Trickster Sings the Blues
Amorak Huey

If I did not exist you would have invented me:
this unlonely loner, walker, wanderer,
face you swear you’ve seen before.

Consider me—threat to women, men, decency
but in that good-natured way makes you feel better
about yourself. I bring magic in an old brown case:

music, mystery, a Sunday-go-to-meeting hat,
twelve bars & devotion. Meet me at the crossroads
& I’ll sell you a taste too true to be good. I see

inside your fears, your forevers, your sunsets—the heat
you think no one hears. I do not need to tell you
my name, it’s written in your eyes, mote & moat,

last defense against pretense. Sing with me.
You say you know better but what I offer
& what you crave cannot be wrenched apart.

The only trick in my bag is you think
you’re giving up something. I steal nothing
you didn’t invent in the first place. If you want

to know what gain I seek, forget the lyrics,
focus on the silence between the hard notes,
the empty, electric space between flesh. To find my angle

in this land of featureless planes & plains, this red dirt
crusted & dusted with scrub pines, follow the rivers:
water bleeds into water with a sound like freedom.

I do not exist but your stories
                                                       do not make sense without me.

Return to Archive