While I Weep, Your Guitar Gently Plays

Desire for the Earth

Your name means "valiant fighter".

Beloved,
I wrote this poem about you, months ago, before I went looking for the song below. I had sent you a different version from this one, during a conversation about guitar solos. 

The Light From Outside

Wherever you are, now

you’re not my brother anymore.

You’re someone else.

I don’t know how I felt the change.

You’re someone who exists as

Desire for the Earth.

You want things to happen here

for the people you love,

and yet, you don’t want to be here anymore,

not part of it, in the same way as you were, before.

You are quite relieved, I feel. So deeply and thoroughly relieved.

There aren’t any seas as deep as the relief you feel.

One day, I listened to your music for quite a while,

for longer than seemed wise.

I used my hands to feel the solid flesh of my arms

and cushions, and the drape of the sheet.

The shadows around the room were warm and not lonely.

The lights from the cars outside,

all going home at the end of their days

were cast low to the ground,

meeting the road with every revolution, very much here.

But I didn’t feel tears start to well up

until many songs had been played and replayed.

And that seems good.

You are starting to be part of 

feelings outside of grief, now.

You don’t live within its confines as much.

I think that will be more and more

the case.

And seeing the word, case

I’ll now make a bad pun

and think of you as the guitar that is no longer in its case.

But you’re not your guitar

and not your music.

I know that I am not the words I write, not the thoughts I think a few seconds

before I type them. I’m not all of these feelings.

I don’t know what I am, but I think someday,

we will recognize each other enough that it won’t

seem strange at all to just 

start seeing, instead, what we both want

for the Earth.

                                                                                        ~~~~~~~~~~

Now that you're gone, and there will be no more two-sided conversations, I wanted to write and attach this song to my poem. This video came up that I'd never seen before, with all of its uncanny images. Every string of my heart wishes this could have been your fate, instead. And maybe, now it is.

No more performing or teaching and not getting paid, no more worrying about the sale of your gifts, no more being controlled by what you could not conquer, no more cheap hotel rooms, canceled gigs, bait and switch, no more buying and selling your guitar. You are with the right ones, now. They delivered you from all that was unbearable. And those of us here, we still love you and thank you.

Carlos Santana plays George Harrison, accompanied by Indie Arie and Yo-Yo Ma

I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps.

I don't know why nobody told you

How to unfold your love

I don't know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you.

I look at the world and I notice it's turning

While my guitar gently weeps

With every mistake we must surely be learning

Still my guitar gently weeps.

I don't know how you were diverted

You were perverted too

I don't know how you were inverted

No one alerted you.

I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

Look at you all

Still my guitar gently weeps.