Tag Archives: Rock and Roll
Beatles Breakdowns
Returning to home from Old Sturbridge Village, I made the error and glorious decision to drink two beers and listen to the Beatles album Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. My wife was driving, thank God. I found myself once again on the verge of tears, praying to the Lord to help me not break down, repeating to myself internally:
It’s only silly hippie music by English pop stars, it’s only rock music, it’s a low cultural art form, etc.
But I was on the edge of total mental implosion and no one knew but God and myself.
I: Lyric Line of Flight
Cavern Club / black leather / German rockers / proto-youth culture groped its way from Liverpool / TV slowly sped up / modernity invented / flown in planes / swallowed in pills / I watch the second Kennedy funeral on the screen in shades of gray rain / warming to mid-60’s hues / into the stratosphere / a lysergic surge / retinal after-images / intensities of nostalgic color / that British courtesy in understatement / Paul’s voice a bassline / George a guru of six-armed confusion / tasteful: now a meaningless word / it was Apollonian-Dionysiac / my childhood’s soundtrack
II: Poem
They grooved—as our world became another
up from caverns to psychedelic flight.
They look so young in melancholic light
harmonizing black and white to color.
So distant—yet within our life’s short span
they grow apart as the hair grows longer
(The West’s resolve to expire grew stronger.)
Quadruplex visage: young god sold to man.
I crack up beholding the mid-Sixties
lost in late-night YouTubes, I start to break.
time past: removed from the complexities
Recalling every song, the beat, the shake…
They sang the primrose path to confusion
nostalgia replacing resolution.
American Iambs for Springtime
I couldn’t stop movin’ when it first took hold
It was a warm spring night at the old town hall
There was a group called The Jokers, they were layin’ it down
Don’t cha know I’m never gonna lose that funky sound
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news
The skeeters start buzzing ’bout this time o’ year
I’m goin’ round back, she said she’d meet me there
We were rollin’ in the grass that grows behind the barn
When my ears started ringin’ like a fire alarm
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news
Hope ya’ll know what I’m talkin’ about
The way they wiggle that thing really knocks me out
I’m gettin’ high all the time, hope ya’ll are too
Come on a little closer, gonna do it to you
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news
That I’m tired of payin’ dues / Done said goodbye to all my blues
Lawdy mama light my fuse
AND NOW,
The MFA Modern Lit re-write:
spring: The Jokers
(in Hoochie-Koo, the lawdy Hoochie Koo—)
and so the laying-down
until fuse lit
the mama lawdyspread, a truck
trucking the news;
skeeters buzz the grass, rolling, rolling
alarmed: the barn fire
// she had said she would meet me//
in Hoochie-Koo (the lawdy Hoochie Koo)
wriggling, spring knocked
higher // closer than time had known
bitten, dues paid, bit-lit
illiterate
mama lit that fuse
in Hoochie-Koo, the lawdy
Name of a City
So many people have come and gone… their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on — as clear as the sun in the summer sky
BOSTON
Your name remains: a magic word
to conjure nights of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your face, alone
and find my heaven’s hope deferred.
Since unpoetic life occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes long dead.
Nostalgic memory has fed
the embers of a fire you stirred.
You turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your voice again.
Yet memories of you amaze
Engraved in my adoring brain.
In labyrinths we wander free
to meet again eventually.
or decasyllables . . . which is better ?
Your name remains with me. A magic word
To conjure nights and scents of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your tawny face, alone
And find my heaven’s hope now long–deferred.
Since unpoetic life and age occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes that lie long dead.
Nostalgic memory of you has fed
The smoldering embers of a fire you stirred.
One spring, you turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your feline voice again.
Yet memories of you, intense, amaze
Engraved for good in my adoring brain…
On, through the labyrinths, we wander free
To meet in time again, celestially.
Something Japanese:
carp-pools, bamboo, some old monk . . .
yes—Oriental !
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