by Rocco de Giacomo
I didn’t like you, Bob
until now.
It wasn’t that
you always reminded me of Gonzo
with a head cold
or that
I always imagined your lyrics
scribbled out in purple crayon
or that
your duet with Janis
sounded more like two cats
making it
under a wicker chair
than two drunks stumbling
through the lyrics of last call.
It’s your fans, Bob:
The MasterCard malcontents
sucking back Evian water
between sets at the Superfitness,
digging out their wedgies
as they sweat
and swoon to burned memories
of free love
in the hot mud
of Woodstock.
The driver’s-side air-bags
crooning with their golf buddies,
shaking their nine-irons
at the complacency of kids today
and how
by god
by god,
when they were young
they went out
and they made a difference.
And the great
hippy
den mothers,
their teenage granddaughters
orbiting them like sour moons,
Chapters-bought, special edition books of your lyrics
crushed to their breasts,
all,
just waiting
-chins wobbling-
waiting for you
to die
so that they can just weep all over you
and like an episode
of While You Were Out
decorate your headstone
with Body Shop Bath candles,
patchouli incense sticks,
and empty, 2-litre bottles
of Maria Christina.
However,
in that Victoria’s Secret commercial,
I realized, Bob
that you’ve been waiting too.
Cast in a cadaver light,
you’re a lingering target
for that stray bullet,
that loaded syringe,
or one last hit of whiskey,
that turned Janis, Jimmy, and Jim
-those glorious letdowns-
into legends
before what they produced
became products placed
in an unremarkable world.
An empty highway,
an open stage,
a distant uncle’s birthday party:
you were all caught
in riptide of the right moment,
but only you, Bob
were blessed with the cruel knack
of survival
and in surviving
you fail
like the rest of us,
and you have to wait now
like the rest of us
for that long, slow death
that awaits everyone.
As appeared in The Antigonish Review No 141/142, 2005