Who Do Ya Love?

[Angeline]

That is who inspires or inspired you? A real person? A character in a book? I dunno, maybe not even a being, but a concept.

Here's a challenge to pull a poem out of you. Write about someone or something that inspires you. As for form, you know me...form, feh. You wanna write a sonnet, write a sonnet, or a schmonnet, or a tenga, or a renga, or a ho-ku. Whatever. (Sorry. I get carried away, I know.) Just use the goddamn spell check before you post. (Right, Judo?)

Oh. And in a blatent rip-off of Smithpeter's pic-a-thon thread, feel free to add a photo or illustration if you like. It's ok, right Smithpeter, cause poetry belongs to the universe.

I'll go first.

 

[Angeline]

Laura Nyro

All your life, you have these dreams
These birthday candles
I'll meet you in October
I'll be a little bit older, again
And you'll be silver, red and wine

~Laura Nyro
Fires of the Heart - unreleased


I really love Laura Nyro (and you thought only Lester Young). She was the soulful child prodigy singer/songwriter of New York City in the late 60s and early 70s. Had a powerful voice and wrote some amazing lyrics covered by many. Few people realize she wrote And When I Die and Eli's Coming and lots more. And the scary part is she was about 19 when she was writing it.

Laura died, too young, of cancer in 1997. I just read somewhere that she would have been 55 on October 18. So this is a birthday present for her. Happy Birthday Laura. Thinking of you and a long time ago in New York City.



Once and Now Again
(for Laura)

Laura once Washington Square
walking drinking something hot
winter morning park in snow in
new snow early still the day
the snow still early clean no
junkies yet no flim-flam man
no cocaine blues train buy and sell

at 8 a.m. on positively 4th street
neighbors own the square

old woman with suspicious eyes
a leash and two unwary dogs
two old men who argue finger
pointing at a bench angry at
snow no place for morning chess
a couple young their peacoats
pressed tight heads bent alike
hair the same I could be seeing
double till they laugh they
separate her south to NYU
perhaps and him who knows

and Laura once and future
teenaged empress of the
New York Tendaberry cool
hip sister proud queen of
my tribe urban blues waif in
tweed cap aslant and her hair
tumbledown her soulful liquid eyes
a shaina city songbird glides
along the snow along the square
beautiful and rare as a black swan
cup held carelessly the trailing
scarf her breath the streaming air

sometimes it seemed unreal in
New York City then a stage a
Broadway set a photograph in
black and white when Laura
walked by in unstudied grace

today a memory an echo of another
time in Washington Square Park
but once and now again she is
the natural snow once and now
the emblematic cameo the weaver’s
daughter born for loom’s desire
lives like Bird not gone not
blowed and gone alive a phoenix
rising voice all powerful alive still
wailing timer’s winter city blues
the lady’s gonna love again alive
in flames of December’s boudoir.

 

[JUDO]

Just use the goddamn spell check before you post. (Right, Judo?)

Is this another slam on me and spelling? Gah!

 

[Angeline]

Judo--No way girl

i respect good spelling.

 

[HomerPindar]

Perhaps, in concept, this shouldn't really be a tough thing, but I think it reveals a flaw in my character that I can't nail down a thought to be twisted into a poem on who, or what, I love.

Then again, I am single...

I'm going to get back to this, mainly because it bothers me when I can't articulate a thought. Ok, or even identify a thought to articulate...

HomerPindar

 

[Floater]

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I now he's not your favourite Angeline but,
he's one of mine.
For those who don't know who he is-

The artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart, now a successful reclusive painter under the name Don Van Vliet, carved out a weird, small but enduring niche for himself and the Magic Band in the 60s and 70s, producing a potent but, for many, indigestible mix of raw blues, free jazz and rock n roll. It never made much money but was enormously influential (Tom Waits, P.J. Harvey, Beck and others say he was an important influence on them) and is still dazzling listeners and provoking the kinds of portentious observations from musical academics that he always found hilarious. He was a difficult, argumentative and unreasonable man by all accounts, and his music certainly soundsargumentative and unreasonable, but no one but Dylan in the rock field draws the word genius so frequently from writers and interviewers who met him or know his music well. I saw him live a number of times and he was like a storm at sea on stage. He reminds me of Blake becasue of his shamanistic idiot-savant boisterous unconventional pigheaded determined creatively triumphant and commercially disastrous career. His poetry and music kept me company through some strange times; still does actually. I love the old bastard.


