Jukebox Junction USA - River Poets Journal

River Poets Journal
Jukebox Junction USA
Published by Lilly Press
Editor: Judith A. Lawrence
Co-Editor: Joseph Reich
All future rights to material
published in the River Poets
Journal are retained by the
individual Authors/Artists
and Photographers.
November - 2009
Special Edition
CONTENTS:
Page #
Poets & Writers
Barbara Crooker
Robert Cooperman
Bruce Majors
Charles Rammelkamp
Davide Frame
Lyn Lyshin
Kenneth Pobo
Natalie Villalon
Nils Peterson
Roger Craik
John Riley
Peggy Landsman
Anthony M. Majahad
Dianna Robin Dennis
Debby Forte
Barbara Eknoian
Elaraine Lockie
Judith A. Lawrence
Delbert R. Gardner
Gretchen Fletcher
Jacob M. Carpenter
Richard Roe
Laura E. Holloway
Beatrice M. Hogg
Beth Browne
Vera Long
Joseph Reich
Carole Longo Harris
Louis Gallo
Neal Whitman
Julia Ponder
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
8
8
9
10
10
11
12
12
13
14
15
16
17 & 25
17
18
18
19
20-21
22
23-24
26
26
River Poets Journal
Special Edition
Ju k e box Ju n ct ion USA
A Poetic History To How
Music Moved You
Editorials
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best things
about being an editor of a literary journal is the
writers you meet along the way, whether locally,
across the USA, or internationally through mail or
email correspondence.
I just wanted to sincerely and earnestly say how
many wonderful and thoughtful submissions Judith
and I received over the past few months for our
theme issue, "Jukebox Junction," which likewise
just made our task that much more challenging in
having to choose and boil down and triage it all into
Joseph Reich and I were enjoying occasional email one thematic and salient collection; appearing to
chats on all kinds of things, from poetry, prose, music touch on musical periods and influences all the way
and art, to food, Philadelphia, NY, sharing some
back from the Twenties to the present day, and
favorite bands, singers, songs and groups we were
encompassing a whole wide range of eclectic
enthralled of and then one night in an email
musical forms and genres.
Joseph mentioned, “wouldn’t it be great to have a
themed issue of poems that were inspired by music
We were also pleased to have received a variety
or favorite songs?”
of submissions from so many different regions of the
country, from small town to rural to suburban to the
The idea really intrigued me as music plays such a big city, as well as internationally.
large part in our lives. If I taped all the CD’s,
records and cassettes back to back in my home I
For all of those who didn't make it, I just wanted
would have enough music to play continually all year to say how honored and grateful we were to have
and then some.
received your submissions, as well as your
willingness to share with us what appeared to be
I often question why I have this impulse to buy yet some real profound and sentimental and nostalgic
another album when I know that I may not get around memories, and do hope the experience was as
to playing it for some time, but the thought that it’s
cathartic for you as it was for us.
there, accessible for when I’m in the mood, allowing
the luxury of the occasional laid back day or night,
I believe what Judith and I have put together
pulling out that old chestnut, sliding the disc into my here is a real insightful and intriguing, engaging and
player knowing it will take me away, weave images
absorbing collection as evidenced by "Jukebox
and magic into the fabric of my life, and every once in Junction," and now please feel free to dig in at your
a while even inspire a poem.
own leisure, and mosey on down memory lane to the
melody of your choosing, and wherever that path may
The Jukebox Junction USA Special Edition has
happen to lead you!
been a labor of love. The difficult part of pulling this
collection together was that there were so many
Joseph Reich
wonderful submissions it was difficult for both
Co-Editor
Joseph and I to make the final selections.
Jukebox Junction, USA
In our selections, the poet’s names were removed
from their submissions, and each poem was assigned
a number in place of for unbiased selection.
I hope that you enjoy this wonderful collection
and that the lyrics, music and poems bring back some
meaningful memories and inspiration for you as well.
Judith A. Lawrence
Editor/Publisher
2
Name of Songs: Thunder Road, Independence Day,
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) Hungry Heart
Name of Album: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street
Band Live/1975-1985
Name of Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Me 'n Bruce Springsteen Take My Baby
off to College
We hit the turnpike early, O Thunder Road,
every inch of the car packed: sweatshirts, prom
gowns, teddy bears, such heavy baggage. She's both
coming and going, this shy violet of a child,
the teenager too hostile to be in the same room,
breathe the same air. Now she dozes beside me as
the car spools up the miles, and I slip in a favorite
tape, raise the volume. Her skin, edible, a downy
peach, her long hair unwinding. My foot taps the
accelerator with the beat; the Big Man, Clarence
Clemons, pours his soul out his sax, yearning,
throbbing, as the turnpike pulls us west,
bisecting Pennsylvania, tunneling through the
mountains: Blue, Allegheny, Kittatinny, Tuscarora,
this big-muscled, broad-backed hunk of a state.
We drive deeper into the heart of anthracite,
the wind blows through the dark night of her hair.
A harmonica wails and whines, brings me back to my
tie-dyed college years; sex looms like a Ferris wheel,
carnival lights in the water, but we've reached our
exit, here she is, it's independence day, ready or not,
Pittsburgh, city of smoke and grit, polished chrome
and glass, soot streaked buildings, pocket
handkerchief neighborhoods, abandoned
steelworks, the Monongahela River.
I deliver her again, heavier this time.
We set up the room, she turns cocky and sulky,
breaks into sobs when I leave.
On the return trip, I play the same tapes over and
over. The miles roll by, I'm driven by the beat,
everybody's got a hungry heart, nearly there:
Lenhartsville, Krumsville, Kutztown,
green rolling hills dotted with cows,
Pittsburgh's iron and steel filling the horizon
in the rearview mirror.
Name of Song: Dark Star
Artist: Grateful Dead
Name of Album: Live/Dead, 1969
Setting: The Fillmore East, NYC
Love Interest: Not Nearly as Important as the Music
Verse: Dark star crashes, Pouring its light into ashes.
The Night the Dead First Played “Dark Star” at the
Old Fillmore East
Dark Star: a black hole.
But to us at the old Fillmore
that night, “Dark Star” meant
the music of the spheres:
Pythagoras might’ve been up
near the stage, twirling
to the beat the drums laid down
hypnotic as a snake charmer,
the guitars and keyboards weaving,
like the dance of DNA molecules,
the universe forming that night.
Garcia’s guitar a pterodactyl
soaring on thermals, diving
for prey just under the surface,
then stroking skyward again
higher and higher, almost more
than music was capable of.
And all the while we swayed
like a field of wind-weaving barley
on this night of pulsing
planets, comets, and stars.
When we left the concert hall,
dawn was turning East Village
buildings the color of doves.
“What the hell was that?”
one friend asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered,
“but I never wanted it to stop.”
©Robert Cooperman
©Barbara Crooker
3
Name of Song: Purple Haze
Name of Album: Are You Experienced
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Year: 1967
Setting: Tennessee Technological University
College Student, Loose lifestyle
Love Interest: The Sixties
Hometown: Dayton, Tennessee, Small Town, USA
Season: Quiet waves, Summer
Verse: Purple haze all in my eyes,
uhh/Don't know if it's day or night/
You got me blowin, blowin my mind/
Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?
Flying Like Angels
We made John’s Place an icon,
Pabst Blue Ribbon like sacred wine,
a watering hole for the lost.
Somehow we always got back to school.
Minds blew at the edge of knowledge,
psychedelic dynamo, free love time,
leaning toward darkness or light
––freedom was hard.
Jose Garcia wore ringlets of love
in army green, stepped on a land mine,
came home in a box.
Didn’t make it back to school.
We thought the smoke-filled days, liquid nights
would never end––now it seems like,
what’s the song? Purple Haze…
But we were cool in that purple mist
driving the dark side of the road,
flying like angels going nowhere
in the smoky, yellow van with blue flowers
and the red door painted black.
Name of Song: In the Middle of Nowhere
Artist: Dusty Springfield
Year: 1965
Setting: Middle of Michigan
Hometown: Albion, Michigan
Season: Fall, cool evenings
Verse: Baby won't you tell me/What am I to do?/I'm in
the middle of nowhere/Getting nowhere with you.
