vintage bass, circa 1975

no particular logic
to its platypus get-up

electric bass
eel pie, vintage, worth more
with a pick-up missing
than a new blue Rickenbacker having known
Spaghetti-Lee's
magic hands

varnished, shellac-finished
stands
like a rake
leaning on my couch
as if in an alley,
poised to light a cigarette
to eye a skirt
to lay down the law
in thumping, stumping, junkety funk
stuck in the 70's
astral projecting toward a new home
in the third world of some future U.S.,
a mankind now mojoless
mocked by its rock and roll past
waiting to be saved
by the rhythm that permeates
its shocked soil