Greensboro Train Station

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Kenny Dalton Sleeps with Angels

When I lived in Lemay I did a four year stint as a daytime Dad-Mom, and nighttime pizza delivery driver. At the pizza joint I got to know and became friends with Kenny, who was born and bred down there, and who was a natural born streetfighter in every sense of the word: a square peg anywhere, who sometimes would go to local watering holes for the express reason of getting in some hillbilly's face, and then kicking his ass "for practice". Aside from the fact that I think we both felt like outsiders, there was really not too much we had in common. Somehow he took a shine to me, and me to him. He loved my guitar playing and wasn't shy about letting me know about it, and I liked that, alot. We had a few lessons on my back porch with the dogs and some cigars, coffee and cigarettes. He was an enthusiastic student, and had stumbled upon a riff and wrote a song around it, and would proudly and unabashedly play it over and over for me, until I could muster up enough courage to ask him to stop. I sold him the modified Mexican Telecaster my friend Karen (drummer for my seldom seen or heard three-piece, Pye-Dog) had given me (that ended up not so soon after in a pawnshop, somewhere).





Kenny, was a junkie-- heroin, and "hillbilly" heroin, i.e., Oxycontin, Percocet, Demerol, &c. I was clean and had been, and did my best to steer him in the direction of some, twelve-step fellowship. I think he actually did come with me once, but just didn't much care for it. Kenny took to me the way tough guys sometimes take, I think, to those they like or admire in some way, and who they can see are maybe a little too vulnerable, a bit too defenseless. My friend Malcolm-- pal, bodyguard, running buddy, beer-buyer and songwriting partner (from my brilliant lost, fifteenth year) was like that to me, a big brother-type: wiser, hipper and thicker-skinned, my John Lennon (he had, the glasses), me being maybe, poor old, Peter Best. Malcolm died as I was finishing up my freshman year at WU. He asphysixiated somehow, as he was taking hits off a whipped cream cannister, at the Swenson's Ice Cream Factory there in Chapel Hill, where he had been employed.





Somehow, I found myself back down there in Lemay, the other evening. I don't like going back down there. The bus ride is long, and there's plenty of time to get a little to familiar and cozy, with emotional memories that are still a bit too achingly unpleasant. But I did feel I was making that trip, for a reason, some reason. I thought it was maybe this other reason (one that I almost certainly wanted and coveted too, much). But, it turned out differently, and there it was, what it was, and just-so.





Headed home from an introductory lecture on a brand of enlightenment I was unable to afford, I found a bustop with a bench, and saw that I had 40 minutes of unscheduled time ahead of me. I sat there, on that bench at half-past nine on a Friday evening, in what I had always felt was hopelessly hostile territory: the swampy hoosier hell known as, Lemay. Me, the maybe odd, and vaguely queer looking guy, who'd been brought up southern in the quaint, bucolic and mostly kind Chapel Hill, NC, home of the Tarheels, and the Dean Dome, and where the sky is always a perfect Carolina Blue.





I looked up after a bit, and noticed across a dimly lit Lemay Ferry Road, right left of the Family Dollar, a backlit plastic sign: PIZZA & MORE. I had driven for Lemay Pizza & More, but the place had burned years ago, and I had figured that they were just no more. I had to walk twenty-five feet maybe, before I could make out the painted and unlit heading, LEMAY. I had about twenty-five minutes till the next Grand-bound bus was due.





I went in, but didn't recognize anyone. Speaking with a driver at the counter, I realized there was a Zack, now managing, who was still there, and had been there then, when I was. Busy, I sat and he came out after a few minutes.





Kenny had told me more than once that he had been declared 'dead', three times, off an O.D. He knew what was in store for him. I think the song he had played so eagerly for me, had lyrics, along the lines of, worms or maggots, and how it is, at the end-- with a body, with what's left of us. Zack let me know that Kenny Dalton, Lemay Streetfighter, my friend, had indeed passed from this life sometime last September. I know that Kenny expected the worse, or mostly just nothing, when he took his final rest. I'm just glad that Kenny's path and mine crossed, and that I was able to recognize him as a generous and profound teacher, and as a beautiful soul wrapped in a knot of ugly circumstances.