Hooking the Gut
In the middle of Michigan,
just past the middle of the century,
CKLW, the AM station out of Windsor,
provided the background music
to the movie of our lives.
Across the river from Detroit,
they played all the current hits
to the teenagers in the cars
in the small towns
in the middle of nowhere,
a non-stop stream of hit songs
as we circled through the town,
six or seven of us high school boys
packed in a single car,
singing along to Motown,
the Jefferson Airplane,
the Dave Clark Five,
Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones.
We orbited the planet
that was our town, our universe –
hooking the gut, in the local phrase –
Victory Park, the college campus,
past fast food joints and ice cream stands,
smoking cigarettes and talking
about the girls with whom
we were getting nowhere.
©Charles Rammelkamp
©Bruce Majors
Jimi Hendrix
Dusty Springfield - at home
4
Song: Mississippi
Album: Love and Theft, 2001
Artist: Bob Dylan
Hometown: Venice, Italy
Verse: Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast. I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no
past. But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free. I've
got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me.
Name of Song: Me and the Devil Blues
Artist: Robert Johnson - Blues singer/song writer
Hometown: Virginia
Season: May, drizzle
Verse: You can bury my body down by the highway side
Lord, my old evil spirit can catch a Grayhound bus and
ride.
May, Drizzle, Virginia
Mississippi
This song in my mind
recurs, persists
and it’s like that land down south
with houses with verandas
filled with large leaves from whose margins
raindrops hang and never fall
and clouds and sun clash quietly
and pools linger harmlessly
for a long time after the floods.
This song steps forward with the stride
of the long-legged heron and with it flies,
eyes so accustomed at surveying and at one
with the slow wings’ beating and the trees’ swaying.
I see this room without me,
the window-panes reflecting branches and sky,
it’s a big room,
like the big pace of the song’s refrain
and I think it’s great to shed your skin and breath
and keep walking kissing that land
where we know everything changes
just to let nothing change.
©Davide Frame
Sixth day of pewter.
The cat coils under
the microwave, excited by garbage
trucks as I open
mail, a little cautious
as if something
dangerous could be
there. Bruise sky.
Ozone’s cheap perfume
in the trees. I think
of Robert Johnson
with a poisoned drink
in one hand from some
one sure he’d been
cheating with his wife,
sang bury my body by
the old railroad
sign so I can catch a
ride on the old Greyhound bus and ride and
ride. Dead at 28, a
voice says as the cat
coils on terry cloth as
if it was purple velvet
maybe dreaming of
gizzards or being
worshipped with flayed
salmon and sparrows
Robert Johnson
(One of two, possibly three
photos taken in his short life)
©Lyn Lifshin
[Robert Johnson's death is as mysterious as his life.
The prevailing theory is that he was poisoned in a
juke joint in Three Forks near Greenwood,
Mississippi. He was buried beside the highway,
where the busses pass by, in the small Zion Church
cemetery near Morgan City.]
Bob Dylan in Mississippi
5
Name of Song: Gingerbread Man
Name of Album: Mony, Mony
Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells
Year: 1968
Love Interest: Stan (no name in song
though speaker calls himself a
gingerbread man)
Season: Spring, more cool than I would
like
Verse: Hey girl, if you lost your way
Reach out and take my hand
I’m a gingerbread man
Name of Song: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' ta Fuck Wit
Name of Album: Enter the Wu-Tang (26 Chambers)
Artist: Wu-Tang Clan
Year: 2008
Setting: Princeton University, nerd camp
Love Interest: the philosophical stoner guy
Hometown: Alamo, CA
Season/Weather: clear summer night
Verse: Ti-tiger style/Tiger style/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin'
ta fuck wit)/BANG IT/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck
wit)/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck wit)/Tiger style/Tiger
style (Come on!)/Bang it! Huh! Come on!
Gingerbread Man
Untitled
Flip it over. I agree,
“Do Something To Me”
is a great A side,
but “Gingerbread Man”
Swaybacked groaning table we commandeered
held up by our faith in shouting and swaying raw summer nights
roaring tiger-style banging our life-love
(we knew everyone else was dead)
with a badass backbeat we thought
and protested nothing except fall and
the waning of dazing pseudo dangerous days
a few hands and Wu-Tang Clan gave us
shields and arms beyond repulsion
in our fun and need for each other
danced on the table it was our sinking ship
smoothing our springing anxieties
with burgeoning laughter and foreign courage
you kissed me alien raw wandering
it became everyone’s bacchus kiss
we were squished hugged chanted courted
and there are so so many
I hung batlike prostrate and ready off that table
to touch cool grass remember
there was an earth to catch me
never felt screamed sang laughed safer
someone else commandeered the speakers
animal and nervous with the hastening escape of such nights
as we proclaimed all with comic savagery (fear of losing it all):
ain’t nothing’ to (laughter) wit
living on ruckus that threat of collapse and rumbling still
could have Top 40’d
on its own. The guitar
craves a kiss. It’s OK,
guitars can be
promiscuous. I’m a
gingerbread man, too.
At my worst I’m crummy,
overdone. At my best,
I taste good. Songs are
red blood cells—
give me enough of them,
I can stay healthy.
©Kenneth Pobo
©Natalie Villalon
Tommy James - 1960’s
6
Name of Song: Go Way From My Window
Year: 1950
Live Concert: Gladys Swarthout
Setting: Centre College, Danville, Kentucky
Love Interest: None
Hometown: Mt. Vernon, NY
Season/Weather: Fall, Cold. Dreary
Lyrics: Incorporated in piece
Go Way From My Window
I’m sitting in a bar – drinking a martini larger than I’d
make at home – because I do not want
to drink alone. I am, of course, drinking alone.
I can’t remember the first part of her program –
maybe some 19th century German art songs
about babbling brooks and the beloved which I likely
wasn’t ready for. At the end she sang,
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” which
explored a place in me I didn’t know existed,
and then, “Go Way From My Window” :
Go way from my window
Go way from my door
Just leave me with my broken heart
And bother me no more,
And bother me no more.
I’ll give you back your diamonds,
I like the noises, the “warm, drunken wash of voices,” I’ll give you back your rings
the beat of the bad music just beneath disturbing loud But I’ll ne’er forget the love we knew
– I’m aware that the gin is good and I’m aware that
As long as song birds sing,
I’m thinking of Gladys Swarthout when she came to
As long as song birds sing.
Danville, Kentucky in the fall of 1950 to perform at
the basketball court which four times a year doubled her big voice carrying passion so darkly that no
as a ballroom and once in a blue moon as a concert
sweet-voiced Judy Collins ever could seduce me a
hall. I’m sitting in the bleachers listening, something
decade later.
to do in a town and time when any something was
better than the usual nothing.
My drink is gone, though the ice cubes I suck on are
reminiscing about the good times.
I float above the clinking beer glasses remembering
how beautiful and exotic she was – broad-chested,
©Nils Peterson
dark-haired, big-voiced, and I remember wondering
what we were both doing there. I was sitting next to
my roommate, also from New York, who in the
spring would serenade the girl’s dorm singing “Some
Enchanted Evening” in his fine baritone,
and when his former girl would not come down and
join him (these were the days of girl’s dorm lockdowns and house mothers and the like, and it was
maybe two in the morning, his voice muzzy with
drink) brought out a pistol full of threats. He waved
it around and shortly after waved goodbye to the
school.
One could say “girl’s dorm” then; Breckinridge Hall
was the boy’s dorm in turn. The returning
GI-billed soldiers lived in Vet’s Village, ran a neverstopping card game, and supported a steady trickle
of moonshine from the hills. I was 16 and a long way
from home which mostly felt good.
7
Name of Song: Apeman
Name of Group: The Kinks
Year: 1973
Setting: Heard this when I was having a miserable time
as an English schoolboy in Aberdeen , in the north of
Scotland (but I always liked this song)
Verse: I'm an apeman, i'm an ape ape man.
(features car horn --mentioned in the poem--and traffic and city noise)
Name of Song: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy
Name of Album: Live at the Club
Name of Artist: Cannonball Adderley
Year : 1976
Setting: Attic of the old farmhouse where I grew up
Love Interest: Kristy Ketchum
Hometown: Rural North Carolina
Season/Weather : Summer, of course, hot and sticky
(there are no lyrics to this song)
"Days" (which is another Kinks song)
Mercy
The man who honked his car horn twice
In the opening bars of “Apeman” by the Kinks
Watches his granddaughter play in the sand
In a municipal recreation ground
On an afternoon in south-west London.
