Al and Bob

One time Bob Dylan and Einstein were chillin
at some far out lakeside retreat.
No cell phones, no cable, just drinks on the table
and all kinds of good stuff to eat.

Bob said, "How you doin?" But Al he was chewin
and couldn't coordinate his tongue.
So he mumbled sumpin, while Bob's foot kept thumpin
the bass line from Forever Young.

"You're an icon", said Bob scrapin corn off his cob,
"How come? (Could you pass me that knife?)
Ya see what I'm sayin is would you explain
the thrust of your creative life?"

"Why you little snot, how much time have you got?"
Said the physicist pourin some wine.
"Where should I begin?" Then he flashed a big grin.
"Let's start with the nature of time."

"Wine and time? That don't even rhyme",
thought Dylan. "My God that's so lame.
But, hell, I've used worse, 'sides I'm outside the verse.
Better get back inside of the frame."

"...so the reference frame", Albert was say'n,
"renders duration wide rangin.
An hour can appear to you as a year,
for time it is a changin.

Time could be a jet plane and move too fast,
But speed affects what's when,
so that time passes slowly and fades away..."
Bob blinked, said "Say that again?"

"The name of the game is the reference frame.
If you fly near the speed of light,
the whole world", said the sage, "'d be rapidly agin'
by the end of your round trip flight."

Said Bob "That's insane. You're fryin my brain.
That's wierder than writing a waltz.
Dint you have doubts how the theory'd come out?
And what if it proves to be false?"

"When I saw Newtonian gravity failed,
negativity didn't pull me through.
Ten years I sweated! But I knew I'd get it,
so don't tell me it isn't true.

But you do what you must, and I asked 'is it just
gravity which pulls us down?'"
"Maybe destiny's driving us apart", mumbled Bob,
tappin his foot on the ground.

"Yes! The ground may indeed be picking up speed,
pressing up on the souls of our feet.
Is it us falling down or a rising up ground?
No one knows!", replied Al, "Is that neat?

"Energy, matter, space and time
are separate - or so we were taught.
But all times and places – like all creeds and races-
are more of a piece than we thought."

Bob said, "Now that's cool. What they taught us at school
never touched me or set my soul free.
I needed to sing while strumming my strings
To make the light shine on me."

"I've written some verse, mediocre and worse",
said Al, "and I love playing strings.
But it's wondering all night about space-time and light
that's blowin' the wind to my wings.

Once the schools plunder your sense of wonder
you might's well be underground.
I see the Master's Hand in every grain of sand."
(And there's Dylan takin it all down.)

"The most incomprehensible thing
about the world to me,
is the fact that it makes any sense at all",
said Al, "take a theory..."

"Or a song.", said Bob, "When they're right and not wrong
they're pieces of what's Divine."
"Yeah, I agree. Hey, lay one on me",
said Al, "I'll keep it with mine."

Bob took out his harp and blew an F sharp,
strummed a D major riff to a rhyme.
Said Al, "That's so hot! Do you do that a lot?"
Said Dylan, "Most of the time."

Then right in the middle Al picked up his fiddle,
and laid in some licks with his bow.
They both came alive at verse number five
of Desolation Row.

They showed off their chops, pulled out all the stops.
"Havin you in my band would be sweet.
That is", Dylan said, "if you weren't dead
and didn't keep losing the beat."

Al loved the line! He poured some more wine
and they talked for a year (or an hour)
about war and greed and corruptible seed
and the glorification of power;

'bout how it was time to make war a crime,
and put all our guns in the ground,
how we'd better awake, cause the whole world's at stake,
how that long black cloud's comin down.

How our foot of pride kicked the world on its side,
that not much is really sacred or free,
and that they were too stubborn to ever be governed
by forced insanity.

"Sometimes you find in the depths of your mind",
said Bob, "what you couldn't in college.
Sometimes imagination makes you impatient
with that useless and pointless knowledge.

"Like the way those guys love to catagorize,
'Is it a tune or a poem?'"
"Is it space or time?", said Al, "You know I'm
for bringing it all back home."

"Man, breakin new ground, don't that get you down?",
said Bob, "They resent ya for tryin."
"But he not busy being born",
said Al, "is busy dyin."

"To live my life by what others are thinkin
can't be right", said Bob, "now could it?
Hey what was that line about born and dyin?
I love the way you put it."

Said Al, "Is it wrong that I've never belonged
to anyone with my whole being?
Sure, I've been rude, but I need solitude."
And Dylan seemed ta be agreein.

"When I'm writing a rhyme, I forget about time.
I tune out the world, like you.
Patterns just come. I don't know where from.
It's somethin I just gotta do."

"The most beautiful experience is the mysterious;
the fundamental feeling or emotion
that lies at the heart of all science and art
and of which we can form a faint notion.

"But it can cure the soul, it can make it whole,
the rest are details, just jive.
The most important function of science and art
is keeping that feeling alive."

A cool, gentle breeze blew a tune on the trees.
A good bit of time seemed to pass -
sun slowly sinkin, neither man drinkin,
just starin into his glass...

"One more cup of coffee for the road? Gotta go."
"Gotta keep on keepin on."
Wish I could stay, time's runnin away."
"I'm goin", I'm goin", "I'm gone."

They smiled, clinked cups, stretched, got up,
a country music station played soft.
They felt really tired - their brains were so wired.
They locked eyes, and then they took off.

Al and Bob

New Poems

From By Heart

Some Earlier Poems

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