by Heather Taylor Johnson
We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we
           shouldn’t be involved with – Trump
Patti Smith read Footnote to Howl on our first night
at Blues Fest, threw the poem on the floor & spat –
holy punk & common cold thick with holy mucus
She didn’t sing People Have the Power
but recited it as a giant poem
Patti Smith was a giant poem
We screamed – everyone was screaming
like when Buddy Guy played guitar with his ass
& when Buffet came on, how we realised
that Parrot Heads are global
(my parents in Florida are Parrot Heads
we sent them a photo of the crowd)
Bonnie Raitt sang the night
Trump dropped the 21,000-pound bomb
she was sexy at seventy, smiled sideways
slid those strings
like they were broken hearts
having a hoedown at a bar & grill
She was mad as hell – everyone was
because the world had to bear witness
to Donald Trump, & after the bomb
there was no turning back
It was our fifteenth anniversary
we were babies though we sagged
& cracked, slept in our tent
touching through the cold night
holy snaking legs & arms
In the morning we woke to pounding propellers
aeroplanes dropping skydivers
parachutes disappearing behind tree-line
For breakfast we had egg & bacon rolls
at jacked-up festival prices
because we didn’t want to cook
& fair enough, it’d been a hard six months –
Bonnie Raitt could’ve written our soundtrack
Patti Smith could’ve written a poem
Â
holy women of the word
Â
Love chips away, but sometimes you wonder
how much of the chipping is us & how much
is the wearing down of the world
This was our time to mend
& when the Doobie Brothers
came on I kissed you after
every song
We were free, privilege so webbed
between our fingers we swam
through the audience
holy water holy waves
holy holy        Â
school of fish
Each time we found our perfect view
it felt like the universe was making room for us
& I think it happened in every tent
Who could blame us for being confused
thinking Afghanistan was so 2001, history the silence
after war, the contemplation we then turn into song
The night of the GBU-43 we were drunk on ten-dollar beer
Mavis Staples sang March Up Freedom Highway
2017 not ’63, still she’s rasping
whole world is wonderin
what’s wrong with the United States
Â
Trump’s Mother of All Bombs
spent in an Afghan grave
We hated that they were calling it the MOAB
because we’ve camped in the thick
of Moab’s red-rocks, slipping each day
in heaven’s clay, washing it off in the Colorado
& when we laughed in the canyon, it echoed
Holy bliss, holy gladness
holy holy
joy
Moab demanded our respect, not the other way around
like Bonnie Raitt & Buddy Guy & Rhiannon Giddens
(I cried when she sang about flying away)
Music makes sense of our world
made better sense of our marriage
than we’d been doing since October’s election
& here it was April, in love again
so we talked about returning in another five years
swatted away what-ifs like we were doing the shag
death never an option.