When I was a boy and self-born in religion my aunts,
uninterested in being washed
with the saving blood of Jesus Christ,
called me Preacher Boy.
(They both lacked imagination and made a series
of bad marriages.)
Come Sunday mornings I traveled alone
in a white shirt, clip on navy-blue tie,
penny loafers shined the night before,
down a failure of a county dirt road
studded with rocks
that jabbed through the red soil
like a reef slicing a surf.
In my memory it is always cold fall.
At the end of my walk I'd wait for the bus
to the Providence Primitive Baptist Church,
practice my weekly verses, press
my wet hair back with a ten-cent black comb.
And as he thumbs in line the brittle worms
Of Captain Black into their greaseproof sleeve
And tongues it closed along the join,
He is not thinking of that afternoon
When the Sixties seemed to sigh their last and go,
And he, just as was told to do,
Opened the door of his Ford Cortina
And, as if annoyed at someone pulling out,
Banged two times with the heel of his hand
The plastic disk the size of half a crown
He was only someone someone knew
Who knew the Kinks. He never met the band.
Now the sun of another century
Slides westward. He muses that there used to be
An air-raid shelter where she’s playing now
Beneath the cheerful tunneling
And unfamiliar playground characters
Which must be from American TV
Where during bombing raids
(His father used to say) the neighbours smoked,
Played darts and cribbage, crossed their fingers, hoped
That Jerry wouldn’t score a direct hit,
And felt how small it was to be alive.
The elms that stood through four kings’ reign
Are spreading into twilight now.
He asks himself how many years remain.
The little girl is dawdling, looking back
To where her pail-shaped castles in the sand
Are growing smaller as she’s led away.
I strapped myself to the word of God;
stood and swayed when hymns were sung;
wanted death to be a wool glove.
But the hold of that ancient agony collapsed
the first time I heard Cannonball Adderley
and his Sextet play “Mercy Mercy Mercy.”
It was recorded live in '66. Cannonball
was gone before I heard
his funk rise from the turntable
and wash the sea of salvation away.
All was lost. What could I do?
Day spun into night!
I became blind as a fish with scales for eyes.
That touch of the dark felt right.
©Roger Craik
©John Riley
8
Name Of Song: "Nothing"
Bucking the needle at every turn,
Name Of Album:The Fugs First Album
Knocking it out of the groove.
Artist: The Fugs
Year: 1965
©Peggy Landsman
Setting: Dream Town, New Jersey
Love Interest: No one in 1965. After 1972, Richard Logan.
Hometown: Newark, New Jersey
Season/Weather: Fall, brisk and drizzly
Verse: Sunday nothing, Monday nothing, Tuesday and
Wednesday nothing, Thursday for a change a little more
nothing, Friday once more nothing...-Tuli Kupferberg
Nothing Dreaming
Tuli Kupferberg and I are dancing.
He is light-years ahead of me,
Maybe old as twenty.
I myself cannot be
Many moons past eight.
We aren't holding hands exactly,
Only our fingertips touch.
They are sticky. We've been noshing
Messy chunks of halvah,
Melting chocolate gelt.
Fugs Final Performance Concert - September 16, 2003
Mr. Slowpoke, my uncle Phil,
Fresh from a stretch in eternity,
Roller-skates across the floor
On wheels of salted bagels.
"Kam mit tsores!" he calls to us,
[Founded by Beat poets Ed Sanders and Tuli
Kupferberg in 1964, The Fugs pioneered a
blend of Beat-style lyrics, political rant,
comedy and jug band music that influenced
Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention,
The Velvet Underground, The Stooges,
and Alice Cooper.
And time, the way it does in dreams,
Whirls by, dreidel-like,
Revealing all its sides
To me.
Tuli Kupferberg gained indirect notoriety as the
real life "guy who jumped off of the Brooklyn
Bridge and lived," immortalized in Allen
Ginsberg’s epic Howl.]
I am...I am distracted by
Kaleidoscopic visions
And winks from my mind's eye.
Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from Howl
Tuli, meanwhile, is spieling
His nada, his gornisht, his nothing.
“who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this
actually happened and walked away unknown
and forgotten into the ghostly daze of
Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks,
not even one free beer,”
I am turned around.
Cracked and scratched beyond repair,
One of my favorite 78s
Is skipping like mad past all the best parts,
9
Who was that trumpeter
accompanying some forgotten blues piece,
recorded on a graphite disc – circa 1920?
What happened?
Did you die from an overdose
of Sportin’ Life’s happy dust?
Were your notes absorbed
into the ether of time,
or handed down to your children
like the ancient Greek epic?
You bear me to another world;
I spiral inward; your rich tones
filling the hollows of my soul.
Name Of Song: Symphony #3 by Aaron Copeland
Name Of Album: Copland: Symphony No. 3
Artist: New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein,
Conductor
Year: 1980
Setting: NYC - Avery Fisher Hall
Hometown: Hopewell, NJ
Season/Weather: Crisp NY day - don't remember the
season
Verse: "Fanfare for Common Man" used as a theme for
various Olympic Games, is the basis of the final movement.
Copland's Third "Common Man," in Four
Movements, New York, Avery Fisher Hall
I
how can I write for
instruments with leaky pens
black dots on white page
When your music ends,
its haunting echoes
still reverberating in me,
the radio announcer
can’t identify you.
I solely desire
to write me on your body
with this warm finger
He calls you a lost chord.
touch your coldly drawn
breath, crescendo in C 'til
notes multiply, die
©Anthony M. Majahad
II
dreaming your hands jazz
body weeps, sighs, together
we dance along brass
III
audience restless
ears disregard anguished notes
hid in open chords
IV
racing to leave, they
trample our feet, curse our seats
run for subways, cabs
we ponder Common
Man's ability to miss
his own life's refrain
©Dianna Robin Dennis
10
Name of song: Stairway to Heaven
Name of album: Led Zeppelin 4 (released in 1971)
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Year: 1973 or 1974
Setting: My bedroom
Love Interest: Just being alive, shared friendships,
rock music. Boys were still in the future
Hometown: Barrington, R.I.
Season/Weather: One late summer night
Verse: And as we wind on down the road/Our shadows
taller than our souls/There walks a lady we all know/Who
shines white light and wants to show/How everything still
turns to gold,/And if you listen very hard/The tune will
come to you at last./When all are one and one is all/To be
a rock and not to roll./And she's buying a stairway to
heaven.
Here's To A Memory And A Favorite Song
Candle plume and verse converge upon the moment
sway across the wall, gather on the ceiling
a canopy of promise
explodes just like a preacher's storm
moves us to religion
By the cool black window
my cat Natasha on her pillow,
purrs
There is something out there
The stars of promises past
the moon and little bits of matted sun
are fanned by jasmine breeze,
skirting through the curtains
and in between her whiskers
to smells of Indian summer
and a cricket applause,
and pulsed with hope and fireflies
We sing our prayers at night
dreaming we are that lady
answering the piper's call
the sultry swells of Robert
and Jimmy's silky strumming in our ears
©Debby Forte
Cloistered in my room
on the corner of the second floor
in nineteen- seventy- three or four
we sisters in faith, a tribe eternally linked
sing in tounges known only to our breed
We wear our hair hung loosely,
parted down the middle
shirts, an east indian gauze
jeans low waisted, belled
our clogs and wooden sandles scattered on the floor
Burning incense of solidarity
we let all pretense go
our shining pollyanna eyes
always looking forward
never back
Inside that little room on Linden Drive
the air is warm
the Spirit alive
we watch our shadows dwarf our souls
and know the difference
11
Name of song: Tears on my Pillow
Name of album: A single
Artist: Little Anthony & The Imperials
Year: 1959
Setting: Lake Hopatcong, NJ
Love Interest: Ronnie M.
