Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan came to me
Wrapped in a magazine
And I took up being 16.

Mystics and wizards
Mist and the spells
I couldn’t get the hang

Just the cloaked figure
With his doll’s face

Saved by his ringlets
I was the acceptable face of curly hair
Previously a curse

I caught him just lifting
Into rock and roll
With an AOUW!  and an UH-HUH
Which opened the fire escape for me
From the purse-lipped folkies
With their safety gloves of Marxist ideology
Or of irony, take your pick.

I took it up and played it
Bent the neck of my still-supple
Adolincandescent guitar

Only a long time later
Did I take on the unironic
The Chuck and Little Richard and Elvis
Who really meant it
Whom Bolan held in his eyes
As I held him
As we played.

2 thoughts on “Marc Bolan”

  1. I hereby launch the campaign to get ‘Adolincandescent’ into the Oxford English Dictionary. Fabulous word, great poem, sir.

  2. Funnily enough, I cheated there in that the word wasn’t part of the original poem, but I misread my handwriting while typing it in and thought – yes!

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