Solo by Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess
Part One:
Hollywood
There’s this dream
I’ve been having about my mother that scares
the holy night out of me,
and each time I wake from it
I’m afraid to open my eyes
and face
the world that awaits, the fractured world that used to make sense, but now seems disjointed—islands of possibility that float by—like a thousand puzzle pieces that just don’t fit together anymore.
So I think
of Chapel
and grab hold of the only other thing that matters.
My guitar.
Strings
Mom used to play this game
on the tour bus to help us
go to sleep:
Who’s the best?
We’d go through every instrument: piano, drums, horns.
Our favorite was guitar.
My sister, Storm, always said Eddie Van Halen was her favorite, probably ’cause he once made her pancakes
at 4 am
in a Marriott kitchen.
Ask Rutherford and he’d say,
I’m the best in the world, I’m outta this world.
Electric soul brother interstellar man, which is ironic because he was trying to quote
Lenny Kravitz, who Mom would say
was in her top three along with Jimi Hendrix and me,
just to piss him off.
Chapel
is the great song in my life.
The sweet arpeggio in my solo.
Her lines bring color and verve to my otherwise crazy life.
Without her
I’d be a one-man band, with a played-out sound and no audience.
The magic
we compose
is endless,
immortal.
We could play together
for centuries.
If I’m lucky.
And I love
the music
our bodies
make
when we’re dancing.
But there is one thing about my girlfriend I don’t understand.
She says
she doesn’t believe in sex
before marriage, but she never wants to get married.
When I ask her, Where is this all going, then?
she likes to get real close, eyelash close, and say things like Let’s live in the moment, babe or we don’t need labels, and then
she kisses me like we own the world and nothing else matters.
It’s funny how going nowhere feels like it’s going someplace fast.
Texts from Chapel
7:37 pm
On your way stop by Best Buy pls. Headphones broke.
Red or purple. K?
7:47 pm
They finally left. I hate hiding. Wish my dad wasn’t so CRAY. He 7:48 pm
thinks all the things the tabloids say
about your family 7:48 pm
are true. He doesn’t know you’re different, Blade.
He says
7:48 pm
you’re going to
drag me into sex
and drugs.
7:49 pm
Hurry up and get here.
They’re at Bible study ’til 10 . . .
Leaving in ten minutes
Sorry. Working on a song.
Beats or Bose?
And tell the Reverend I
only did drugs once.
The Show
My father,
Rutherford Morrison, can’t stand
to be away
from the stage.
He has always craved the spotlight, needs it
like a drug, posing, posturing, profiling before millions— an electric prophet, or so he thinks, capturing concert worshipers in the vapors of his breath, as if his voice was preparing them for rapture.
My sister and I have always lived under the stage, beside it,
behind it.
The After-Party
There was always another party.
More loud music.
More loud groupies.
Booze
and still more groupies.
I was nine.
He grabbed me and held
a sizzling cig in front
of my face.
Only it wasn’t a cig.
He blew smoke circles around me and laughed.
My boy.
The band uncles got in on the joke too, and I stuck my tongue in a shot glass full of whiskey, soaked it up like a dirty sponge.
I loved making them laugh.
The whiskey hurt my throat and stung my eyes.
But the laughs were epic.
Before I knew it I was taking my finger and dragging it across powdered sugar that looked like ant snow trails on the table.
Rutherford was too busy kissing his ego to notice.
I tasted it once, twice, and
a few more times, trying to find that sugar sweet.
But, it wasn’t sweet.
It was salty bitter
and it coated my mouth
in numbness.
I woke up
in the ICU
frightened
and embarrassed by my father, who sat by
my bedside
crying
in handcuffs.
Hollywood Report
Rutherford Morrison has kept rock alive for twenty-five years.
His band, The Great Whatever, is credited with introducing a new flavor of Hard Rock to America with the release of their triple-platinum album, The History of Headaches. Even after an acrimonious band breakup,
Morrison continued to have an illustrious solo career, selling thirty million albums worldwide.
His music has lasted the test of time . . . until now.
Eight years ago, he was arrested for reckless endangerment of his child, and he hasn’t released an album since.
Most recently he’s managed three DUIs, and a drug overdose
that almost sent him to a rock-star reunion with Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
Rutherford may not have much time left before he falls flat on 12:00. Midnight can be so cruel.
Who doesn’t feel sorry for his kids, left answering the hard questions, like How does it feel
to be the daughter
to be the son
of a fallen rock star?
Who Am I?
I am
the wretched son of a poor rich man.
I do not hate my life.
I am not like Sebastian Carter, who found his father kissing his girlfriend and now hates his life.
My life is, hmmm, inconvenient.
But
if it weren’t for Chapel . . .
Are You Sure They Aren’t Coming Home?
Chapel and I are about to take flight, two souls on fire burning through sacred mounds of fresh desire.
Our lips are in the process of becoming
one
in her hammock, like two blue jays nesting.
Feeding each other kisses of wonder.
I’m sure, she answers.
Hands of curiosity.
What are you doing?
Kissing you.
Slow down, Blade.
Why?
Woo me.
Woo you?
A song.
Come on, babe, we don’t have time for that.
But we have time for this? she says, puckering her lips, and hypnotizing me with eyes blue
as the deep blue sea.
Those Eyes Will Be the Death of Me
My gravestone will read: Here lies a young man who died inside the gaze of a woman.
I watch the river in her eyes gallop forth fall into them dive into them.
She smiles.
Those eyes.
I can’t escape the depth of them.
The song has ended, but the melody still rings from her mouth.
I can’t hear a word.
I’m lost
in these two comets that move across my universe.
I remember
the first time she looked at me like this.
Two years ago
before he hit
an all-time low, Rutherford threw one of his
Hollywood Rocker House Parties which became Storm’s pool party
SLASH sweet sixteen SLASH get-all-the-kids-at-our-school-drunk-so-they-could-listen-to-Storm’s-mixtape-and-think-it-is-hot party.
While they dove deep in shallowness, I found a quiet corner, a vintage Rutherford Morrison guitar took it off the wall and started playing American Woman and any tune
with a hard groove to soften
the dull.
Minutes
or an hour