THE EMERGENT LINEAGE

Jerry couldn't play a clean riff
if the entire counterculture
gave it every last mantra

Neil's electric
would be laughed at
if he were up and coming today

and Jorma's is considered
by most connoisseurs
to be downright awful

but where would we be without them

spacing the lyrics
missing rehearsals
getting booed off the stage

Starship's muse had no balls
--it left with two pillars of grunge
and their rhythm-driven Tuna boat

CSN was pretty and all
--but it was Y's off-kilter
that set it sailing

and the Dead
would simply be

unimaginable

_____________


it is not strictly
the alteredness
each of these men wrought
on their bandmates
and audiences
which bore their music
life

it was the insistence
of a voice
ugly as it may have been at times
to some

to speak itself

through its encounters with structures
it needed
but could not fully abide by

(the prior sonic images
already captured)

and even destroyed
carelessly
and without regret

in order that

through an invisible
inherently broken
and uninheritable lineage

the unimaginable could
of its own urgency
emerge


all around the borderlands
creative souls
must wander