A Blues Guitarist

[TranquillityBase]

Coming in on this discussion late, but anyway:

I like both versions. You do lose a lot of wonderful lines, what is almost an epic quality in the first version with the revision, I think.  A few notes on both:

A blues guitarist
searches for the perfect blue note      I think you could lose this second "blue"
behind an electric African rhythm
and syncopated shotgun blasts
amongst the melancholia of glass       just doesn't fit the vocabulary of the poem, to my ear; just "inside the melancholia.."?
on steel.


previous version

A Blues Guitarist

The whole room shakes,
dancing in time
to a blues guitarist
sat on an old wooden stool,
feet stomping on an old wooden floor.

Rocking - in a trance
fiery fingers patrol the fretboard
while an electric rhythm hand slaps out
an African bassline

- punctuated
by the melancholic cries of glass on steel
and syncopated shotgun blasts
-- the clashing of frets.

Lost inside a hypnotic riff
nailed to a groove
he searches for that gorgeous
blue note.

Gotta say I really like the "lost poem".  It takes a stanza or two to grab you, but by s. 3 I was hooked.

Tim