Come on, trust yourself, I know how to lead you on
Aren’t you ready yet to check out my chops?
I’m prepared to set your riff thing in motion!
Let’s go someplace where scriptwriters eat
And shake words like coins across the table:
Soon you’ll be spending with the best of them.
My heavy thoughts start with a baseline drone;
I’m here to prompt you, not to overwhelm.
On dull days you can cancel, but I’ll come back,
My perfect tracking stays with your thread,
Or if you get lost, I slog along beside you.
My eyes will display an exaggerated glaze
Only if you clue me in on pyramid schemes,
Or tell me the latest from scandal sheets.
We won’t get gummed up in any kind of feelings,
With every client, results are my sole concern,
That is, I’m here to strengthen your verbal highs.
I mean, I’ll go with you into riffs of any kind
But they’ve got to build your riffing capacity;
You and I won’t be spinning any wheels,
Unless new letters come up each time.
I don’t dump on you, I’m too professional,
If you dump on me, I have an escape clause,
And besides, we pour it all in the river
That flows past the scene of human damage.
Go ahead, throw something at me
We can toss planets and sling comets
Play catch on Walt Whitman’s cosmic scale
Or just up the ante on how much we see
In a bowl of fruit or an old man’s face.
I want you to trust the air to carry pictures
And when the picture breaks, to carry words away.
I want the lyricism of wanting-to-tell,
Let the delivery take care of itself.
We can go to the beach or museum,
But only to catch grooves on the atmosphere.
We can take a tape recorder with us;
You’ll get tapes full of raw material,
Which can get unwieldy, so I also provide
An editing service, for which you pay more.
Our regimen may get intense, phone calls late at night;
And arguments of aesthetics may arise
If you just start stringing platitudes together
And don’t feel the breath in these chunks
That I ripped from the gristle of life!
We may go on a road trip, or share consolation
It may even come to a roll in the hay
But Hey! I’m a pro. I only let it all happen
So your evocative river runs all the stronger,
And if the ripples on that river
Don’t start flexing like muscles
I haven’t done my job, and I give a full refund.
If you ask for my standing as poet-athlete
You betray how little you know of this game.
I perform to set a pattern, but love exploring
And explore best of all by luring YOU out.
As trainer I will fall back and watch you glide,
And part of me is still a gee-whiz hayseed
Who likes getting rolled under your head of steam
And beats hands together at the curtain call
When your performance finally calls up
The very spirits of the air
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