BACKWASH BLUES, PARTS 1 & 2 [1964]

   by Dick Bakken

1

I’ve got those
Kansas City tenement,
T.B.,
blood on my shoes
blues.

In my yellowed room of turpentine,
Benzedrine, and Tokay wine—

I’ve got those
Gideon Bible, fly-specked,
bare bulb,
leaky faucet
blues.

I’m sprawled, chigger-pitted,
sinking in this brass-barred bed
that floats my bones and gin-soaked head—

I’ve got those
Kansas City tenement,
T.B.,
blood on my shoes
blues.


2

Way down, shack town,
love stabs riddle through my heart—
Ohh, lonesome New Orleans.

Street car, way down,
into licorice baby dew and grass—
this lonesome New Orleans.

Down Street, St. James
cobbles, swamped churchyards—
my man, my man is gone.