Monday, January 29, 2024
First Two Lines From a Dream, Followed by Lines Written Immediately Upon Waking
Sweet leaf Keats drew my whole life over
It gave flesh to me
Tumbling over mountains over
rivers, through valleys
like a borg in heat
SHE stoned me
and cried for me
I let down my dress
and went to
heaven
Absolved of nothing
yet resolved to everything
I entreated the sun
Infrared rays reveal
astrological scars
amidst the ruins,
like a farmer's car
amidst faint
festoons of
pansies.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
New song, with lyrics by Darin Stevenson and myself
The Puddle Piano
(set to tune of The Gatlin Brothers "All the Gold in California")
G She told some little children who never read her poems
That all the puddles in the world led to other D worlds...
like a puddle of G water with the sun shining on her
is full of the reflection of the shiner her D self
G or a puddle of jello in red or green or yellow
is molded like a meadow of cherry lemonlime D snow
chorus
Imagine a C piano arising from a
G puddle though, but there's only this room D really.
Even if it’s filled with G stars
G Suppose I got a piano? Bold in pianissimo!
and everyone came to listen. Or no one came at D all.
Let’s say, instead, that G judges came. or maybe some surveillors
a whole sea of assailers to D drown all the notes
Some dreams might be G inside me. And even the piano.
Some spirits eviscerate D Ancient urgen G cies.
chorus
C Imagine a piano arising from a G puddle though
But there's only this room D really.
Even if it’s filled with G stars
stars D no one.
could possibly ob G serve.
- words liberally borrowed from my friend Darin Stevenson
Too best to love
Anahid you were standing there, next to the desk, trying to say what Eternity was all about. I couldn't hear you, your voice was so low, like a whisper, but I could feel your breath. It was slowly arriving from the right, while in the left Paganini played through time and space into a Smartboard speaker. I was caught between the two. I asked you the author was and you didn't know. It didn't matter. But I wanted you to know. You said the poem was about "being abroad". You said you didn't really know how to put it. You whispered it, "it's about not putting all of your joys in one basket." The moment was eternal. I knew it couldn't last, even in the moment of feeling it, grafted it onto myself as something eternal, went into it completely, lingered, maybe you could say, wallowed in it.