Captain Beefheart – A Glazed Appreciation

Drums bubble up like lava,
Guitars saw the air
Like serrated sunbeams,
A horn shrieks like excited sap,
Bass burps and booms
Like the rumbling guts of some great beast
And over it all,
A swarming voice
Swoops,
Breaks like a flock of dark birds
Into impossible ragged harmonics,
Under a roaring sun.

Improbable lyrics avalanche images –
Bursting bubbles of information
Float over skidpan canyons
In a tranced, magical America:
One red bean, stuck in the bottom of a tin bowl,
Hot coffee from a crimped up can,
Tail feathers claw the air like a hammer,
A mind cracks like custard.

It’s like
William Blake
Stomped up to the mike
And let loose.

 

[Floater]

so much for the spillcheck eh?

 

[Angeline]

Floater ?

If you promise--looks around--not to tell anyone else, shhhh, but I think Beefheart's a genius, too. I only pretend to hate him because my ex was always pontificating at me about how much better he was than anyone I liked. (As if personal taste has nothing to do with it. As if everything is a contest. And and and ... well, never mind that.)

However, I would now like, on no partcular authority, to present you with an award for most amazing sentence I've seen outside of a Dickens novel. This award is presented in the longest coherent content category.The winning entry:

He reminds me of Blake becasue of his shamanistic idiot-savant boisterous unconventional pigheaded determined creatively triumphant and commercially disastrous career.

Good lord man; that sentence is a poem!

 

[Angeline]

And Homar

if you would just stop hanging around chat talking to weird poets who try to drag you into their threads, you'd have more time to dream up an example!

 

[Rybka]

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I now he's not your favourite Angeline but,
he's one of mine.
For those who don't know who he is-

The artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart, now a successful reclusive painter under the name Don Van Vliet, carved out a weird, small but enduring niche for himself and the Magic Band in the 60s and 70s, producing a potent but, for many, indigestible mix of raw blues, free jazz and rock n roll. It never made much money but was enormously influential (Tom Waits, P.J. Harvey, Beck and others say he was an important influence on them) and is still dazzling listeners and provoking the kinds of portentious observations from musical academics that he always found hilarious. He was a difficult, argumentative and unreasonable man by all accounts, and his music certainly soundsargumentative and unreasonable, but no one but Dylan in the rock field draws the word genius so frequently from writers and interviewers who met him or know his music well. I saw him live a number of times and he was like a storm at sea on stage. He reminds me of Blake becasue of his shamanistic idiot-savant boisterous unconventional pigheaded determined creatively triumphant and commercially disastrous career. His poetry and music kept me company through some strange times; still does actually. I love the old bastard.


Captain Beefheart – A Glazed Appreciation

Drums bubble up like lava,
Guitars saw the air
Like serrated sunbeams,
A horn shrieks like excited sap,
Bass burps and booms
Like the rumbling guts of some great beast
And over it all,
A swarming voice
Swoops,
Breaks like a flock of dark birds
Into impossible ragged harmonics,
Under a roaring sun.

Improbable lyrics avalanche images –
Bursting bubbles of information
Float over skidpan canyons
In a tranced, magical America:
One red bean, stuck in the bottom of a tin bowl,
Hot coffee from a crimped up can,
Tail feathers claw the air like a hammer,
A mind cracks like custard.

It’s like
William Blake
Stomped up to the mike
And let loose.

ZAPPA RULES!!!

Regards,                       Rybka

 

[Angeline]

Zappa

So where's the poem Rybka?

 

[Rybka]

Re: Zappa

So where's the poem Rybka?

"Brown shoes don't make it! Quit school. Why fake it?
Do you love it? Do you hate it? - There it is, the way you made it!"

"Who are the Brain Police?"

Regards,                       Rybka

 

[HomerPindar]

Re: And Homar

if you would just stop hanging around chat talking to weird poets who try to drag you into their threads, you'd have more time to dream up an example!