Rest in Peace Kenny D


Thank You

Someone's Looking Out For Me.lyric

Late at night when the moon comes out
You can hear the old folks twist and shout
I sit here thinking, with my chamomile tea
Waxing sentimental over Sioux & the Banshees

That summer, back in the eighties
I hung out at the Mudd Club with those guys the dB’s
Now ‘How Did I Get Here’ runs through my head
I ain’t fast or young, but I still, ain’t dead

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad, is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

Debbie Harry is now non-blonde
Elvis, not as angry, but still a bit weird
The Talking Heads have all gone gray
Just when in hell did I grow this beard?

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

It’s all the same,
The rain still falls, like rain
You get wet, so do I
Sooner or later, we all get dry

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

True Blue.lyric

You were the girl in the corner
You were a sight for sore eyes
I gave my heart, now I’m at the door,
For the last of our long good-byes

So many ways I tried and tried
To rekindle a light long-gone
But your heart was closed, and your mind made up
Now all I got is this sad song

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a night or two
But now that you say, that you don’t want me
My heart’s free to beat, True Blue

Sometimes, when I’m alone at night
I hear Sam sing, As Time Goes By
I’d like to think that I’m over you
But darlin’ I still cry.

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a month or two
But now that you say, that you don’t want me
My heart’s free to beat, True Blue

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a year or two
Now that you say that you don't want me
My heart's free to beat, True Blue

The Play

The scene where I dress myself,
Becoming before you
A dream for amateur
Analysis, as I insist I ask
Not your rank conclusion: it’s

Dust, air, innocence, enmity, a
Play spent in limbo on
An outcropping of lot, vacant
And teeming too, with
The growth of a truth

Too small to notice, but then,
It is huge if you speak
The language, it is mammoth
And planetary and dancing
Like this galaxy, beyond any

Gathering of fact. Isn’t this
Your truth, too? And haven’t
I tried, to unwind you with a glance,
To pretend and prefigure you,
As an inadequate actor, playing nude

On a stage made dangerous
In China, in plastic sandals, hurling
Foible after foible at a bland
Audience, who are tickled-- and not just,
By their ticket stubs: sugary-sweet, and not a bad, snack.

Please God.lyric.2005

The sky’s on fire, the water is deep
There’s fear in the heart of the soldier’s sleep
From a thread we hang over a lonely abyss
Praying for manna and the home we miss—
I’m planting sacred seeds in worldly sod, Please God—

The night’s recesses claim many too soon
And many are lost before the Harvest Moon
Many are born into sin and lust
Hand on the handle of a broom to dust--
I’m from the school of Hard Knocks, magna cum laud, Please God—

The chill in the air proves Autumn true
And Winter will heal you, should you make it through
The ice and snow, which dry your skin
Prepare the warmth, and the chance to begin—
And though the play is absurd, I’m bound to applaud, Please God—

Bats in the belfry, hound in the yard
The Fall is free, but the ground is hard
The tongues we speak, just blur our vision
And prohibit the will to catechism—
I love my brothers, Winken, Blinken and Nod, Please God—

I want to spare this child,
And spoil, the rod—
Please God

Prayer, Wednesday

In and out
Of what it is I ask for,
I make this promise:
To allow the season
Its bounty.

Because I can only want
What is perfectly offered
And grace does not suffer
Profane argument.

Because the earth
Called me here, because
The air has offered its worth,
Because home
Called me home, and because
I took notice.

But it is true,
That I need my wanting-you
Because my wanting-you
Is the ticket I claim
And also, the one that names
The notes, of the homesong.
It is there, where the gentle arms
Of the hearth
Embrace my stained cloak
And dust me whole, into
The loving un-done.

Where I will courteously
Take that, that
Which is given, in
Pure truth, and of an unearned
Love, a love,
Now, I learnTo answer to.