Bob Dylan's Excremerit

"You can't go through life without reading some kind of book."
  - Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2012

God I heard you
 your lousy voice
I knew it was you
just like the voice
dronin' in my mind
comin' outa amplifiers
jukeboxes, cafeterias,
1966
a young voice
an old voice
a ghost rider with his
 pen dipped in poison
the poisoned barb of bath.
it got accommodated
by society
and slowly compromised
and I don't care
if it can be said more
flowery than that.
it is what it is.

now the tide
has gone down
we pick over debris
who said what
Lennon, McCartney
Dylan, Morrison,
Joplin, Pound -
the tide it turns out
rising again
reanimating matter
rearranging it
carting it away
transfiguring a new idol
 to civilisation

you blew away
your mind
blowing in the wind
rainy day women
it slipped away
between 66-68
that kid died
a new guy grew
an turned into you
 Hendrix and the others
couldn't pull that stunt
 to walk again
upon the earth
like Judas
unmascara-d
playd fuckin' loud
for one more
cup of coffee
and a thousand telephones that don't ring

like an old
Italian poet
with Spanish boots
a Petrarch or Baudelaire
his early intrigues and instruments
golds and spices
lifted
from the 13th century
into 1963
like a spider sewing
the spiral outward
from the central spokes
of a wagon wheel
a cowboy hat
spinning in the dust

gathered up
45s, spinning vinyl
scratched folk tunes
the Remixer, the Artist
the Singer of Songs
the Post Poet Incarnate
that's who we made you
but not who you are
the voice inside
a generation's mind
truth speaks
in a drawl and it's not You
I know
it's not You