Hometown: North Bergen, NJ
Season: Summer, warm
Verse: You don’t remember me, but I remember you
Twas not so long ago you broke my heart in two
Tears on my pillow pain in my heart caused by you
Name of Song: Goodnight Irene
Name of Album: In Times Like These
Artist: 1950, my father/2006, Arlo Guthrie
Years: 1950 and 1999
Setting: 1950, a song at bedtime/2006, a concert hall
in San Francisco, CA
Love interest: My father
Hometown: Big Sandy, Montana
Season/Weather: 1950, all seasons/2006, autumn
Verse: Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
The Summer of Possibilities
Song from the Other Side
I entered Lake Hopatcong’s
only ice cream parlor.
He was standing behind the soda fountain
and I noticed his white blond hair.
Just so I could see him every day,
I ordered sundaes, apple turnovers
and banana splits.
By summer’s end, I had gained ten lbs.
One day he canoed past our hotel dock
looking for me,
but I had gone home for the weekend.
Many nights that winter I fantasized
how I would be more outgoing
and by summer
I’d land a date with him.
I arrived at the lake on a sunny
June morning and he whizzed by
in his pink convertible
with three friends.
Later, I entered the ice cream parlor
expecting to see him, but found out
he had just left for the Navy.
That summer, every time I heard
“Tears on my Pillow”
on the radio
I cried for him.
©Barbara Eknoian
Arlo knew the secret
long before scientists conceived cloning
He discovered it in the guitar strums
and famous folk lyrics from his father
Toured the country with reincarnate rituals
Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation songs
that released Woody from his sound-proofed box
But did he know how many
other resurrections he wrought
How the first bars of Goodnight Irene
could recall forgotten renditions from other fathers
Like one who sat singing beside a bed
banishing nightmares and cooling fevers
With such nostalgia that the daughter
thought Irene might have been her mother
Did Arlo know how his lyrics released
those moments long held in ransom
Before breasts budded
and fevers that became adolescent endemic
refused to be soothed by a song
And there was no antidote
for the parental paralysis that followed
Frozen feelings that
endured the test of time
While the daughter slipped
on them in icy dreams
Until songs from the dead
melted early memories
That dribbled out and down
her cheeks in a concert hall
©Elaraine Lockie
Little Anthony & the Imperials
12
Name of Song: I Only Have Eyes For You
Group: The Flamingoes
Year first released: 1959
Setting: First Ballroom Dance
Love Interest: James Dean
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Season: Late Summer, balmy
Verse: are the stars out tonight…I don't know if it's cloudy or
bright…I only have eyes for you…
Boulevard Ballroom
The year I turned eighteen
I emerged from my cocoon,
all that was terribly wrong
magically righted.
A tall angular young foreigner
with Elvis pompadour
advanced quickly to my side,
bowed courtly
and swooped me in his arms.
I looked up into wistful brown eyes,
knew instinctively
I would break men’s heart’s that night,
and the music played…
as he crooned in faltering English in my ear…
my love must be a kind of blind love…
I can't see anyone but you…
Sha bop sha bop...
©Judith A. Lawrence
On the wings of my metamorphoses
I floated down a flight of steps
leading to the Boulevard Ballroom,
next to Big Boy’s Buns and Hamburgers,
and the Boulevard Pool where the previous summer
I lost my bikini top…not enough there to fill
an A-cup.
A transformed image emerged complete with
Nathalie Wood hair, alabaster blemish free skin,
red, red lipstick, batting curled eyelashes,
perfectly straight seamed silk stockings,
strappy tapping black sequined high heels,
dressed in a borrowed low cut cinched swirl of
dark gold, forest green, and deep purple fluid chiffon,
an emerald pendant gleaming on my breast,
with sparkling matching dangling earrings,
the scent of Chanel clinging in the air.
The Flamingoes
The ceiling was ablaze with stars,
cut crystal balls spinning fantasies,
twinkling jewels rotating on the floor.
Capricious Gods watched hushed in the wings.
With an intake of breath I glided nervously
toward the line of young men
waiting on the sidelines with fresh haircuts,
decked out in their best suits, silk ties,
white dress shirts and gleaming polished shoes,
the same men whom only a year before
had not taken a second glance
suddenly shifted interest toward me.
Nathalie Wood & James Dean
Rebel Without a Cause
13
Name of Song: An Affair to Remember
(Our Love Affair)
Name of Album: Nat Cole Sings the Great Songs
(1966)
Artist: Nat King Cole, performer; words by Harold
Adamson and Leo McCarey; music by Harry Warren
Year: 1969
Setting: Grand Canyon
Love Interest: Marilyn Hegarty Gardner
Hometown: Keuka Park, NY
Season/Weather: a blisteringly hot September
Verse: Our love affair is a wondrous thing/That we'll
rejoice in remembering/Our love was born with our first
embrace/And a page was torn out of time and space/Our
love affair, may it always be/A flame to burn through
eternity/So take my hand with a fervent prayer/That we
may live and we may share/A love affair to remember
The myths and legends her appearance brought
To mind.
"Come back," I called, pretending calm;
"It's a bit dangerous, love, and--well, the child--"
"Yes, the baby," she agreed, sobering,
And the not yet obvious fetus made her grope
Her way to me with care, back from the wild
Where she had ventured without fear of harm.
Then breathing freely, we gazed from behind the rope
At the canyon carved as the patient river streamed
An aeon or so before our souls were dreamed.
©Delbert R. Gardner
Love at the Rim
(For Marilyn)
Leaving Vegas after 8:00 p.m.,
We drove through the night, my bride of a year and I,
To avoid the oven of the desert day.
The stars were flares viewed through a velvet screen,
And we heard Nat sing about "Our Love Affair"
A dozen times to help Miss Holiday Inn
Broadcast her own love message through the air.
Next morning we stood on the Southern Rim
(After a few hours' sleep inside the car)
And tried to comprehend the giant chasm
Licked into shape by the wandering Colorado.
At a lookout point my wife did a frightening thing:
She walked a jutting ledge to where a tree-A straggly-haired cliffhanger of a pine-Had clawed its roots between the rocks. She climbed
The crooked trunk and wrapped it in her arms,
Then twisted around toward the canyon rim
So all I saw of her were her willowy arms
About the trunk and one foot on a limb.
Nat King Cole
Soon her face appeared beside the trunk:
Several pine needles sticking to her hair
And a pixie smile in her hazel eyes,
As she crooked a finger at me in mock seduction,
Made me laugh at her despite my fear.
But there was the precipice, and I forgot
Movie - An Affair to Remember
14
Name of Song: Que Sera, Sera
Artist: Doris Day
Year: 1956
Setting: the beach in Palm Beach, Florida
Love Interest: boys
Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL
Season/Weather: hot summertime
Verse: When I grew up and fell in love,
I asked my sweetheart, 'What lies ahead?
'Will we have rainbows
'day after day?'
Here's what my sweetheart said:
'Que sera, sera,
'Whatever will be, will be;
'The future's not ours to see.
'Que sera, sera,
'What will be, will be.'
Name of Song: “Memories are Made of This”
Artist: Dean Martin
Year: 1956
Setting: Stand of Australian pines in a vacant lot by
Lake Worth in West Palm Beach, Florida
Love Interest: boys
Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL
Season/Weather: hot summertime
Verse: Take one fresh and tender kiss
Add one stolen night of bliss
One girl, one boy
Some grief, some joy
Memories are made of this.
Sweet, sweet memories you gave-a me
you can't beat the memories you gave-a me
Beach Party
Under the shade of pines
we stretched taut stomachs
(we’d dared to bare in two-piece
suits) across the hoods of Fords
and laid down coats of wax
rubbed in wide swirls on trunks
and fenders, taking care
not to scratch the surface
as we caressed tail fins.
Before the sun could dry the wax,
we buffed our boyfriends’ cars
to mirrors that reflected
faces eager to please boys
who stood by and shared
Luckies while they compared
waxes, cars, and girls.
Someone's transistor
on a blanket was tuned
to Dean Martin telling us
that memories are made
of this – even this small moment
we would remember forever.
Phosphorescence drips from bodies
emerging from the night ocean,
a black, horizonless
extension of the night sky.
They trudge through sand
carrying collected driftwood,
blankets, and transistor radios
as Doris tells them “Que sera, sera.”
