by Marc Meierkort

Had you stayed, would you not have gone insane
with the Airplane?  I listen to you play
through washboard fingers, jamming with the Grape
while the rest of them played Monterey Pop.
Say the whale was a cymbal down the drain—
you grabbed an oar and they put you away,
rolled up in buckles like an offbeat crepe.
Your mind lost less than two miles from the top.
Your eyes strain to sing. Your voice a dying
reminder of genius untouched by
numbers green from distance & phobia.
I need no bio to know who’s lying
around the mixing board, the psych ward. Why
would he skip.  Nothing beats euphoria.

Marc Meierkort is a life-long Chicago resident and currently teaches English and Film Studies at Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City, IL, where he has taught for the past 19 years. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (B.S.) and National-Louis University (M.A.T.) He currently lives in the western suburbs of Chicago.