#Poetry - Crazy, Crazy Jesus by Gabriel Ricard - excerpt from LOVE AND QUARTERS

CRAZY, CRAZY JESUS
GABRIEL RICARD
FROM LOVE AND QUARTERS

A poem from LOVE AND QUARTERS

The drummer trying to give up heartless late nights
lives upstairs, and spends twelve hours a day
sweating out the compulsion to dream of inspiration.
 
He wears a big jacket in August,
and I don’t think
he’s ever going to tell me his name.
 
Some of the most secretive people in the world
actually commit to quiet. They have nothing to hide,
and they keep the orange juice and vodka
separate at all times.
 
Some people lord over weird hours by choice.
No special reason for keeping six lamps, fourteen grenades,
and four Bibles in the bedroom closet. Revolution is not coming soon.
Those things will probably be there long after they move out, pass on,
or kill those two birds with three similar-looking stones.
 
The drummer digs rock and roll,
but there isn’t a lot of call for that these days.
 
I’ve heard him play rockabilly,
and I’ve heard him try to compel strangers
passing by on the streets below to quit their jobs.
Quit, start digging shallow graves at wherever their glory days
turned to the concrete you can’t trust enough to walk on.
 
These nursery rhymes suggest better places to be.
 
I can’t stand to hear him play by himself.
It’s better when someone shows up to jam.
I prefer guitars that picked up the blues
in their old age fifty years ago.
 
I appreciate anyone who skips a pine box gathering,
especially if it’s someone close,
for the sake of squeezing in a couple more hours of practice.
 
Choirgirls and trashy theater geeks
have passed through his doorway in the same afternoon.
 
But I still like it when he brings in someone
to write songs, argue about that sacrilegious Alamo gig from 1989,
and shatter the light bulb on my ceiling
after the first punch is thrown.
 
It’s crisp, believable medicine. That’s how I see it.
I can go a whole hour without listening to my own music,
and I don’t take it to heart that my own madness
hasn’t been nearly as lucrative.
 
Hell,
I don’t even mind that his love life is as steady
as the suicide attempts over the one-story Italian ballet school
across the street.
 
I tried my luck with one his girlfriends once.
She thought I was kidding.
 
It’s cool.
Life is not a competition.
I don’t mind knowing where I stand.

​CODE: FREELOVE 

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