNNY
      • REQUIEM
      • SPELLBOUND
      • WOLFEN
    • RUMINATIONS >
      • 3RD ROCK
      • I ROBOT
      • ORIENTATION
      • THE RIGHT STUFF
      • VECTOR ANALYSIS
    • NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE, TOTO >
      • EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS!!!
      • WITNESS PROTECTION COUNTY
      • TWO-HEADED MAN RUNS FOR MAYOR
      • THE STING
    • TRIBUTES >
      • TO LEONARD...
      • MR. SALINGER...
      • MIXIN' UP THE MEDICINE
      • RIDING AROUND IN STEPHEN KING
  • Prose
    • Man on the Flying Trapeze
  • Bio
  • Reviews
    • NO DAFFODILS REVIEW
    • PLAYING WITH FIRE
    • PLAYING WITH FIRE (Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards Commentary)
    • MY CINEMA PARADISO
    • KILROY WAS HERE and WORK AVERSION TRAUMA double-review
    • AMERICANA REVIEW
    • PLEASANT STREET REVIEW
  • Events
  • Influences
    • LITERARY
    • MOTIVATIONAL
    • BIZARRO
  • eMail
  • Buy
  • A / V
    • Video Catalogue
    • Audio
  • BLOG
  • Platonic Cave

MIXIN' UP THE MEDICINE...

Picture


"‘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’

Dover-Foxcroft's Rogue Poet Laureate since... well, OK... only 2010