Letter To Elvis

“Letter To Elvis” by Marc Hosch

I never saw your grave, but I saw your statue
While on layover at an airport in Memphis,
Nashville’s similar but contrarian sibling.
You were holding a guitar, strumming an E7
And some thought you barely knew how to play,
But I always wondered if you were just shy
And virtuosity wasn’t your kind of rock-n-roll.

Were you a Pentecostal trapped in a Baptist body
Or a Baptist trapped in a Pentecostal body?
Were you a good ol’ boy from the South
Who loved the Lord and loved his Momma,
But life was on and it was yours for the taking,
Even if it meant taking the path many-a-man
Before you traveled down and never returned?

You’d swivel your hips and society jeered,
Sneering at the vulgarity of raw human expression.
At first, you were agape as you insisted this is how
Many professors of faith in church moved when they
Worshipped their Heavenly Father with tongues aflame.
And I believe you believed that reasoning – at first.
But you and I both know the girls screamed for more.

Too country for rock and too rock for country,
But way more country than you were given credit for
By the cool, the hipsters who called it rockabilly.
You sang of love, you sang of lust and I don’t approve of lust.
Though I wonder if you were not worshipping lust,
Rather vocalizing what many men and women struggled with
But did not know how to put into rhymes or chord changes.

But before any permanent damage could be done
To America and her daughters, Uncle Sam served you notice
To cut your locks, shave the sideburns, and put on an Army shirt.
You did your duty, refusing to entertain but quite literally
Stand guard on night shift at an Army base, protecting
Its inhabitants from North Korean sympathizers.
Because North Korean-style communism was all the rage in Western Europe.

Perhaps it was the fact that your twin brother died
And you felt the cliched though true pressure to live for two,
To live the life your brother wasn’t able to live.
Maybe that’s why there was Elvis the Holy and Elvis the Profane,
The duality of man on display in theaters everywhere,
Delivering lines hokey and one-dimensional even by cheap Hollywood standards.
But so long as you made money, no one seemed to care.

The problem was, deep down, I think you did care.
So you ate yourself to death, drugged yourself to death,
Had a group of vampires who drained you lifeless,
And allowed a lot of sorry, sad women to sleep with you
Just so they could say they spent a night with the King,
Even though the crown and its jewels had lost its luster.
You did all of this to numb yourself so you wouldn’t care.

So as I look upon this statue of you, guitar in hand,
I look at a man full of confidence and baggage.
I think I also see a bit of myself in you
And I think America saw a lot of itself in you,
Which explains the rapturous applause and violent shouts.
But I refuse to clap happily or shout invectives.
I just look into your dark eyes of stone and whisper, “I’m sorry.”