Mike's Room

Mike’s Room

Two months wasted at college brought
my brother back to work long hours
in the Fish Shack, filleting, dicing,
however you please. He covered the wood

paneling of the converted garage
with posters of the Guess Who, Mountain,
shelves lined with boxes of 8-tracks,
stacks of albums, piles of cassettes
threatening to topple. A wonderland

of baseball cards and 70s comic books.
He lay in his giant bed, listening to:
The Who: Live at Leeds
Cream: Live Volume 2
Jethro Tull: Original Masters
and dreamed of being a drummer, touring
Monterey, the Isle of Wight.

On long drives he quizzed me on FM music
until I learned Page and Blackmore,
Kay from Burdon.
“Listen,” he’d say, shushing me for a solo
and then dissecting it afterwards.
He devoured

Destroyer serials, quoted Mark Twain and Mel
Brooks, action movies and Shakespeare.
“Remember” he’d say: “No matter where you go,
there you are.”


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Carcinogenic Poetry