WITH WILL THERE WAS ALWAYS A WAY

To the distinguished memory of Will Thornbury
With pith-helmet of integrity secure on your
futured skull, you were committed to guarding the
jungles of music in the circular breathing bop of
your tethered spirit: not so surprising, really, with
you being a veritable docent carrying provisions
for the Jazzamatazz wailing inside American radio
after midnight alternative annotation of modern
sounds. Your illuminated will-full courage
continued in contemporary jumps over a gone
mad canyon of loveless commercial trash, trying,
always to rescue kidnapped vocalist valentines
and crashing your helicoptering heart held
without ransom. You were ready broadcaster
of the right brain hemisphere, made movies for
our ears, demanded dreamscapes around
vintage slate-boards of cinematic renewal. You
never stood rigid vigil before any stations of the
Cross, but, somehow, you Easter in us who
resurrect the body of poetry following every
disgraceful crucifixion of it. Yet, you were
sculptor to good wood and we named it
“Will’s Wonder Workings” as we worked to affix
a strip to a broken lip: and your daughter’s gift
to us is soon mended. The Western sunset of
your beloved baseball, as it has become another
corporate money-splattered myth, is only one
of the reasons we miss you more and more each
dying day. So, it is our sorrow we exhale into
the ignorant air of Southern California. Now,
with you gone, your soldier poet pals thrash
around in their foxholes upon blear battlefields
of delusion firing papier mache bullets,
confounding the enemies of the creative
imagination and, now, your disappearance into
eternal Storyville heaven continues to signify
that those martyrs of the media may neither be
truly sanctioned nor saved. The only burning
solace for us is to say: however, wherever you
reside, is identified, we know you are, now,
and forever in a company of angels.
Long Beach (1999)