JOHN PAUL DAVIS
Advice To A Young Writer
On early recordings from before Bob
Dylan's fame you can hear him try to peal
bright & clean as gospel on a Sunday.
His songs with which they still soundtrack movies
about the 60s capture his swallowed
sandpaper period, when he so loved
the lariat of Guthrie's twang & bend.
In Nashville, recording with Johnny Cash
he tried on Elvis & Sam Cooke like suits
that didn't quite fit right, one too roomy,
the other too tight. In the studio
rehearsing "We Are The World" Quincy Jones
stops the tape & requests sing more like Bob
Dylan & Robert Zimmerman replies
I don't know what that sounds like so Stevie
Wonder offers help, does his best Dylan
impression. Invited to write a song
with U2, Dylan belts his verse out, moans
like a traveling preacher, out-Bonos
Bono but doesn't like it & they mix
it as a backing vocal so on "Love
Rescue Me" he sounds like a man singing
in the shower to a stereo bumped
loud in his living room. Then he got old
& his voice brittled in an exact way
like how chance makes a piece of shattered glass
into a poor man's prism. His voice broke
to rumble like a dying truck engine
like Louis Armstrong's once did, like a tear
through sailcloth & it's this bullfrog holler
he's stuck with 20 years now, as if he'd
been marrying & then remarrying
his own voice uncertain he was even
any good at commitment. You can hear
how much he enjoys it, moaning a deep
nasal crackling like Charley Patton
or hooting like Son House or filling up
a note's semitones with dark molasses
& pebbles like Robert Johnson, barking
like Leadbelly, now content to wail
like the black men he grew up listening
to, their voices invoking something deep
in him from the single lo-fi speaker
of his father's turntable, entering
him like just the Holy Ghost & haunting
him his entire life & isn't it strange
to realize when Dylan sang the way we
most easily remember him he was,
all that time, imitating someone else?
Advice To A Young Writer
On early recordings from before Bob
Dylan's fame you can hear him try to peal
bright & clean as gospel on a Sunday.
His songs with which they still soundtrack movies
about the 60s capture his swallowed
sandpaper period, when he so loved
the lariat of Guthrie's twang & bend.
In Nashville, recording with Johnny Cash
he tried on Elvis & Sam Cooke like suits
that didn't quite fit right, one too roomy,
the other too tight. In the studio
rehearsing "We Are The World" Quincy Jones
stops the tape & requests sing more like Bob
Dylan & Robert Zimmerman replies
I don't know what that sounds like so Stevie
Wonder offers help, does his best Dylan
impression. Invited to write a song
with U2, Dylan belts his verse out, moans
like a traveling preacher, out-Bonos
Bono but doesn't like it & they mix
it as a backing vocal so on "Love
Rescue Me" he sounds like a man singing
in the shower to a stereo bumped
loud in his living room. Then he got old
& his voice brittled in an exact way
like how chance makes a piece of shattered glass
into a poor man's prism. His voice broke
to rumble like a dying truck engine
like Louis Armstrong's once did, like a tear
through sailcloth & it's this bullfrog holler
he's stuck with 20 years now, as if he'd
been marrying & then remarrying
his own voice uncertain he was even
any good at commitment. You can hear
how much he enjoys it, moaning a deep
nasal crackling like Charley Patton
or hooting like Son House or filling up
a note's semitones with dark molasses
& pebbles like Robert Johnson, barking
like Leadbelly, now content to wail
like the black men he grew up listening
to, their voices invoking something deep
in him from the single lo-fi speaker
of his father's turntable, entering
him like just the Holy Ghost & haunting
him his entire life & isn't it strange
to realize when Dylan sang the way we
most easily remember him he was,
all that time, imitating someone else?
20 Questions For Jay-Z
Yeah, I'm out that Brooklyn
Now I'm down in Tribeca
Right next to DeNiro
But I’ll be hood forever
- Jay-Z, "Empire State Of Mind"
Is pious pious because God loves pious?
- Jay-Z, "No Church In The Wild"
Supposing you saw me, middle
aged, middle class & white
walking in your neighborhood.
What would you do? Do you have a landlord?
What did you have for breakfast?
Your wife's wig collection is worth
more than fourteen times what I owe
on my student loan which is itself three
times the median annual income in Brooklyn,
where you grew up. I'm sorry,
I realize that's not a question. When the protestors
camped out on Wall Street, did you worry
about interest rates? Did you sympathize?
Maybe you did both. Did you know
I thought I had food poisoning
last week but it turned out
I had gone a whole day without eating
& it had been decades since I'd felt
a hunger pang so I'd forgotten
what that particular flavor
of discomfort meant? Would you park
any of your cars at the intersection
of Rockaway and Livonia overnight?
Did you know The Black Album helped
me get past my divorce? How does
that make you feel? Do you ever wonder
where any of your regulars
from when you were a dope boy
are now? Does knowing
I admire you change how you read
the previous question? Is being holy
an intrinsic quality, like the redness
of a ripe apple, or is it imbued
by context & action, like how that apple
can be eaten? What happens to a dream
eaten? Did you know I lived in a trailer
park when I was a boy? Do you find it ironic
or fitting that I learned all the break dance
moves I know from another boy in the ballet
class my stepmother made me take,
that I remember how to glissade
and how to moonwalk about the same?
What is the President like? Do you think
I can be holy? Is there a term
for the specific kind of loneliness
one feels moments after achieving
the long-sought goal? Are they cursed
or blessed who get exactly
what they want? Am I red, or am I eaten?
Yeah, I'm out that Brooklyn
Now I'm down in Tribeca
Right next to DeNiro
But I’ll be hood forever
- Jay-Z, "Empire State Of Mind"
Is pious pious because God loves pious?
- Jay-Z, "No Church In The Wild"
Supposing you saw me, middle
aged, middle class & white
walking in your neighborhood.
What would you do? Do you have a landlord?
What did you have for breakfast?
Your wife's wig collection is worth
more than fourteen times what I owe
on my student loan which is itself three
times the median annual income in Brooklyn,
where you grew up. I'm sorry,
I realize that's not a question. When the protestors
camped out on Wall Street, did you worry
about interest rates? Did you sympathize?
Maybe you did both. Did you know
I thought I had food poisoning
last week but it turned out
I had gone a whole day without eating
& it had been decades since I'd felt
a hunger pang so I'd forgotten
what that particular flavor
of discomfort meant? Would you park
any of your cars at the intersection
of Rockaway and Livonia overnight?
Did you know The Black Album helped
me get past my divorce? How does
that make you feel? Do you ever wonder
where any of your regulars
from when you were a dope boy
are now? Does knowing
I admire you change how you read
the previous question? Is being holy
an intrinsic quality, like the redness
of a ripe apple, or is it imbued
by context & action, like how that apple
can be eaten? What happens to a dream
eaten? Did you know I lived in a trailer
park when I was a boy? Do you find it ironic
or fitting that I learned all the break dance
moves I know from another boy in the ballet
class my stepmother made me take,
that I remember how to glissade
and how to moonwalk about the same?
What is the President like? Do you think
I can be holy? Is there a term
for the specific kind of loneliness
one feels moments after achieving
the long-sought goal? Are they cursed
or blessed who get exactly
what they want? Am I red, or am I eaten?