by Daniel Clayton

The blues collector collects the blues Like I used to catch black bodied butterflies and red ants when I was a child.

Just snatch them thangs out of the sky And shut them in a jar with fist-fulls of dirt. As the dirt wriggled around and came to life It gave birth and emerged the angry ants: The red-orange beauty would flutter and dance, The orange-red beasts would prod and prance, And my innocent, child-like amusement

Was quenched with this murderous act.

My African brothers were soon decapitated -- Their large scrotums swinging heavily from the old oaks in night Their backs no longer burdened with the triumphant foundation rested As their bones ground to fertilizer under the weight of the blues.

And the collector found a perfectly uncut diamond.
He scraped it, shaped it, raped it,

Even rewrote some of the words and taped it, Those uncut, bleeding blues.