Your Blues (A Poem)

Your blues are coming from far off,
from the old towns, the country fields,
by backroads, too far back to find your way from,
dirt and dust in their wake, willed strong
with menace, with sickness, searching
a long time now for you, here
with your bourbon and your guitar, your soul
and your sins, lost,

while your blues are coming
from so far off, coming to be heard
from your beaten instrument, your sore fingers, your voice
ragged with your bitterness and your aches
running deeper than your bones and coming
from the Devil knows where,

your blues coming to relieve it all
from you, to preach it into the night, gospel of your heart,
to get you lost in it, confused in melody and emotion,
lost in the instinct of rhythm, in motion, your fingers
sliding along your biting strings to play
songs that can't be written, songs played in the dry heat

when your blues, from far off,
with their harsh and cool tones, come to be sung
with everything you've lost, whatever you have
left, whatever hope
had the nerve to stay.

--Matthew Stalbaum, 9/23/11
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I've always been obsessed with the Blues for some reason, I don't know why. But the necessary ingredients for this poem were: a break-up, and watching the TV show Treme. It started off with just the first line, this idea that the Blues, instead of being something we feel from time to time, are something that come for you. I'll probably put this poem through a couple more revisions, it can use some more physical descriptions to give it a harsher feel, but for now I'm pretty satisfied with it. I guess my Blues came.