folk music, revised

the redheaded kid
in his banjo'ed rhymes
we met at the apocalypse
or maybe appomattox
one time or the other
brandishing our signs
free willie his bumper sticker read
but his courage was an intricate vessel
shaped by someone else's hands
on the spinning wheel of what he had
betrayed. he left me and the sands
outside of time for the crated
job of rhetorical memory.
all stories inhibit;;; at least
I think that's why
he juiced his last newton,
flailing in the monster world, the
shoggoth's motorcycle betrayal, riding
up and down the beach doing
some pretty disturbed numbers
(he was) rung on the wheel of self deceit
gary adkins, will adkins,
how are you now?
are you dead in the water?
are you lost, without memory?
I found that Madeline
L’Engle book the other day,
with your inscription:
friends forever artists
in America. I see you now,
a snow angel in my memory,
a foggy mountain breakdown
lisping through the Lady's
sacred rhyme, your arms and legs
akimbo, your great goofy smile
reminding me that funny is just
excess fun the catastrophe still pursuing
you around your vodka tonic the ghost
of your unborn child reading through
your manuscripts wondering when
it is their turn
never, I suppose