I Also Do Impressions
       

I am a restless soul born of a restless man
who wandered in and out of time.

He appeared to die across the phone,
his unbearable breathing.

So little to do at the end of things.
This isn't about that man
but what became of his son.
This kid could listen
to Journey or the Temptations.
Although he preferred Temptations.

For he was born under the sign of "Yield."
This is what I can do well, he thought,
here is my pass.
                                He had to pass,
although he grew up in a white world.
Not quite white in the head, though.

And so he learned "Any Way You Want It"
and other white hits.

He learned them from
a blue-eyed meth addict he was attracted to.

He learned them from the johns
who sang so tragic:
Teenaged wasteland
It's a teen-aged wasteland

and naught comes from a wasteland
but waste.

Waste, you see, is wasted
on the young.

To Carthage then I came
where round about me and on every side
there sizzled such a skillet of
Temptations
doing "Papa Was a Rolling Stone"
and any place I laid my hat
I was bound to be bare-headed.

He struggled with that.
A city is an orgy that
just hasn't started yet.
They're sizing you up.

Lord I wouldn't take nothing
for my Journey records now, but

sometimes you just gotta go
it's a ball of confusion.

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Copyright © 2015 D.A. Powell All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission