The Jukebox Prophet (from The Songs Of The Erinnyes, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies by Jay Noya, Brigantium Press)

1

What’s the distance between the two points got to do with it?
He wasn’t thinking it or saying it
It drew him onward and it was there for that very reason
But what was behind the urge to be where he was?
He was confronted with the dilemma of purpose
And accountability and it was because he could no longer dodge it
He saw a shadow across the sidewalk
He recognized it as his own and retraced his steps
He watched the shadow and went forward for the second time
What scale should he employ to read what he saw?
It hadn’t a thing to do with foreboding
But it might just as well have been nothing but foreboding
The ground hadn’t been firm beneath him for years
That’s what it reminded him of and he couldn’t expect otherwise
Flesh of the flesh of his ancestry and to dust ordained
To dust he’d return as all the other previous generations
Flesh of the flesh of his ancestry and predestined to return to dust
He’s through agonizing over absurdities and over his body
He’s got something in his mind and won’t wait for sunup
He’s got to be somewhere else before the night traps and buries him
And buried with him shall be all that he said and what he thought
What he saw and what he had since adolescence reasoned as his own

2

In blue denim trousers and cowboy boots and native sangfroid
Looking more like a federal penitentiary alumni
Than a devil-crusher and desert-seer and prophesy-spouting prophet
He’s been staring at a framed photograph hanging on a wall
And there’s nothing much in the way of an expression to report
And for a while it’s just him and the framed picture on the wall
The rest of the room needn’t exist
As far as the cowboy-booted prophet goes
And if he’s thinking something he ain’t showing it
And if he’s figured something out nobody else has
The prophet ain’t giving no indication of that either
And if he’s the wonderman everyone has clamored for
Decade in and decade out then this here fellow
In the shabby cowboy getup and the sleepy eyes
Makes for one hell of an incognito-type of prophet
And then there’s that guitar box at his feet
Which may or may not contain a guitar
The guitar box may only be good enough
To hold years of winter evenings and years of summer mornings
Folded twice and some of the bleaker years folded thrice
And all of it is wrapped in oily and otherwise stained brown paper
Fastened with hairy string that’s been knotted again and again
About the front and the back and various other places in between
Then again that guitar box may hold nothing within it
That is nothing that one can call something
And if it’s a guitar the prophet keeps in the box
If it is a guitar and some sheet music and bundles of old letters
Then it’s to his credit and rather to the detriment of his foes
And detractors and to the mystification of big-city television reporters
And no doubt the cowboy prophet
Will laugh about it and turn to check over his shoulder
On his way out of town and the incident
Since by now it has become an incident
May turn up in a song that’ll play on the radio and play in jukeboxes
It’ll be heard and danced to in a dingy backroom acrid and pungent
With the slowly aging smells of cigarettes
And beer and the sweat of fatigued bodies and swollen feet
The song will play in a jukebox outside of Perro Amarillo in Arizona
Yeah the prophet may be a marauder and he may be a troubadour
And he may just happen to be an ageless fool doing God’s errands
And if it comes to that then the cowboy stranger
Is none other than the messenger the newspapers
And television have been speculating about for months
Yeah they’ll have to reduce it to the formula
That the stranger fits the bill
And that the man in the wrinkled clothes
And the sleepy eyes and the slow gait of the vagabond
Is the prophet and no other but the prophet in disguise
That it is him and how can it not be him with that guitar box
And those eyes and that long neck and that head?
That’s the man everyone’s been waiting for
And the look has intrigued and inspired gamblers
They’re foaming at the mouth with heavenly visions
And suddenly yeah it’s true all right they’re taking bets
And at this very moment there’s a man
In a gabardine suit with an umbrella nodding and winking
And all confidence shuffling up and down the Carson Hotel lobby
In Nineteen Hundred and Five the old edifice saw times of splendor
And extravagance while it’s since become a refuge and home to whores
And drug-addicts and other hard-living and hard-dying derelicts
The hotel is the disfigured pile opposite the church on Jefferson Street
Bets are being offered and taken by the man with the broken nose
And the shrill falsetto voice swearing and shouting his percentages
Broadcasting his bizarre type of optimism to the world
He goads the meek and the reticent to take a stab
He gestures at the bleary-eyed dealers and commands the whores to bet
And make a fortune on the shabby stranger in the cowboy getup
The man in the gabardine suit loses his voice pleading
Has the prophet crossed deserts and braved seas for nothing?
You’ve got to take a chance on the man with the guitar box
You’ve got to fold a twenty-dollar bill and kiss it goodbye
Take a chance on the cowboy with the dusty guitar box
Take a chance on the prophet with the unseen and reported tattoo
On his chest of a woman wearing only a sailor’s cap
He’s the prophet with a song on his lips and a gun in his left boot
And for the thrill of it and in his honor (it won’t last you know)
You’ve got to fold a twenty-dollar bill and kiss it goodbye


© J. Noya 2006