The Man With A Microphone Or A Song For Jack Poem by D. Harris

It’s been said
that any man
with a microphone
can tell you
what he loves
the most.

He’s got Spanish guitar distortion
and a haze of cymbals
that create a wall of sound
begging to be broken through -
broken through so that his purpose
(hidden in the words he screams)
can be discovered by the men
in blue business suits.

And if he were here
I bet he’d sit in a chair,
smoking a cigarette,
bleeding smoke
into the fresh air,
contemplating the contradiction
of white stripes on blue jean music
and sharing his tongue with the room.
But keeping his fingers to himself,
and never sharing his ears (those are personal) .

Shadows of ghosts of the past look at him
and mutter to each other:
‘I remember him.
He lived next door, ’
and they smile as they secretly know
he’s the only one who remembers.

Jack screams like a bum with a gun
and shows us what he means;
how he doesn’t need a microphone.

He rides his white horse to market
and paints it black,
waving his dripping paintbrush as he enters the ring
and shouting to the crowd that covers the Earth
((like so many butterflies)
(covering a field of white orchids))
accusing them of their existence
and reigning spittle on them,
spilling the tears of angels
to turn white orchids blue.