Some of the best poems you'll read - Perigee

"Jim Morrison Grows his Last Beard"
for David Hillenburg
by Adam Tavel
In college I made it two weeks before
a roommate gave me an old razor.
You look homeless, he said.
There's soap and a fresh towel
on the back of the john.
Then in '67 after the first
album I let it go.
Thirteen beers into a show
at the Whiskey I made the band
vamp in E minor
while I scraped my cheeks
against the microphone.
I only keep flashes from the stage,
the moments I refused to dance.
Before blacking out on a mat of cables
I heard a girl in the front row
scream at her boyfriend.
He's sick, she yelled,
Can't you see he's sick?
So after the extra weight,
the move to No. 17 Rue Beautreillis
I grew it thick, even when
it bristled past my top lip.
Now when I walk in the evenings
and browse the used books
I can leave my sunglasses on the dresser.
The perfect anonymity for a poet, I tell Pam,
but she nods like a tired child
after a long day at the circus,
her nose caked with China White.
That's when I take long showers
and feel the water run down
the tangled maze on my neck.
If I sing more than three notes
she's here with me in the steam
so I hum and let the melody rattle,