My initial response to this thread came from seeing "Why do you love" not "who do you love." For obvious reasons, this question ~ even though I saw the correct one a second later ~ continued to stump me. Actually, continues to stump me would be more accurate.

Now you've got me "dreaming up an example" of love...

There is this weight that dragged me outside into the storm so heavy the water refused to fall but insisted on theatening overhead in flashes of distant brilliance that failed to illuminate my wet face as I stumbled under the assult of its pulling forth pain
"I don't want to live"
Standing in the dark heart of the storm I am unable to face or to change all the death that insist on destroying still more or lift my hand against the hold of impotence that leaves me unable to change
"Hey, what are you doing out here?"
Drake from the party sees me standing in a storm
"enjoying the weather"
but sees niether me in this light or the storm in the dark
"it seems to fit
that he has already turned and walked away leaving me alone again with all the world dragging me down with thoughts out of control
I don't want to live where I want to die in pain
the gravity of the question ~ me wondering why do I love


Ok, so maybe it's more fitting for the suicide thread than it is for a love thread, but really, it works

I'm off to bed...

HomerPindar

 

[JUDO]

"Found" Frank Z.

Phi Zappa Krappa
Sat Frank Zappa
Staring up at me.

He made many worlds
In his 200 Motels, while
Weasles Rip My Flesh, you see?

The Yellow Snow
'Neath the Zomby Woof
Cast the Black Page so wet.

But Tiddies N'Beer
For Pajama People
Will make Dynamo Hum cum yet.

St. Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast
By Father Vivian Oblivion
Ate a Sear's Poncho he bought.

My python boot stinks
So, Kiss my aura, Dora.
Are experiences that Frank Z. wrought.

That's right, folks!
Don't touch that dial --
Say it again -- with feeling!

I gotta spot that gits me hot,
But you ain't been to it.
No, no, no!

I gotta spot that gits me hot,
But you ain't been to it.
No, no, no!

 

[smithpeter]

nothing

Beefheart's name was always Don's name.
Bluejeans
&
Moonbeams
clear spots
flying paint
riding Mr. Duke
riding my own personal
Mr.Zappa

being a mean critter when you
write or draw or paint is ok
with some

show kindness to the lame,
help them limp better.
I know this is silly-
Don Van Vliet is no Mac Rebennack

 

[Palau]

laughing and choking
smiling and crying
simple chord change
perplex like there is no
other mature weird adult words
left on the bathroom walls for this poem.
it is simple Jimi
star banner spangled
sitting on a rainbow bridge

 

[Angeline]

Night Tripper

Doctor John croons gris gris blues
in urban bourbon growls in gumbo
yaya yowls so jump out Jack cause

He knows Mama Roo was the queen
of the little red wagon and he can
conjure her in his voice and he can
call the witch queen too make her
rise in steamy air floating past the
crypt creeping foggy up your back
making mystic tonal changes elliptic

Some old spirit came this way riding
west burning candles riding Papa Legba
through coffee-scented Congo Square
beating rhythm in the dust forever making

mojo there

The gift of blues comes wrapped in tears
the spirit birthed in pain turned beauty
now made art remained in voices spoken
New World griot voices ancient tales

reclaimed

Buddy Bunk Bechet Oliver
and Louie too, you know
what I mean speckle bean?

Such a long and raucus night remains
Mac feels it too the beads the offering
the feathers the Royal Avenue crawdaddy

Nawlins blues.

 

[Angeline]

Laura Revised

Once and Now Again
(for Laura)

I saw her once in Washington Square
walking drinking something hot the
winter morning park in snow the new
snow clean still early in the day still
early in the snow a curiously quiet
park no junkies yet no fast-talk flim-flam
man no cocaine blues train buy and sell

at 8 a.m. on positively 4th street
the neighbors own the square

old woman with suspicious eyes
a leash and two unwary dogs go by
and two old men jab fingers arguing
pointing at a bench they’re angry at
the snow no place to go no place for
for early morning chess

across the street a couple moves as
one their wool coats pressed together
tight heads bent alike their hair the
same I could be seeing double till
they laugh and separate her moving
south toward NYU perhaps and him
who knows

