As of tonight, he’s sprung.
We meet him roused from his lone photograph,
peering out on a world long since dead to Dockery’s
hardwood stomps and Specials, too—
blemishes
like bruised peaches under each eye,
lips asserting the stout, mid-taunt gaze of the Delta dandy.
No doubting he is that hardboiled and wiry sonofabitch,
said to be part Injun and winnowed by the seamier affections
of men, and why not.
Not one voice like that voice rising,
now whumping low in the register,
demystified,
the storied routs of Tom Rushen and Halloway
mixing stakes with our nubile daughters’ trembling
knees.
We need well this poet and harpy: one like to blow
the roof off God’s house just to tickle a whim of whiskey
and coke;
the other firm and quick in the squabbles of fools,
railing against the scheming likes of all the world’s
Mr. Days.
We need him like the god needs the demon,
so the augurs of all that good and bad Charley
remain an imbalance eternally tipping one
truth to the next, one song to the other,
heel to ghostly heel.
Swing low, wind, and back him.
Pete Simonelli writes:
“Patton,” refers to the old Bluesman, Charley Patton. It was written as a response to his song, “Tom Rushen Blues.”
I’ve always loved the song, but I wanted to express some of the legend that surrounds Patton the man as well.
The references to “Mr. Day” and “Halloway” (along with Tom Rushen) are intended to shed some light on the nature of the song (jail, oppression, and graft) as well as on Patton’s own interpretation of the story. I believe he was a poet, a fool (in the best sense of the word), a rabble-rouser and a gifted performer and singer.
