I was listening to-- or rather had listened to-- Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited, and during the last track something struck me about the whole thing. For instance, take the image on the front-- Dylan wearing a silk shirt, his hair kind of piled up in a quasi pompadour, wearing (at least) lipstick-- and compare it to the one on the back-- Dylan in a basic striped shirt, hair frizzed and not particulalrly styled, sitting at the piano, frowning with concentration. The icon vs. the artist. And I started thinking that I could hear that same kind of dichotomy at play throughout the album, on every track.

I was wrong. So I wrote a poem with images from several of Dylan's songs off Highway 61, with references to some of his other works as well. "Desolation Row" was the original title; the current title is supposed to imply that, whereas Dylan wrote "JUST LIKE Tom Thumb's Blues," what I wrote is REALLY Tom Thumb's Blues. Get it? It's a POP CULTURE REFERENCE! HA! Sometimes I'm just too damned clever for my own good. Except that I'm not Tom Thumb. In fact, I'm not even sure what Dylan means by "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." Or even who Dylan's "Tom Thumb" might be. Oh well.