(Jesse Malin Benefit Concert 12/1/24)
After your back to the wall balcony
tickets were upgraded to third row,
center orchestra, aisle seats, due
to a cell phone snafu. After Alejandro
Escovedo opened the show singing
Sensitive Boys and Rickie Lee Jones
wore what looked like the red beret
from her back in the day, 1979, Chuck
E’s In Love video and sang Sinatra’s
Cycles beautifully. After a brief break
the curtain lifted, and voila—Jesse Malin—
spotlit, front and center, perched on a chair
leading his band, strumming his guitar
and singing, his head sliding side to side
like an owl watching wide screen porno.
After long lasting overflowing loving
standing ovations. After Little Steven
walked across the stage head down,
finally found a seat, played unimpressive
guitar on a song your ears didn’t know,
Jesse put aside his guitar and slowly
shifted, scooched, pushed and slid
his ass, rocked it back and forth a bit,
summoned the strength of a newly shorn
Samson with pillars of strain and struggle.
After who knows how many bed pans,
tubes, catheters and pain pills, nurses,
doctors, PT sessions filled with sweat
and gritty persistence, there’s Jesse
standing at a mic, rocking out a twenty
song set. After Lucinda Williams and Elvis
Costello slur, moan, slither their way
through Wild Horses and that annoying
Counting Crows guy plops behind a piano,
bellows out a very fine Long December.
After the all-hands on stage closing Rudi
Can’t Fail final encore. After one last
never ending standing ovation, trying
to imagine how wonderfully satisfied,
gratified Jesse felt playing The Beacon
surrounded by a crowd of friends less
than two years after a spinal stroke,
You head for the EXIT and slow down
as you walk by the woman you loved
longest, deepest, standing by her seat
The woman you hadn’t seen in twenty
years who lives five states away and still
looks good and almost as surprised as you.
She’s smiling, slowly mouthing she can’t
talk while shaping her fingers into a telephone.
You move on guessing her husband’s nearby
and never forgot about her affair and even
though you know she won’t slip away, wave
a cab down, meet you at your Queens place
and leave a sweet note when you go for bagels
in the morning, somewhere on the way
to the subway, the first night of December
turns into a mid-May evening, an Italian
café in The Village, your first date. Jesse
Colin Young, who she later confessed
she confused with Jesi Colter, cancelled
his concert at the Beacon and you remember
you were either falling in love or already
long gone, over your heels, over the edge,
arms flailing, as you stood on the platform
looking in the tunnel, waiting for the C
to transfer you to the E and carry you home.
