My Big Bob Dylan Fantasy

I wish I was Bob Dylan if I was Bob Dylan

Everyone would love me even if I was being

A total asshole most of the time and once made

Brian Jones cry

Why you ask why would you want to be Bob Dylan

That certainly wouldn’t make Bob Dylan happy

Even Bob Dylan’s not entirely happy being Bob Dylan

Are you up to the job? Can you write great poetry

And play the guitar no I can’t

Play the guitar but I can write great poetry

If I put my mind to it

I could even learn to the play the guitar

I could get a book telling me how to play the guitar

And go buy a guitar

And make sounds come out of the strings

Like filigrees of willow & studios of gold

Sparkling waterfalls ghosts & antiques

But which Bob Dylan would I want to be

The young Bob Dylan in suede & blue jeans

With Suze Rotolo on his arm or the Blonde on Blonde

Bob Dylan with his scarf & outrageous hair

Or the goofy Basement Tapes Bob Dylan

In which he resembles Harpo Marx

A clown in a basement with a weight lifter & a ballerina

Midget paper delivery guy & Rick Danko on accordion
Or the elder Bob Dylan with the tired sagging face

And the voice like a tractor pulling a weight

Of astonishing emotion bitter northern winds & rawhide

Afternoons long journeys with no resolution

Yes yes I say that Bob Dylan because I’m already old

And my desires are still young

And I’m still learning how to be the person I already am

Which has taken nearly seven decades

A handful of pharmaceuticals & an unfocused rage

And I’m still in that skin still in that cage

Warming the bed with my bones

And waking up to do it again and again until I don’t