All Along the Watchtower
“Listen, man, I’m telling you. He ain’t talkin’ about no animal. The wild cat is Ginsberg,” Duncan proclaimed.
“You’re nuts. Whattaya mean?”
“Wild CAT. Doncha get it? A wild cat. Ginsberg’s a wild cat, man. Listen close, here— listen—two writers, writers, not riders, were approaching,…”and the wind began to HOWL…” Just like the Ginsberg’s poem, man. HOWL.”
“I don’t know, man. That’s seems way out there.”
“You’re listening, Dobro, but you’re not hearing. It’s like a secret message, see. You have to be tuned in. It’s like life. Everything ain’t what it appears to be. You can’t just look at the surface. You got to dig deeper and see what lies underneath. You got to look to see what things really are.”
“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t know. You always got these wild ideas. Sometimes they just make my head spin. I think it’s just the weed talking, man. This is some good shit.”
Dobro takes a long pull from the roach clamped between the clip on the end of a little handle, sucking in the smoke, filling his entire lung capacity. He holds his breath until he feels he might burst into bloom then exhales forcefully.
“Other times, it’s like some kind of divine truth, some kind of holy, goddamned transmission from the Cosmic Dog God. I think if you farted, light would come right out of your ass. You make my teeth hurt with all this crazy talk.”
“It’s no tricks involved. It’s right there in front of you. All you gotta do is open your ears and mind and really hear. You gotta SEE with your EARS, man. I mean really HEAR, so you can SEE. We are deaf and blind men standing on the brink of an abyss. If you step off, you will grow wings and fly.”
Dobro handed the joint to Duncan. Duncan took a long pull and handed it back. He put the arm of the record player on the revolving vinyl and said through clenched teeth, “LISTEN.”
Alan C. Reese is the author of the chapbook Reports from Shadowland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smartish Pace, Gargoyle, The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Delaware Review, Welter, Grub Street, Attic, Bicycle Review, Danse Macabre, and the Loch Raven Review. He teaches writing at Towson University.