night after night in all those arenas
we hippies understood
only three songs where it happened
RED HOUSE, VOODOO CHILD
and HEAR MY TRAIN A'COMING

you see, THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER
was pop sculpture
1983 (a MERMAN) multi-track symphony
FOXY LADY and PURPLE HAZE *** and drugs
HEY JOE and ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
nifty covers

but it was only in those three fluid blues jams
launched by deep bass and lurching drums
standing on albert king's shoulders
that acid and sonics unlocked the rigid gates of reality
the landscape melting in a psychedelic instant
the trip coming on inexorably
then at warp speed
fillmores became colosseums
roofs shrugged off, slicing treetops
delivering us to a battlefield no one had known existed
a war without violence but with neural flashing conflict
and fantastic consequences

twirling his guitar like a magic lasso out out out
making contact with patrols buzzing through the galaxy
he grabbed the slurping wah and whammy,
wrestling them
into enormous axes, chained maces and
networked nuclear swords
jimi riding elephants and african curtains past the clouds
rushing through different dimensions, pinballing
across the stars
carrying us longhairs with him, jimi
the grooviest warrior
castles disintegrating as he stepped through them

the lyrics were peripheral
singing about longing in HEAR MY TRAIN
****** swagger in RED HOUSE
confronting the issues more directly
in VOODOO CHILD
laughing about his colossal strength
his ridiculous psychic power blasting open
every wretched door
jimi so brave and bold and debonair
charging past speed limits, not with scales and chords
but with lightning bolts, blue notes and a carpet
of feedback
which he captured and twisted into climaxes
galloping across a cosmos of souls, way past calculation
spilling emotion, blues and riffs over the earth
in a scramble
to overcome the forces against us
we could even SEE the armies as jimi confronted them
all alone but with our ears as eyes upon him

and all the seas that jimi hendrix swam through
here on earth
the hydraulic groupies, carnivorous managers
drugs and rock star glamour
NOTHNG next to those cosmic dogfights

and when he was finished, when the battle was over
and the song ended in victory for everyone
and the tendrils returned to the soil
and we all had our final ******
and he tuned up for the next number
the entire firmament revolved once
and applauded itself