More Rock

Here, look, there’s a little more rock
than elsewhere? Than where else, exactly?
“What do you want from me?”

Somewhere in my old armchair
my prehistoric headphones stayed behind,
so badly broken by now
it’s as if I had never heard through them
those words:
“What do you want from me?”

And the silly rondo of
the ever-returning
song,
over again from the start
and over again from the start…
“What do you want from me?”

Until, among the things I liked,
I distilled the wish
to resemble
no one but myself.

Until I caught myself listening
to more of the music from thirty
years back,
the very thing that once amused me
in my father.
“What do you want from me?”

The slightly off-key whistling
from my sofa slid
into “What do you want from me?”
and I was startled by the memory
of my sharp eyes
and a sudden leap
and a dash out of the house,
like stepping out of a dream.
Off somewhere among the directions
of the curious world beneath my shoes.
“What do you want from me?”

The drums and the guitars
in my head
echo after the footsteps
in the corridor of music.
In the alcove of a youth that never sleeps,
in the cellars of memory
and in the attic of my future,
scattered pieces of songs,
of memories and words,
of friends and strangers,
of eyes fixed
upon our backs.
Of the soft eyes
of our loves, already dead.
“Wish you were here…”