How to Be Young Forever

 Here he is..  attacking it, his eyes lost, glowing half-desperate / half-euphoric, chasing the center of the room's voice, flowing..   channeling the ferocity and the affection that I can see moving through his body, in waves. 
 The hands grasping the neck, and the slide trembling against the strings..  
the guitar quivers,
the banjo bends into shiny-splinters,
 the echoes of the drums turn into honey and drip from the corners of the ceiling. 
The music is not being played..  the music is playing itself.    
It is not being recited...   it is happening out of its own free will.   
Very. much. alive.     
This isn't a song  - and everyone else knows it..   everyone else feels it too.   
Entranced, eyes glowing too..  half-desperate / half-euphoric.. 
at the edge of our chair,
 listening and yet also longing and quietly shivering with joy.  
Its like making cornbread out of intimacy.   And eating it.    
Its like sculpting a statue out of breathing. 
We had it backwards..  the music is conjuring us, 
not the other way around.
Everyone leans forward...  hearing themselves in the mess and the perfection,
and the room fills with the conversation of instruments,
describing with detail the greatness of each of us..
and we rock ourselves gently, because of the sensation
of being spoken to with
ferocious kindness. 


To sabotage the soul is to say:
this is what IT IS, 
and never agreeing to more than our name,
to say that we are [only] the makers of things.. 
instead of also being made by them.
I sit, and feel this somewhere inside of me that you cannot see with your eyes. 
I feel tonight that I do not know myself truly,
that I am larger and more elegant that I have imagined. 






Andrew Tipton