They laugh away nervousness
and shake dark drops of ocean
onto the bodies of their friends
sitting in pairs around the fire
who will eventually make their way
away from the others and become
an archipelago of isolated islands
scattered down the beach.
50’s Girls
©Gretchen Fletcher
©Gretchen Fletcher
Doris Day
Dean Martin
15
Name of Song: Nightswimming
Name of Album: Automatic for the People
Artist: R.E.M.
Year: 1995
Setting: Farm creek in rural Midwest
Hometown: Oregon, Illinois
Season/Weather: Warm summer night
Verse: Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday
The Naked Moon Smiles Down
Moonlight rushes through trees,
pulls apart fat leaves,
drenches the black night
in white candlelight
and the moon smiles,
filling the air
as bright as possible.
thighs, knees, ankles
into piles on wet grass.
Hearts pump.
Arms cover.
Girls rush
to hide.
Boys smile
with wide eyes
racing and straining
not to miss.
Heart beats pound waves.
Long hair
and smiles
float on the creek.
Stomachs squeeze
and feet kick beneath.
Fireflies join and drown.
The naked moon smiles down.
©Jacob M. Carpenter
Bare frogs bound
from shadows
to the water.
Black crickets chirp in delight.
Blazing fireflies hover
in anticipation,
flashing
to add their light.
Deep water rushes
to the bend
then slows
fighting not to be swept past,
humming softly,
begging, encouraging, persuading.
Electricity heats the air
as t-shirts and jeans
rush through outstretched arms,
over heads,
past goosebumps
and skinny
Released - July 15, 1993 (UK)
16
Name of Song: Ring of Fire (Carter & Kilgore)
Name of Album: Ring of Fire
Artist: Johnny Cash
Year: 1963
Setting: Nashville, Tennessee
Love Interest: Darlene
Residence: Marietta, Ohio
Season: Spring, 1963
Verse: Love is a burning thing/and it makes a fiery ring/
bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire
Name of Artist: Gail Davies
Setting: upon seeing Gail
play The Station Inn in 6.5.08
Nashville in the Dark Ages
I.
The 12th Avenue Illuminati make their way
through the shadows of skeletal
warehouses in the June dusk.
The Burning
Like a bottle of beer on a dare,
I chug down a mug of scalding
black coffee with four sugars
at a corner table in “The Pit,”
exam cramming, paper writing,
boozy weekend, busted romance.
Like a slinky landing on a step,
Darlene sinks into a chair, laughs
like the wicked sister who steals
boyfriends; she’s high octane caffeine,
custard-filled doughnuts, a torch song,
a concert grand sharply tuned.
She says, Bach and Glenn Gould, I fugue
for the four voices of a torrid wind;
Errol Garner, leaves falling on keyboards;
Earl Hines, keys dancing in infirmaries.
I mention my ex- and Darlene shakes
her hair, bountiful and wind thrown
like a set of bellows fanning flames,
like the hip slinging vamp of the gypsy’s dance.
I can hear my roommate muttering clichés
about fires and frying pans, squared circles.
I’ll skip the pep rally, leap into a flaming ring
and sizzle like sirloin on open fire at a beach bash.
They move like late September moths
to the subtle glow of a secret
legend. Her name
is a shibboleth.
II.
People pulsate through neon flicker and buzz,
clogging arteries in the heart of town, unaware
of its bloat -beat-beat-beat- meaningless
rhythmic pounding beneath the steady dull
hum of a city-wide flat-line,
unaware of atrophied limbs and empty shoes,
unaware that the soul is at the Station on the
outskirts of town.
III.
She opens her arms wide,
her fingers
wide, her mouth…
Her lungs blossom
Blues and Bluegrass.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Not enough. Not enough.
Gail Davies
Outside, 12th Avenue is bare as bone.
Regret grins as a cruel relative,
leaves its rain check, instructions
for fire extinguishers. Beguile me
and burn me, douse me and leave
me a smoking ruin, my heart peeled
like scorched skin. Send Johnny Cash
for the dregs.
©Richard Roe
©Laura Eleanor Holloway
[ “For years Gail Davies has been like one of music's
private treasures,” wrote William Zmudka in the
book, Her Music Is Her Own, “Jealously hoarded by a
relative handful as someone special, a sort of
gourmet's delight. “]
17
Song: That’s The Way of the World
Album: That’s The Way of the World
Artist: Earth, Wind and Fire
Year: 1975
Setting: Pittsburgh, PA, in my friend Crystal’s dorm
room, song playing on her stereo
Theme: Reflections on My First Year at
the University of Pittsburgh
Hometown: Lawrence, PA
Season/Weather: Spring
Verse: We come together on this special day/Sing our
message loud and clear/Looking back, we touched on
sorrowful days, future pass, they disappear/You will find
peace of mind/If you look way down in your heart and
soul/Don’t hesitate 'cause the world seems cold/Stay
young at heart, 'cause you’re never, never old/That’s the
way of the world...
Fresh Woman
At seventeenI stepped onto the bus
To travel from naiveté
To knowledge
On my own for the first time.
On a bright September morningEverything changed
Small-town girl to the Steel CityThe Cathedral of Learning
Beckoned with promise
With vistas unimaginable.
Now in SpringConfidence is born
With the turn of a pageFilled with wisdomVoyages of a lifetime
Start with just one fearless step.
Name Of Song: Into The Mystic
Name Of Album: Moondance
Artist: Van Morrison
Year: 1987
Setting: Chico, CA
Love Interest: Thomas, II
Hometown: Chappaqua, NY
Season/Weather: Early winter, cool and dry
Into The Mystic
"We were born before the wind,
also younger than the sun"
-Van Morrison
It was on the roof,
the south side streets
quiet and still
the skies of your town
not quite a city to me,
bright with stars.
I had seen the Milky Way
on a Colorado highway years before
but that meant nothing now.
We smoked and laid our heads back
to the click of aluminum chairs.
We were together for a while
though we knew it couldn't last.
You loved me so much
you said it had to be past life stuff
like the words in that song
and I liked that.
I was young and you
missed your lost youth.
I went and moved on and you stayed there
but the mystery of the stars never left you
and the song sailed on in my memory.
That’s the way…
©Beth Browne
©Beatrice M. Hogg
Van Morrison
18
Music: Country
Artists: Varied
Years: Ongoing
Setting: Stillwater, OK
Love Interest: Othadell Long
Season/Weather: Summer/Hot
Tom T. Hall
Elvis Presley With Fans - Tupelo, MS
George Jones
George Jones; Tom T. Hall; Elvis
I forget appointments, dates, and time of day but I remember old love-songs: She’s My Lady; Lady Love;
Come Back, Lady; This One’s for You; I Don’t Know What You’re Doing But Keep It Up!
I pull up onions, dig down deep in the hard-packed soil to find a bucket of red and white potatoes. I cut the
okra pods from the tall leafy stalks. I’m itching to my elbows; should have worn long sleeves and gloves. I
pick a basket of fat, juicy tomatoes, eat a couple of tiny sweet tom-a-toes. I carefully pull from the vines crisp
greenbeans and pickle-size cucumbers, leaving the big ones for seed. I pull a few red-globe radishes and some
tender leaves of iceberg lettuce.
It’s getting hot as blazes. I turn on the garden hose, let the cool water flush through my fingers, over my
arms, splash some on my face, and quench my thirst before I sit down in the shade of the house to cool off.
At the sink, I wash the gritty off the vegetables, break beans and put some on to cook. I slice a platter of red
tomatoes, cucumbers, white onions, and place the radishes and lettuce on one end of the platter, with a few
chips of ice. I cut the okra, put some on to fry and put a few bags in the freezer. I check the roast and make
a pan of brown gravy.
It’s time for my favorite DJ’s show, so I turn on the radio, lean back in a cane-bottom chair and listen to
Country Music. Looking Back I Should Have Married You; If I Have to Steal Your Love, I Will; Middle Age Crazy;
You Light Up My Life; Chains of Love. Tom T. sings May The Force Be With You Always. Eddie Arnold sings
For the Good Times. George Jones closes with If My Heart Had Windows. I heave a sigh.
I forget phone numbers, street addresses, area codes, zip codes, but I remember songs by John Denver,
Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, and, most of all, Elvis. Maybe my heart, mind, and
soul have been brainwashed and re-programmed with songs on the radio, in the long lonesome years.
