Damn fingers want to make music…
too old,
too tentative,
too set in their lumbering, clumsy ways
to find the strings
to make the chords hum instead of buzz.

Damn fingers
Want to find the way into the music
Without learning the root causes for the sounds
That make rhythms,
Pleasant dancing rhythms.

Downtrodden guitar
unsure of its own destiny.

Or perhaps, it’s the damn ears?

A neighbor passed today on his way to non-being.
A casual traveler basking once in the silky sun of existence.
Cells once nourished became his bete noir.
They consumed him in a gulp.

Not knowing him well,
Hardly a blip on his radar screen.
For a nanosecond at a community gathering
He acknowledged my existence.
And I his.
We talked of boots,
Walking, y’all, cowboy boots,
Strutting boots 
Boots with power, the shit-kicking kind.
And the cowboy hat that I was wearing.

Because he could strut no more,
His wheel chair holding him in thrall,
He gifted his red, gray shitkickers to me.
But I did not strut in them
I tossed them to the bottom of my closet
Among forgotten, mismatched socks and underwear.

Now that he is no more,
I sought them out.
A life memo.
I tested them. 
Wrapped my feet in them.
Stood like the Colossus of Rhodes arms akimbo
And strutted across my bedroom in them
Il Duce, chin stuck in the air sucking in life,
I sashayed to the mirror.

Agape, a mortal stared back.
My neighbor would have smiled.