Welcome back to Member Monday.  It’s a pleasure to feature a poem by poet, storyteller and children’s author, Linda Boyden.  You can purchase a hardback copy of Linda’s newest picture book Boy and Poi Poi Puppy at All About Books.  Welcome, Linda!

Dylan Retrospective
By Linda Boyden ©2014

What happened to the wild poets
the crazy word makers?
Red
White
Black

            Brown
Hell, get drunk enough and everyone’s Irish,
30 pints of Guinness reveals the truth.

Where are the crazy poets?
We were the wanderers,
the word listeners,
the rat-ta-tat-tat beat
filling our brains
guitars trilling
to Smoky Mountain blessings
thoughts blurred as snow fields.

We passed the bread basket,
played jug band music,
hoped to eat,
sometimes didn’t.
So we wrote
we hoped
we lived to write.
We sucked up coffee,
and often just sucked;
used hunger as the fuel

to wind up unforgettable.
Immorality is one letter shy of immortality, a few cigarettes

and beers from the gutter.
Stolen lyrics, forgotten lines,
who cared, who remembers?
We got our words out.
We got our worlds out.

Now who will catch the torch?
Who cares where the hungry poets spend the night?
Who knows how to feed one?
Do we? Does anyone?
When are you going to howl, America?
Or are you star-spangled to death,
a no-child-left-behind-single-file-parade
to acres of beige houses with white trim?

When will you howl, America?
Where are your crazy poets?

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