I scrape the new red potatoes, slice some to fry, turn the burner down under the skillet of okra, make tea,
chip ice, listen to the news (all bad today).
But then I hear the chug-chug of my dearly beloved’s John Deere tractor coming down the road. I rush out,
letting the screen-door slam behind me, then I run across the barnyard, take off the chain and hold the gate
wide open.
© Vera Long
(previously published by Anderbo.com - Vera Long was the winner of the 2006 Anderbo Poetry Contest)
19
Name Of Song: Red Red Wine
Name Of Album: Labour of Love
Artist: UB40
Year: 1983
Setting: 116th & Broadway, Columbia University, buzzed & happy
Love Interest: All those mean pretty girls in high school who turned to fantasy
Season/Weather: Crisp Fall Evening
Verse: Red red wine/It's up to you/All I can do I've done/
Memories won't go/Memories won't go/
I have sworn every time/Thoughts of you would leave my head/
I was wrong, now I've found just one thing makes me forget...Red red wine...
UB40
Red Red Wine
Dear Sister,
Just the other evening when I felt my mind playing tricks on me I was thinking how there is something so
comforting & self-affirming about memories & how they hold such a rare & rich & even transcendent sense of
meaning of unconditional belonging & that they can never ever really change or betray like almost everything
else in Nietzche & Voltaire's wicked & self-interested & nihilistic conception of humanity & how in many ways
they are diametrically opposed to all of Freud's defense-mechanisms free & fleeting without any sense of
boundaries & yes God Bless the opposite of man's transparent manipulating & how there's something so nice
& necessary & surreal even so real about a memory as just the other day I was telling Erica about that first
freewheeling evening I had spent with you & your crew up at Columbia & so without further a-duh as she
might very well say let there be no further delay with any of this stray storytelling somewhere around twilight
making suppertime with those sexy sexless girls from Barnard & how there were all these different kinds of
pastas & wines most likely very well just one pasta & one wine yet I'd like to kind of continue on if you don't
mind & on came on at the perfect time the song "Red Red Wine" by that Reggae group from The Eighties
from London or England I think the lead singer was white & making that our theme song for the rest of the
night spending good times with good ol Juan who just got an A on some sort of Art History paper & we all
sat around in this cluttered circle of squares as he eagerly passed it around page by page (saying such spirited
things like "Hey! Are you finished with that one?" & us hesitantly answering "Uhhh...No, not exactly quite
yet...") explaining & analyzing what he believed to be all these brilliant nuances of symbolic meaning with a
beaming & childlike mentality & clearly he was very insecure & interesting & there was this other Don Juan
type of guy who was making at us Casanova eyes while I believe rolling blunts & I remember you & your
friends (might have even been Tamara that pretty Borderline girl from Argentina who always got involved
with crazy men strung out on heroine or else was always the other women in some strange triangulation of
cheating wives & husbands) telling me how he couldn't have any real significant relationships unless there was
some type of intimacy or physical contact of some kind or another & me thinking how could that really be
so right or wrong considering what a complex & cruel city of overwhelming & unnecessary suffering & I even
looked up to him for his willingness to engage in such wild & needy escapades of what I considered to be a
righteous type of reality rather than all of this pathetic & absurd pointless philosophizing that really gets you
nowhere I mean there was really so much more to be said about these romantic adventures than any kind of
cer-ebral bullshit banter where it is true you always ultimately end up excruciatingly lonesome lusting &
longing literally lamenting about some past present or future lady while spending the whole evening tossing
this fantastic frisbee on some big empty quad in the middle of a blessed dripping sleepy-eyed city trying to
find it the last second before it came hurling at our higher than holy happy heads with the fast & funny & fine
high on "red red wine" dry comic athlete Harry Lipman & then all of us piling into some taxi & barreling down
Broadway forgetting time & reality with a certain amount of liberating laughter & explosions of levity & him
20
holding his frisbee out the racing taxi against the palm of his hand in the whipping breeze to test all the rules
& laws of gravity & somehow sneaking it beneath his coat or maybe even being the clever punk that he was
checked it with that big black bouncer at the door & boogying all night at Studio 54 for the first time with
your older sibling that meant the world to me & then noticing in the bathroom with oblivious backs turned
from me Juan & Harry pissing side by side & Juan asking Harry if he liked my sister & me thinking that that
was kind of cool yet how odd it was to view these two older college guys I couldn't help but to really admire
& like casually & nonchalantly chatting about your sister conversing at the urinal & then somehow falling
asleep stripped down to the bare essentials in the deep dark night of the Upper West Side thinking &
dreaming & thinking about that delicious & blissful night not really thinking at all about the future & thinking
how this was a damn fine notion & how Kerouac & Ginsberg & even Hemingway & Buddha must have felt &
were not so much wrong & how they were even right & how it was the first time in my life you did not see
me merely as this annoying little pest yet someone who kept up with the best of them waxing eloquently
about Joyce & Dostoevsky & shocked the hell out of you with my literary ramblings instead of simply being
this bad boy thief who accrued a solid D average & how it is sincerely so strange to be writing this to you
exactly twenty years later the night before I am about to move into my new home with my new wife looking
out to some luminous lawn at dreamy dawn seeing it draped with a gentle dew or snow or some kind of
meteor storm & how I suppose now it's time to finally move on & how there's so much to really be said
about a simple memory which beholds all the meaning & true sense of belonging that can ever & will never
betray you like anyone or anything like some lifelong companion that will stay with you 'till eternity even
when you're sinking in some sea nile wheelchair of old age babbling with a saucer of tea looking out to some
strange & spectacular sea humming the bars that seem all too familiar & might even sound a little something like that soliloquy "Red red wine..."
©Joseph Reich
Studio 54 - 70’s - unknown photographer
21
Name of Song: Paper Doll (written by Johnny S. Black, 1915)
Artist: Mills Brothers
Year: 1943
Setting: Apt. #45 East Main Street, Bradford, Pennsylvania
Love Interest: Gerald & Parma (otherwise known as Boss & The Doll)
Verse: I'm gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real
Boss & The Doll
Music at the Do Drop Inn
(excerpt from “Vincenzo’s Promise,” a book in progress)
During the forties, when money was really tight, Gerald bought Parma sheet music for her player
piano. Paper Doll, was one of their favorites. On Friday nights, when Parma played poker with “the gang,”
Gerald stayed home and listened to Your Hit Parade on the radio. He knew all the lyrics and crooned just like
Bing and Ol’ Blue Eyes.
On Saturday nights, Big Band sounds flowed through their upstairs apartment dubbed the Do Drop
Inn. Laura, Gerald’s sister, played the large carved oak player piano positioned in the center of the living
room. Sing-a-longs were popular. Cousins took turns pumping the pedals to rotate the paper piano rolls.
They created strange sounds by pumping the pedals backwards and loved to peek under the lid and watch the
felt covered wooden hammers pound out favorite tunes: Indian Love Song, Yes, We Have No Bananas, World
War I songs and Broadway show tunes. The funniest song was, I’m My Own Grandpa by Dwight Latham and
Moe Jaffe.
A neighbor skillfully tapped the mother of pearl keys on his accordion and squeezed out Lady of Spain,
O Solo Mio, and Back to Sorrento. Polish friends whirled around the living room on the first note of Beer Barrel
Polka. Parma’s friends, dressed to the nines, sometimes celebrated New Year’s Eve at #45. Once they
celebrated at the Moose Club where Gerald sang along while the Mills Brothers performed Paper Doll.
After WW II Parma went to work in a resistor factory for money to buy a washer, dryer and new
living room furniture. She also decided to give the player piano away because it took up too much space.
Two strong men attached the piano to heavy ropes and lowered it from the porch railing to the sidewalk.
The whole neighborhood watched and prayed the ropes wouldn’t break. The new owner took the piano to
his hunting camp. Rumors spread that he chopped up the beloved piano for firewood.
During the fifties, Parma was always in the kitchen rattling those pots and pans. The former Kane High
Charleston Champ couldn’t resist joining the teenagers. She cut a mean rung on the linoleum floor. Romantic
Gerald, who only slow danced, got caught up in the Twist. After a double hernia operation he kept his
promise to dance the Twist at his daughter’s wedding.
