Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man

Let's just start out with this; I LOVE Bob Dylan, so that explains the choice easily. Now, the poem;

The second stanza, I adore it. It's a nice little picture being painted in the lines. It has a fun bounce when you read over it, and the rhyming isn't an excruciatingly blatant punch-to-the-face like it is in some other poems, it's subtle, is nice, yes?

Easily, of the whole thing, I absolutely fell in love with the line in the end of the second stanza; "And the ancient empty streets too dead for marrying." Just the image of that, decrepit streets rotting away under your feet, not an ounce of life anywhere to be seen… Morbidly beautiful in its ways. I adore it, and the work put in by Dylan. Though, for him it probably didn’t take that long (darn talented lyricists, why must you taunt me so!?! GIVE ME YOUR POWERS)

Ahem. But in all seriousness.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’.

Ah, curse you, Mr. Dylan, and your Mr. Tambourine Man. Curse your lyrical abilities that I have longed for for years of my life. Curse you.

The words are beautiful in their ways, giving pleasant (if you could call it pleasant) imagery with every hop-skip-and-jump, with every little detail. Perhaps it’s just me, but I could actually see the ship, bobbing in the water, the deck hand (Our dear Mr. Dylan) gripping onto the side as the waves crash against the ship, waiting for his legs to gather strength again, for his boots to move. 

Then take me disappearin’ though the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

Again, images. The entire work sends images burning through my mind like nobody’s business. His work is just… Spectacular to me. Can you picture it? The cold day, the smoke rings disappearing into the fog? The dying, twisted and mangled trees and the cold, abandoned beach, hiding away from the pains of the world, keeping themselves safe, for what little safety is worth in this world.

Then again, considering the time it was written, I could just be completely overdoing this and it may just be one giant drug trip.

Maybe I need to sleep on this one.