No Expectations

Can a song be so sad it becomes beautiful? A record listened to with such incessance Its needle scratches and wobbles Becomes desperate new notes for the melody? The song unrecognizable to the listener Without its own personalized warp From a thousand roundabout journeys? Try Hurrah For The Riff Raff’s Good Time Blues (An Outlaw’s Lament) Or their Ogallala Try on Steve Earle’s Last Words Or St. Vincent’s Smoking Section All these songs make me turn my head And cry When I’m around others Otherwise if I’m all alone I stare ahead in stoned silence No Expectations is another Mick and Keith say that day in the studio Was the last time They ever saw blurry-eyed original Brian Jones Alive Bent over his guitar with his steel finger slide Finding and gliding his long long regrets Up and down his bent strings As the boy watched his peace of mind packed up For the last time Adding his own final warped words From a piece of steel to carved hollow wood His swan song for the Stones That Keith and Mick thought they wrote Made his own Immortal And beautiful.