Monday, June 29, 2009

Skeleton in Love

She waits until the moon has risen
Calls her lover’s name
Almost a ghost he moves at last
She smiles and holds the flame

He sees her in the depth of night
And listens to her song
For him she is the only light
He hears the wind all wrong

She leads him to her lonely place
Where many chance their lives
And when the sun rises anew
The skeleton arrives

Monday, June 22, 2009

Ashen

Perhaps her face would not look so ashen
If she won the Lotto, got that car,
Took that cruise she’s sure she deserves
Found her ideal flesh enhanced
Saw her stock surge, bagged her gold…
But then her soul’d be gone.

Monday, June 15, 2009

For Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, troubador sublime, just turned 68 a few weeks ago. That's 68 in human years, and I, like a faithful dog, went out and fetched his latest CD offering, Together Through Life. It's true that his voice is a raspy skeleton of its former raspy self, yet the cutting edge irony that pervades his best lyric writing is still there after all these years. I particularly like the last track, "It's All Good," which satirizes the sugar-coated sunny optimism that much of popular media and Madison Avenue will shower the public with, especially through the use of trite cliches (like that of the title) for soundbytes.

In tribute to Bob Dylan's moving one step closer to septagenarianism, I offer up this blackly humorous blues lyric (to the tune of "Meet Me in the Morning," c. 1974 Blood on the Tracks). Or in tribute to Quentin Tarantino.

I Save My Tenderness

Well I’m getting awfully hungry
And there’s a pig out in the street
Said I’m getting awfully hungry
And there’s a pig out in the street
Think I’ll just take him with my bare hands
So I have something to eat

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

I live in a downtown dungeon
There’s a bank just round the block
Yes I live in a downtown dungeon
There’s a bank just round the block
But I’ll have me some that money
I’ll crack the safe, I’ll smash the lock

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

Well I’m jobless fifty weeks now
And any day they’ll stop the check
Said I’m jobless fifty weeks now
And any day they’ll stop the check
I’ll just go get work as a bouncer
Or a hit man, what the heck.

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

You

It’s an opaque nightly war
Millions of neurons at battle
For the uppermost hand in my brain
Lists and laundries, notes and meetings
Quite adept at rendering me insane
All of this smoke screen
All of this jive
All of this leaving me
Less than alive
For there is only
Has only been
Will ever be
One flame
You

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Late Inning Stadium

Watching these pinstriped young men
Gracing the field, grazing the fields
Green pastures without valley or shadow
They are younger than the sun
And I am older now than time
The ball that they chase is the sun itself
As I sink low into the sunset
I see myself within that uniform
As the moon rolls up past the lights