© Carole Longo Harris
22
Name Of Album: Already it is Dusk, String Quartet
Artist: Henryk Gorecki
Year: 2005
Setting: Viewing Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth
Hometown: Radford, VA
Season: Winter/Dusk
Listening To Gorecki’s Already it is Dusk while Viewing
the First Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the
Huygens Probe, 2005
In the dream I’m back in my grandmother’s kitchen,
an art deco, vault-like affair with fifteen-foot ceilings.
The cat, Opie, has managed to squeeze into a sealed tin
of sliced beets, and it’s my job to open it up
so he won’t suffocate. A stranger stands beside me,
a misty figure, the revenant?, to observe my progress.
I use an old-fashioned can opener, and when the lid
just about snaps off, I pull it back while still attached,
and Opie leaps out like one of those goofy coils
in tubes of fake peanut brittle or popcorn.
Bloody juice sprays onto the checkered tiles,
but at least Opie is free, and unambiguously alive,
unlike before, when both alive and dead at once,
he floated with the beets. We have this power –
to close a deal with the wink of an eye.
Gorecki must be the saddest man in the world.
I would like to invite him into my grandmother’s kitchen
serve some tea, ask about the veiled, funeral women.
Liquid methane flows on Titan, with temperatures
of minus 298 degrees. There is something holy
about a day when we all witness what no one else
has ever seen. The staggered white and black tiles
of a thirties’ kitchen, the profound basso of Poland,
Saturn’s moon . . . Saturn, god of melancholy.
At the moment I am about to drink a glass
of burgundy, which by itself will send me stumbling
up the stairs into a bedroom, far from that kitchen,
and Poland and Titan, but, on the other hand,
when I ooze into uroboric sleep, I hope we can all
agree that already it is dusk, and already it is dawn.
Say Gorecki sits in a café in Warsaw
imagining himself on one of the rocks of Titan.
He is frozen solid but observes the rivulets and streams
of natural gas forking around his feet. The terrain
reminds him of the convolutions of a human brain.
Aside from Earth, the solar system has proved
desolate, inhospitable, alien . . . we are alone;
we alone devise both pogroms and space probes.
No aliens, friendly or otherwise, no angels.
Gorecki composes another hymn to dejection, and I,
headphones in my ears, listen to it forty years ago
in my grandmother’s kitchen, before it was written,
before we photographed Titan, and, thereby,
created it. In the dream I become alive in the past,
drink tea alone in my grandmother’s kitchen,
except I am not alone . . . there is that presence
(but not my grandmother, not Gorecki), an ally.
The room is warm and oceanic;
I feel content as soft flames or liquid .
I can gaze into the dark sky and suppose
the speck of light I see is a planet, and revolving
around it serenely, a forbidding moon, a place
so remote, so impossible, that the air chills
and my lungs turn to ice. But only for a moment . .
then I remember that the dream, more real than Titan
or the present, chose me; it’s peculiar logic crafted me.
And with gladness, I boil more water on the stove.
©Louis Gallo
Henryk Gorecki
Photo of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the
Huygens Probe, 2005
23
Name of Artist: Mick Jagger
Setting: Mick Jagger comes to me in a dream,
looking sad and melancholic.
The Hidden Life
In 1959 Sylvia Plath dreamed
that Marilyn Monroe manicured her nails,
Marilyn, though still alive, itched
to swallow those pills three years later;
and soon thereafter Plath’s pruned fingers
turned a greasy knob until it hissed.
Me, I’m stuck with Mick Jagger.
He drifted forth in tattered clothing, meek,
spectral, not the raw Liverpudlian bloke on stage.
I’m here to help, mate, he said sadly,
fusing his rheumy otiose eyes into mine.
What you don’t know hurts the most, he said.
Think I want this job? It’s a hot little Swedish model
I’m after . . . but here I am, by the grace of St. Jude.
So if you don’t mind, let’s get on with it.
It’s what you get when wish fulfills itself:
niches, wormholes, cracks and rips-where real life hides, where you hide, where Marilyn,
Mick and Sylvia hide, where secrets burst
into flavors so new, so startling, the universe changes.
The plot thins; you’re back on the narrow,
waiting for some clink, chirp or pssst to happen.
Or not happen. Until, again,
with the precision of radioactivity,
dream fangs puncture the jugular
and transport you drop by viscous drop:
an Atlas truck loaded with Marilyn’s furniture
runs out of gas on the interstate;
Plath’s casket of lost journals rests on a glacier;
Mick’s larynx squeaks, a smudge of ash.
Me, I cling like a hangnail to the static
of applause that anoints with slow rain.
Me, I’m beating time on some dashboard.
©Louis Gallo
And that’s it, I swear . . . he receded
into some cloudy vista, and I, heart pounding,
shot up in bed. I just met Mick Jagger!
I cried at the darkness,
only to fall back into deeper slumber,
remembering nothing the next morning.
So I relate this nugget
from the perspective of the dream and all that happens
beyond ourselves, the way autonomic nerves
sizzle and bristle without our consent or awareness.
All that churning, all that rock & roll.
Of course it’s a bit odd -Marilyn, a woman, comes to Sylvia; Mick, a man, to me.
Should have been the other way around,
should have been sexy.
Mick and I can still kick around some.
And suppose Plath dreams about Marilyn now.
Or Marilyn, Plath? Or Mick, me-fat chance on the latter, but mysteries abound.
Don’t you get this feeling that the pieces
of our puzzles have fallen into disarray?
Don’t you just want God to arrive
with a corps of angelic engineers and cleaning people?
Bob Vila would do, maybe Miss Manners . . .
or some ancient Greek shoulders carved out of stone.
Mick Jagger
Sylvia Plath
Marilyn Monroe
24
Name of Song: Mood Indigo (Bigard, Ellington, Mills)
Name of Album: The Duke Ellington Songbook
Artist: Ella Fitzgerald w/Webster, Peterson,
Ellis, Brown, Stoller
Year: 1957
Setting: Los Angeles, California
Love Interest: Ellie (1959); Maryanna (1963); learned to
sing the song in 1998/99
Hometowns: Whippany, New Jersey (1959); Marietta,
Ohio (1963); Madison, Wisconsin (1998/99)
Seasons: Any season, after dark
Verse: Always get that mood indigo/. Since my baby said goodbye/ In the evenin' when lights are low/ I'm so lonesome I could
cry/'Cause there's nobody who cares about me/ I'm just a soul
who's/bluer than blue can be/ When I get that mood indigo/I
could lay me down and die.
That Mood Indigo
(1)
It’s like sitting alone, watching television,
a movie that seems vaguely familiar - someone’s gone away, someone else looks
for that someone and there’s no one to tell
you, you have already seen it more than once.
(2)
Lately you’ve been morose.
People ask if you’re O.K.
You used to like their little jokes,
the stories, but now it seems
they want to spill the crumbs
of their lives on your lap,
an endless trail of faithless lovers,
fights with the boss, impossible
children - - They’re cobwebs
in your face, burrs sticking
to your pants - - you itch
to brush them off.
(3)
Looking out the window at night,
the moon’s an orange blaze;
its light stings like sleet.
Stars are the words on a page
you can’t comprehend.
Jettison the moon, it shows
you dark circles under your eyes.
Cover the stars, put the book
away, don’t bother to mark the page.
The radio plays a number you requested
at a small cafe, jazz trio, bass player’s
yellow fingertips on blue strings - used to sing it as a duet, making up
nonsense syllables, little love words.
You can’t turn it off, this melody that blue
would sing if it could - - haven’t gotten
around to those “cure for blues”
clichés sent by friends.
(4)
It’s a song Ella sang at Duke’s place,
that blue kind of rightness,
like a navy dress trimmed with white lace.
You sit alone sipping tea with honey,
nibbling on a hazy blue memory.
Ella - - you heard her live years ago
in Jersey, phrases that sipped your tea
pianist’s chords squeezing lemon slices.
Let memory take its course,
the song repeat its chorus,
and wait for that last phrase,
hold on to that last note
as long as you can.
©Richard Roe
You want to play solitaire
but have no idea where
you put the deck of cards.
So, there’s no use and besides
you don’t like the way the jacks
stare at the queen of hearts.
