I went four for five in my not so long goodbye
\nwith a frown turned upside-down into a smile at the end
\nnot on the soft velvety green of an upstate phairway
\nbut on the gritty asphalt of my world capital
\nin the canyon of heroes is where my music stopped.
\nMy run was bookended by skyscrapers
\nmetal carcasses of the past
\nmodern gleaming glass slabs of the present
\nbetween them a great north wood wrapped inside of traffic.
\nThe music was a quick flowing stream of sonic love
\nrushing at breakneck speed into oblivion:
\nthrough a rain slick evening with glowstick sized drops it buzzed,
\nthrough a humid night that stuck you to your seat if you dared use it it thumped,
\nthrough a dark star-filled sky full of haves and have-nots it grooved,
\nthrough a clear blue sky that poured down on the concrete stalagmites it jammed,
\nthrough it all swirled the magical sounds of overflowing joy,
\na wail of strings and keys and drums dancing with both structure and mayhem
\nand language fails to provide a better word than ‘smile’ which is a shame
\nfor we all were well beyond ‘smiles.’
\nEncore! Encore! Then handshakes and rueful smiles,
\na scattered goodbye made on a street corner and then nothing more,
\nexcept songs, pictures and memories to download to anyone
\nwho wants to hear and see what once was.
\nI merely blinked and ten years had passed by.
\nNeon strobbed all around as I thought back to the mountains,
\nabout the show I had seen two nights before,
\nabout the cold walk back to the car with no light to guide us.
\n“I am significant!” screamed the dust spec into the night air,
\n“This is significant!” bellowed the waves from the stage
\nbut an ancient kernel of truth, that this too shall pass,
\nkept haunting me, that it’s over,
\nthis note is over, this song is over, this whole scene is over,
\nthis whole era is over, is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
\nWhere do I go from here but home? And then what?
\nThose thoughts had disappeared when I heard the Broadway reprieve news
\nOne more time! A precious gift not to be squandered and it wasn’t
\na reprieve that ended with a fitting “…Reprise”
\nan up-beat ending that left you amped, not a down-beat ending that left you sad
\nbut after the fist pumping and clapping had ceased there was and is still sadness
\nit cannot be escaped, where there is loss, there is sadness.
\n“I hope we passed the audition” said the red one as he passed by the mic,
\nthe last time I would hear his voice with those others beside him,
\nand I looked up past the fifty stories of brick and glass and steel,
\nsaw the azure sky dotted with wisps of white and grinned.
\nWe both passed the audition and we will both move on
\nand this too shall pass, but I will never forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went four for five in my not so long goodbye with a frown turned upside-down into a smile at the end not on the soft velvety green of an upstate phairway but on the gritty asphalt of my world capital in the canyon of heroes is where my music stopped. My run was bookended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[431,482,497,642],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-music","tag-phish","tag-poetry","tag-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}