VOID WHERE PROHIBITED

This is a frustrating type of song
said Hendrix about “Manic Depression”
while counting blown amp tubes in concert,

About a cat wishing he could make love
to his music instead of the same old
everyday woman. But single you will

dream that daily woman, any fat chance
of a trip to the ladies’ room, place
we start and seek all ends. Not surfaces

but hollows, treasury without treasure.
Absence of content and malice. Lovely,
she leaps your sleepless fences while you mime

a chewy advance into her infrastructure:
ball-bearing hips and braced ankled earrings,
vierendeels against the steamed breeze blowing

to the nth power, where n is a man
sitting at the huge drum set of his ego.
Splashy cymbals smell desire gleaming.

You are in the pink when you are in
the pink. Calendars and magazines,
bloomers under swingy pleated skirts

in Cowboy blue, the space configured
for your type but not for you. Abyss
of content and malice, what law refuses

you access? Instead: monthly dose of lad
rag perfection. A little rage builds up
sure. The violin concerto swooning

at the local pub swoons for you, baby.
Any advice Mr. Guy? In polka-dot shirt
and overalls, Buddy kicks his wah-wah

with a grimace and explodes into the bitch
riff he’s been sitting on all night amid
scraping Stratocasters. You haven’t had pussy

since it had you! Street corner putdowns
Dewey-decimaled in every corner of your personal
library. Her lipstick laughs a hollow O.

Abscess of content and chalice of bile.
The snow turns bad before it even touches
your head. Virgin slush. Greased metal

rods of rebar in the poured concrete whine
to sour chords. Echoing with rust above
you, the empty stadium of all your wanting.