Ella Fitzgerald - 1940 - Photographer - Carl Van Vechten
25
Name Of Song: A Tisket a Tasket
Artist: Ella Fitzgerald (tenor sax: Wayman Carver)
Year: 1938 recording on the jukebox at amusement
park in 1965
Setting: Paragon Park in Nantasket, MA
Love Interest: Nancy Siegel
Hometown: Framingham, MA
Season/Weather: summer vacation
All the other kids were into The Beatles. Me? I love jazz.
Old time jazz.
Verse: A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I sent a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it
Name of Song: Georgia on My Mind
Name of Album: The Genius Hits the Road
Artist: Ray Charles
Year: 1994
Setting: Chattahoochee River Bank
Love Interest: G. Fox
Hometown: Griffin, Georgia
Season/Weather: Summer, hot and sultry
Verse: Melodies bring memories
That linger in my heart.....
Some sweet day when blossoms fall
And all the worlds a song....
Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find....
Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
The Chattahoochee
I made a list of all the places I would go
before, as Wayman Carver once put it,
“The dude left town.”
Young fellows never hear of him, which is a shame.
I mean, he was –– correctoroony – is –
the father of my man tool.
Yeah, the jazz flute is my gig.
I went first to the last place anyone would go.
Easter Island.
Daddio, this place is far out.
2000 miles West of Chile.
2000 miles East of Tahiti.
From the navel of the world,
the mysterious land of the giant stones arises.
I stood in front of the huge stone heads, “moia,”
that dot the coastline and knew they were cool cats.
They dug what I blew at dawn.
A letter to Nancy.
A-tisket A-tasket.
©Neal Whitman
This river runs deep, deep and wide.
The sounds of the river go deep down inside.
Do you hear the sounds? Listen very close,
To the sound of the river that you love the most.
Think of the ones who have been on the Chattahoochee.
Have felt this cool water, Sautee’ and Nacoochee.
They’ve walked on this ground,
And heard these same sounds.
The rippling water, the wind on their face,
The songs of the birds in this wondrous place.
Go back , back, far far away,
This is the place that you want to stay.
Can’t you see them standing there?
Washing clothes on the river bank without a care.
Standing on the rocks in their bare feet,
Spearing the fish that they all will eat.
The people on the river come and go as they will,
But for the river constantly going nowhere,
time stands still.
©Julia Ponder
Ray Charles
Wayman Carver - The Troubadours Band
26
Facts/Legends
Bruce Springsteen: Bruce originally wrote Hungry Heart for the Ramones back in 1978, but John Landau
(his manager) told him he should keep it because of Bruce's past history of giving songs to other
artists and them having hits with the songs. It became his first # 1 song.
Grateful Dead: The band was going by the name The Warlocks and Jerry Garcia went to a dictionary and
said "whatever I point to will be the new name". He then opened up the dictionary and placed his finger on
the page. When he looked down, he had chosen "Grateful Dead", which is an American folk myth. When a
person pays to bury a body that no one claims it is said to appease the dead & making him grateful - the
Grateful Dead.
Jimi Hendrix: The working title of the Jimi Hendrix guitar classic" Purple Haze" was "Purple Haze - Jesus
Saves" and was based on a long manuscript, according to the late Monika Dannemann ("The Inner Life of
Jimi Hendrix"), "Hendrix's lover at the time of his death." In the manuscript Hendrix stated that the entire
meaning of the song came from a dream he had. Ms. Dannemann said, "he looked down on earth and saw an
unborn fetus waiting for its birth. At the same time he saw spirits of the dead leaving earth. Screams from
the children were reaching into the heavens. The earth became engulfed in a great flood, and later in the
dream he was walking under the sea. Part of the song was about the purple haze which surrounded him,
engulfed him, and in which he got lost.
Dusty Springfield: Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien was born in West Hampstead, England, to an
Irish family, and was raised in the West London borough of Ealing. The name "Dusty" was given to her when
she was a girl, since she had been something of a tomboy in her early years. Dusty was brought up listening
to a wide range of music, including George Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, & Glen
Miller among others. She was a fan of American Jazz and the vocalists Peggy Lee & Jo Stafford. Her father, a
tax consultant used to tap out rhythms on the back of her hand, encouraging Dusty to guess the musical
piece. At age 11, she went into a local record shop in Ealing and made her first record, one of Irving Berlin’s
songs, "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam."
Bob Dylan: Dylan's harmonica is heard on records by Harry Belafonte, George Harrison, Steve Goodman,
Roger McGuinn, Booker T. and Priscilla Jones, Doug Sahm, Carolyn Hester, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Sly &
Robbie. Among the pseudonyms Dylan has used when appearing on others' records have been Blind Boy
Grunt, Tedham Porterhouse, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Roosevelt Gook and Bob Landy.
Robert Johnson: According to a legend known to modern blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black
man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues
musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he
was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. After tuning the guitar, the Devil
played a few songs and then returned it to Johnson, giving him mastery of the guitar. This was, in effect, a
deal with the Devil; in exchange Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.
Tommy James & the Shondells: Mony Mony - the band had the music written, but needed a girl's name
for the title. Tommy looked up and saw the corner of the Mutual Of New York building sign, “MONY. “
“They went up to Broadway and talked all these strangers into coming down to the studio and going 'Mony,
Mony!’ “There were all these serious guys out there having lunch, and we said, 'You want to sing on a
Tommy James record?” Laguna
27
Wu-Tang Chan: The name "Wu-Tang" is derived from the name of the mountain Wu Dang (Wudang Shan)
in northwest Hubei Province in central China with long history associated with Chinese culture, especially
Taoism, martial arts and medicine.
Gladys Swarthout: When Gladys did the movie "Champagne Waltz" in 1937, she sang her songs in five
languages, adding French, German, Italian, and Spanish for the foreign versions of the films, making them
quite popular overseas.
The Kinks: At the conclusion of their summer 1965 American tour, the Kinks were banned from
re-entering the United States by the American government for unspecified reasons. For four years, the
Kinks were prohibited from returning to the U.S., which not only meant that the group was deprived of
the world's largest music market, but that they were effectively cut off from the musical and social upheavals
of the late '60s.
Cannonball Adderley: Known for his voracious appetite, Adderley's high school friends originally
nicknamed him "Cannibal," and the name evolved into "Cannonball."
Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven - On January 23, 1991, John Sebastian, owner and general manager of
KLSK FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico, played the song for 24 solid hours to inaugurate a format change to
Classic Rock. It played more than 200 times, eliciting hundreds of angry calls and letters. Police showed up
with guns drawn after a listener reported that the DJ had apparently suffered a heart attack, later because of
suspicion that - this being 8 days into the Gulf War - the radio station had been taken hostage by terrorists
dispatched by Zeppelin freak Saddam Hussein. Weirdest of all, lots of listeners didn't move the dial: "Turns
out a lot of people listened to see when we would finally stop playing it."
Van Morrison: According to a BBC survey, the song, “Into The Mystic” has such a cooling, soothing vibe, it
is one of the most popular songs for surgeons to listen to whilst performing operations.
Ella Fitzgerald: In 1932, Ella’s mother, Tempie, died from serious injuries she received in a car accident.
Ella took the loss very hard. After staying with her Father Joe for a short time, Tempie's sister Virginia took
Ella home. Shortly afterward Joe suffered a heart attack and died, and her little sister Frances joined them.
Unable to adjust to the new circumstances, Ella became increasingly unhappy and entered into a difficult
period of her life. Her grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. After getting into
trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Living there was even
more unbearable, as she suffered beatings at the hands of her caretakers.
Eventually Ella escaped from the reformatory. The 15-year-old found herself broke and alone during the
Great Depression, and strove to endure. Never one to complain, Ella later reflected on her most difficult
years with an appreciation for how they helped her to mature. She used the memories from these times to
help gather emotions for performances, and felt she was more grateful for her success because she knew
what it was like to struggle in life.
UB-40: stands for "Unemployment Benefits" form #40, a reference somewhat well-known in the UK but not
known in the states. The boys came up with the name for the band while standing in line at the unemployment office. It was the name of the form you had to complete to receive unemployment benefit at that time
in Britain. The album cover was a mock UB40 form
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