A bed, a turntable, and The White Album 

I felt brand new, ready to go, the day of the dare. 

Fall all over the air, all over me, I walked all the way 

rather than get on those three midwestern slow buses,

lugging my turntable, speaker, and The White Album. 

It took all day, escaping across the state line, escaping 

everything that had happened from day one to this one, 

so I savored it; in love with red leaves, fireplace air, and me. 

I really saw the landlord and she really saw me. 

I loved her red autumn sunset eye shadow, 

she said she loved my yellow Van Gogh haystack 

... wide wale ... corduroy pants. 

She looked astonished, but prouder of me than anybody   

I’d ever met, asked if I’d swum with those wales on 

all the way over the state line, had I really walked all the way? 

I said yes, she threw me the room key, I caught it, 

she knew I could, and I carried the turntable, 

the lone speaker, and The White Album all the way upstairs. 

I didn’t slit open my still in cellophane Beatles record 

before I opened my room—and I opened the door smiling, 

smelling multiple decades of sex and cigarettes 

which made me feel young, ready to go, life starting!

Night fell, rippling like a blue blanket of sparks snap

electric through the old room and the new (here from the start) me,

so I plugged in the turntable too, and got a new shock 

of recognition: I’m a handsome new guy, on the loose!

No one had ever come close to saying that to me, 

but they’d never been nor be in this room, the Eiffel Tower 

(local country radio station tower) twinkling in the window

meaning Paris, 

The White Album about to play

meaning London, 

and me, only a couple of days thoroughly deflowered 

by a flowery Irish bartender, her flowers still on me. 

(Still no bath, me. I rolled our flowers on my used bed.)

Meaning I was alive. Next to no money but I could see 

everything coming at me out that window, and it came!

But first, I put on The White Album.