Janis Joplin was a tough
little Texas girl, you said
who busted her butt to be a star
but if there was ever any music it disappeared.
Maybe we never heard it anyway.

If there was ever any music
I lost it at the Eagle café
where lunch was Theresa Brewer
and my friend Jack Benny Cunningham's yellow boot
came down on the neck of a little Mexican
we'd called a wetback—
we could have killed him.

The week before, we'd killed a deer
trapped him in the headlights, bird-dogging
in my granddaddy's old Dodge. Then we were
on him with pocketknives, and the more he
struggled the more we cut, until
he stopped.

But I think Janis Joplin died of hype
and when the music disappeared behind
night-slapping windshields from Newark to Saigon
we didn't understand. All we ever wanted
was to get there.

Have you outstripped the rest?
Are you the President?

Out on the road
You've got nothing left to lose, born again
and amplified, faster than Richard Petty
drop-kicked through the goal posts of life.

[Published in New Texas 1998, 1999]