[New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan

[AlMaginnes at aol.com]

My favorite Dylan tune.
 
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're  tryin' to be so 
quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best  to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy  it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just  cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really  nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these  visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

In the empty lot where the ladies  play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper  of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his  flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise,  she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the  mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's  not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where  these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Now, little boy lost, he  takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live  dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to  me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small  talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it's so hard  to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the  dawn

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is  what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway  blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower  freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the  mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang  from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem  so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care  for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and  say a 
prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much,  can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has  not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage  once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes  ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that  loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys  and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain





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