Note
Pete Barnhill was befriended by the late great Johnny Cash.Both were around 13 years of age at the time.Pete learned Johnny his very first chords on the guitar.The rest is history......
PETE BARNHILL - MY TRIBUTE
Pete Barnhill was born with a withered right hand.
All his life he fought a crippling disease.
His old Gibson flat-top, could play a mean tune.
Incessant infiltration of the breeze.
As a polio child, he was teased at school.
Mass of metal worn on his right leg.
But a friend was made, back in those school days.
And a lesson we should never forget.
Pete taught Johnny
in a shotgun-shack
a tub-thumping rhythm like a train on a track
among the cotton-fields
in the Dyess land
where the folk were poor
and the dirt was manned
A bedrock for bedlam down that old dust road.
Playing Jimmie Rodgers tunes and the songs of Hank Snow.
That railroad rhythm, came from Pete's goldmine.
Hear that embryonic baselines now, on Walk The Line.
Kindness is a language, that the deaf can hear.
Kindness is a Language, that the blind can see.
When a gift is gone then another comes along.
Lessons learned from Johnny for you and me.
Categories:
baselines, health, old, old,
Form: Rhyme
Drumming from the amps, bristling with snares and hooks,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Aide memoirs of the past, post-war resurrection, stubbornly,
Wreathed in wires of smoke and delineated by baselines,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In the imaginary glare, scrubland plains play host,
The homeland of bleached white sonic structures,
Aspiring to touch the scorched stonewashed sky,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Ravaging the cold corpses of pastoral dictators,
Burying them in gritty sand, interring with their
Emotional fascism for companionship on the final
Journey into the heartlands of the dead conquistador,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In that hopeless kill zone of love and promises,
That vain and empty body of soulless night,
That reflective insult of scorn and terrible beauty,
Replications of dreams laid bare, films on her iris,
Panoramas populated by citadels of waste,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”)
(“I see in your eyes…castles… in… Spain!”).
But what can I do?
Categories:
baselines, allegory, angst, death, history,
Form: Verse