Notes toward a History of the Blues
by Amorak Huey1.
The blues has a shape,
the S and roll of rivers:
the mud of stormwater.
2.
According to legend,
the blues jumped over moon,
ran away with dish,
fist-fought cow in gravel parking lot.
3.
The blues knows
all your dance moves.
Also your secrets, if you have any left.
4.
Do not fall in love with the blues.
We will not warn you again.
5.
Three chords over twelve bars,
harmonic seventh,
flattened third,
fifth of gin.
6.
The blues was born in a hurricane
on a train
after a tornado
chased by a hellhound.
7.
The blues knows it has been too long
since someone kissed you and meant it.
8.
The blues will fuck you
and mean it.
9.
The blues, as in “the blue devils,”
as in melancholy –
but this is an oversimplification.
10.
The people who thought they discovered the blues
have no idea. Some of us
have always known – some of us never will.
This is the way of the delta.
11.
The blues saw you coming a mile away,
lugging your ridiculous recording device
across fields of dirty cotton,
skirt hiked up, feet bare.
12.
When you fall in love with the blues.
14.
The blues is superstitious.
15.
The blues has a word for people like you.
Come close, let it whisper the word
in your ear. Its breath is warm
and smells sweetly of whiskey.
16.
You can trust the blues, to a point.
17.
The harmonica is pure.
The guitar is pure.
The piano is defiled, tainted –
the piano will steal your girl and laugh about it.
18.
The blues are singular.
The blues is plural.
19.
The blues does not believe in heaven.
Or in hell. The blues believes
only in what it can taste.
20.
The blues will not weep when you leave.
The blues knows you will never leave.
The blues knows you are already gone.
