The Real Sal Jesus

I like to believe that you haunt my playlist. Sometimes when I'm listening to spotify or pandora and I have my phone in my pocket so I can't see who's playing, and something really good comes on—sometimes, if I've never heard it before, I can imagine maybe the reason I can't recognize it is because it's not even from Earth, but rather some magic grabbed up my phone and queued a song on my playlist that came from beyond, from the celestial, and when I hear that fiddle line, the one I've never heard before, I imagine you wrote it and now you're playing me Goodbye like some phone hacking phantom.

I see you casting strings with the Divine, still smoking cheap cigarettes but bumming your fire right from Prometheus. I see the Buddha bass slapping next to Hari Krishna's Harmony of Flute and Harmonica and Jesus plucking banjo with his nails. Accordions strapped to Orion's belt cut back and forth in a Slalom funk and Thor shredding the guitar like thunder while your strings stir dead stars back to life and claim the souls of saved and damned alike and open the ears of sleeping titans. Justin is there too, directing it all for the music video, getting snapshots for the album cover. And the camera shakes a little when Rigly runs between his legs, his tail wagging like a Logan driver, and you just laugh like it's a punchline—a laugh that makes me wonder if I'll ever meet another person in this world who gets my jokes, a laugh like the only man in town who knows the Emperor is nude, a laugh like the Devil told you something earlier, but it only makes sense after he's cheated you. A laugh I remember like the horn of a missed train—'cause it's fucking gone now.

Sometimes I imagine I'll wake up and I'll hear a new song on the radio and I'll check it this time, I won't be afraid to look at my phone because this time I won't be disappointed, this time I see the artist's name printed in big, capital letters because like you said, “the lower case is for the lower class.” I'll see the name SAL JESUS just where it's supposed to be. Topping charts with the amazing Mama Ghost. I'll tell people how I knew you, as close as Bukowski and Charles Potts, killing bottles of Canadian host. Learning the secret meanings behind songs by the Beatles. All nighters until our fingers were stained in ink and stiff like boards. I might have to embellish, however, the part where I was there for you when you really needed it, when it really made the difference between that waking reality and this horrible dream.

Maybe the reason you were such a brilliant artist is because our ears were blocked and all that pain had to go somewhere. I should have just seen you as a friend who needed help, but I never saw past the bar you raised with the talent you expressed, so I stuck you high on this shelf. Even now I can't think of you just burning into ash, I have to paint a picture, and it's not on canvas but on gauze because I'm using it to mask my wounds until my alarm clock goes off and I get to wake up and call you.