Then Laura once and future teenage
empress of the New York Tendaberry
cool hip sista proud queen of my
tribe urban blues waif in tweed cap
aslant hair tumbledown her soulful
liquid eyes a shaina city songbird who
glides along the snow along the square
as beautiful and rare as a black swan
her cup held carelessly the trailing scarf
her breath proceeding streaming air

sometimes it seemed unreal in
New York City then a stage a
Broadway set a photograph in
black and white another time
summed up in Laura walking
by in soft unstudied grace

Laura once and now again
the natural snow once and still
the emblematic cameo the weaver’s
daughter born for loom’s desire

she lives like Bird not gone not
blowed and gone alive a phoenix
rising voice all powerful alive still
wailing timer’s winter city blues
the lady’s gonna love again alive
in flames of December’s boudoir.

 

[Floater]

"True love differs in this from gold and clay,"
(Said Shelley, on a particularly good day)
"That to divide is not to take away."


Need Dylan and Beefheart compete
With Doctor John, and overheat
At the though Zappa may be in receipt
Of a place in the sun on Bourbon Street?


Angeline - your ex seems so ex emplify to an ex traordinary degree the sad truth that good taste isn't necessarily accompanied by good judgement.

 

[Angeline]

Ty Floater

I didn't think it was humanly possible for anyone to be more self-absorbed than me, but he managed. lol

Anyway, Captain Beefheart was the more upbeat stuff he liked. He most loved Joy Division. It's not easy being married to someone whose favorite song is Love Will Tear Us Apart Again.

 

[HomerPindar]

Re: Ty Floater

I didn't think it was humanly possible for anyone to be more self-absorbed than me, but he managed. lol

Anyway, Captain Beefheart was the more upbeat stuff he liked. He most loved Joy Division. It's not easy being married to someone whose favorite song is Love Will Tear Us Apart Again.

LOL, hold it, I like that song... Although a friend noted that I love any song with a strong bass line (Morphine, for example), and that song has one of the strongest of Joy Division's collection. Anyways...

I found this poem, inspired by a movie of the same name (I considered adding this to the pic thread, but don't have a pic of this sort of pic, so...) and decided to toss it into the flow of things:

When Night Is Falling

At the base of the cliff,
~from which I've flown,
I buried love.
No more awakening with you
long walks
meals

When night is falling
drawing me close to rest alone
it's easy to forget the warmth of dawn.

Close myself off behind a wall of ice.
What need do I have
~of thoughts of dawn
after burying love at the cliffs
~from which we've flown.

I'm willing to rest here forever
~but dawn comes to the darkness
~to warm me
~awaken me
~thawing.
Love is buried in the heart
~not in ice.

Love teaches me to fly again,
~from the cliffs I've lived upon.

HomerPindar

 

[TheDR4KE]

in the words of TV chefs the world over

here's one I prepared earlier. I was reading a bit of ee cummings at the time, and of course I'm always one to tend towards the metaphysical. The inspiration? See the image attached...





Who is this, I?

A breath.
A breathing in -
where every lung
carries fresh life
to keep this body shape.
Who is this, living I
that lives
but for the grace,
that breathes in
life?

A song.
A melody that echoes
every heartbeat -
heard but in silent still.
A song that weaves me
out of threads of life.
Who is this, singing I
who plays this song,
of me?

A heart.
A beating moving love,
of warmth and fragile
growth, that turns
towards the sun.
Who is this, loving I
who finds no guidance
but the living light
of you, or me,
reflected.

 

[JUDO]

Re: in the words of TV chefs the world over

here's one I prepared earlier. I was reading a bit of ee cummings at the time, and of course I'm always one to tend towards the metaphysical. The inspiration? See the image attached...

Who is this, I?

A breath.
A breathing in -
where every lung
carries fresh life
to keep this body shape.
Who is this, living I
that lives
but for the grace,
that breathes in
life?

A song.
A melody that echoes
every heartbeat -
heard but in silent still.
A song that weaves me
out of threads of life.
Who is this, singing I
who plays this song,
of me?

A heart.
A beating moving love,
of warmth and fragile
growth, that turns
towards the sun.
Who is this, loving I
who finds no guidance
but the living light
of you, or me,
reflected.

Perks! One of my favs on the boards. Good one, D.


- Judo