The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.
My mother’s dress bears the stains of her life:blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk;She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow;Its brilliance nearly blinds me.
The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar’s strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics.
The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations.
A real musician ain’t gonna choose his own guitar like an evil master choosing his slave. The guitar will choose his master and when he does, you’ll know it.
The place cast a spell on me, a lovely spell that seduced me one one breath at a time.
These babies ain’t just guitars; these babies are living, breathing instruments.
There’s secrets hiding inside this six-string just waitin’ for somebody to find ‘em and turn ‘em into music.
As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.
A song rises up from the belly of my pastand rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.
Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.
I could go to a dozen houses, scrape away the dirt, and find his footprints, but my own prints evaporated before I ever looked back.
There are parents who use their small children as weapons. They are weak people. Sick people. And their children are watching them, watching how Mom and Dad use them as weapons.
As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they’ve ever known.
I’m not made for city streets. My brogans drop soil from the field behind me, each grain of dirt like a seed revealing who I am. My heart belongs in the country. I’m a farmer, and I was shaped in the fields.
With red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.
If he could do one thing, he could run. He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back.
Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord.
He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I’ve been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.