Four Old Poems and Music

2. Purple Haze - 1967

[Ipswich, Suffolk]

Muddy Water licks,
the blues turned
purple as sound was fed back
again and again then
held until its release
railed against the walls:

electric insolence
in teenage bedrooms
and later in those
stranger places where
the music helped to spin
ceilings and floors.

Jimi's words were like whispers
when he attacked the notes
saying this was
living - said this in
feedback like an airplane,
machine gun and
Monterey fire rising it its
unexpected pyre,

and in a twelve-string, twelve-bar
acoustic dreamland
he drew along any neck,
singing his poet's croon
to illustrate the movements
in his own spinning head.

In the poetry of soft sounds
he sang language into vowels
of colour and shape,
other worlds to travel to
on turntable space
riding right into the
inner groove,

and it was later when deconstructing
the Star Spangled Banner
he sculptured Vietnam in a scream,
painted America in the wildness
of Woodstock's dream
and a generation's believing
that never died

until a tornado sang
out of control
  and a haze fell
  castles crumbled
  six remained six
  watchtowers dimmed
and the wind just cried.