Before I Knew It

I originally intended for this to be a free-verse poem, but when lines 1 and 3 ended up rhyming, I decided to make it rhyme. I listened to Dylan's "Farewell Angelina" before writing this. That might explain some of the surrealist wording here. I actually met a man in an alley of St. Augustine and he called himself Jo Jangles. Hah.

I sat in the Sun one day
and saw a shotgun
coming my way.
Didn't know what to make
of it, so I got up
hopped down to the rake
and cleaned up the Moon.
Before I knew it,
I already forgot about it.

Playing my mandolin
once in a back alley
of St Augustine's den,
I saw a man named Jo
Jangles and he was of
those people you meet ago
when Italy was a nice place to live.
But before I knew it,
I already forgot about it.

(A band of gypsies saw the hand
swing down low 'neath the curb
and bay like a hound dog damned.
Twenty-three men now walk past
the the reddened guard at the gate.
I arrived first, and left final and last.
She left, I looked, but I was too late.
And before I knew it,
I already forgot about it.)

Once upon a time
I was on the road
and I saw a rhymed
car that was moving.
I figured it was Georgia Sam
in black face wooing
some red head woman.
But before I knew it,
I already forgot about it.

I had a dream
on a train heading
east and it seemed
to me that all my friends
did not make it through
to the end of the line.
But everyone knows
that lines don't end.
But before I knew it,
I already forgot about it.