Sei mir gut.
Some sounds stay with you
But you don’t know they’re there.
Then one day you follow
A tour of RCA Studio B
And there’s Elvis, in an old photo.
The gabbling guide points out
His modest shirt and collar
And asks us why? Can we guess?
And some guy says “Was he in the military?”
And wins a pick. I knew it, yes,
But that “muss i denn” look, that ribbon tie,
That sublated post-war functionary
Disposition, had already started
The sundering sound of splintering shellac
Ringing in my memory’s ears
The plastic’s brittle crack
And my mother’s echoing tears.
Ten years and “zum Städtele hinaus” was my journey
To break the bond of music and fear.
Sinatra had crooned the soundtrack
To scattering pots, the thud
Of body against jamb
Or muffled screams as hauled by the hair-roots
She tried for her pain not to wake us.
Other rhythms took me out of that, but yet,
With no-one left to remember now,
The same blissful pharmakon brought it back
As I stood in the King’s sweet spot
Beside Kramer’s Steinway, and the holed door
Made by his own angry heel.
Later, looking out over the Nashville skyline
Sipping the Nashville sunset
Wondering why, gross and bloated
He threw it all away, and why
One song could curate a corporal’s hate
Toward the heart of the hearers,
I slid my bottled soul into its applewood case
Already drunk enough on the salty sadness of it all.
Sei mir gut. Muss i denn…
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Stephen A. Linstead DLitt FAcSS Chartered FCIPD
Emeritus Professor of Management Humanities
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