I dreamed I saw Bob Dylan
On the boulevard one night.
His hair was curled and blazing.
His eyes were out of sight.

“Hey, look in here,” he said and
Then he opened up his coat.
And he was just a skeleton
And couldn’t sing a note.

The wind it blew right through him.
A silence fell between us.
He had a penis for a heart
And heart instead of penis.

They swung from bones on little hooks.
He moved, I heard them creak.
He rocked back on his heels and said,
“Somethin’ huh? Unique!”

I asked him for a souvenir
And pointed to his heart.
He grinned and took it off its hook,
Then signed it.  With a start,

He closed his coat and blew away.
I was the last to see him.
They held a big memorial
Inside the Coliseum.

The years went by and no one knew
Which way Bob Dylan went.
And I grew up: At 42,
I was the President.

I often thought of how he’d looked,
His innocence, his beauty,
The fallen angel way he had,
A victim of his duty.

And I remembered how he mocked
Those sacraments of ours,
The way he pinched and bled our wounds.
The songs he left were scars.

And I began to feel him
Standing by me on the job,
And when I spoke to Congress,
Damn if I didn’t sound like Bob.

It’s different now, we fought the War
On Misery and won it.
If he’d been here and he’d been free
It’s just like he’d have done it.

The times they are a-changin’.
He was right after all.
There’s a woman in the White House
With a penis on the wall.

 

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Linda Frye Burnham, 1972

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