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This started out as a song, but I don't sing much anymore, so I converted it to a poem. Gotta pull that guitar out.
How She Got the Blues
I saw a picture of her a year ago,
my one time brown-eyed girl.
She looked like she’d hit the pavement,
I guess like the rest of the nation.
I’d taught her to play guitar;
We’d made out in the back of her car.
She was the world’s best kisser
but she’d never be a rock-and-roll star.
One night, in my sleep, she walked out on me.
She’d done that to other guys, my buddy told me.
Maybe she had some secrets inside;
maybe she feared someone would make her a bride.
Well, she stopped by at work to see me today.
There wasn’t a single word I wanted to say.
But she wouldn't let me leave it in silence that way.
She had a story to tell; she had some things to explain.
She knew this wouldn’t erase it all in my eyes,
but her dad had left her when she was three –
and me and that score of other guys...
well, she’d at least wanted to apologize.
She’d met a man right after she left.
This guy bought the copyright to her heart
Then he left her one day on a drunken spree;
her world was shattered, it all came apart.
It triggered all of her deep-set fears.
She fell into depression for one grueling year.
Then one day she realized –
this is what she’d done to me and those other guys.
She felt a hard sadness; could she even come to terms?
Tears of hot remorse fell from her eyes.
- She resolved to visit all the men she had hurt -
and in that depth of feeling, her depression died.
Then she picked up her guitar from the living room corner,
took it in her hands, remembered what I’d taught her.
A sultry sound emerged, filling the room,
a beautiful gift from pain’s harsh womb.
So she said she’d come to thank me, for all I’d meant to her,
and she wished me well, she really did, but now she had to go.
But first here was a gift, if I wanted it –
two tickets to her blues band’s debut show.
Marc Mannheimer
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