28 Sunday Apr 2019
Tags
1964, charles aznavour, Georges Garvarentz, NaPoWriMo, poem, rip
the perfect marriage
of the singer to the song
is charles aznavour
with ‘yesterday when I was young’.
Charles Aznavour wrote “Yesterday, When I Was Young” with Georges Garvarentz back in 1964. RIP Monsieur.
21 Sunday Apr 2019
Tags
car hire, don't stop believing, ennui, journey, long haul, NaPoWriMo, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, travel
memory blends all
those long-haul flights into one;
quells at the dispiriting brightness
of airport terminals,
all mouth and trousers,
the bleak unwelcome of them
each time I emerge into another land.
where no one ever held up
a rough and ragged corrugated
cardboard sign with my name
marker-penned across it.
no one ever watched for me.
weary to my soul
with sleeplessness
and the prospect of framing questions,
asking directions, in a foreign tongue,
or wrangling with the car hire firm
for the deal they swore to on the phone,
before half-forgetting to drive
on the wrong side of the road.
arriving where time is different
and you can’t just adjust your watch
in order to fit into it.
I wonder always why I’ve come
and why I always have to go.
27 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in music, NaPoWriMo, nature, poem in a white ribbed vest
a day when the sun keeps breaking through/clouds that bleed light in jagged rims of gold/contrails streaked like messages/in a crisscrossed sky/a plaintive quality to its inbetweenness/its indecisive springness/clear and poignant/as the plangent bell tone of terry hall’s voice/(his face blank and deadpan as the foil in a comedy duo)/on an old episode of top of the pops/the sound of a slightly sulky child/called upon in class when unprepared/petulant/with an edge of melancholy
Not quite finished this …
22 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in love, music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, youth
meetings arranged, they say, never work out
I say we’ve proved them wrong without a doubt
I can’t remember now just what we said
I never could have guessed what lay ahead
as I ran towards you up the stairs
did a voice in my ear cry, “beware”?
even now I’m surprised you recall
such a short time it took me to fall
pretending that my heart still lay elsewhere
when in truth I had long ceased to care
for what I thought I’d never replace
’til in my heart you left him no space
you say, you wonder what was it I saw?
I say “oh, I don’t recall anymore”
my first impressions have been left behind
replaced now by feelings and more lost in kind
sure that you know but you never can tell
when I think I understand you so well
shakes me that you were a constant surprise
or so you appear in my eyes
tempting to think now it will all be plain sailing
old enough now to know there’s no such thing
Just a beautiful song from the album A Distant Shore, released in 1982.
18 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, US
Tags
blog, chantal latchford, death, grant hart, husker du, NaPoWriMo, poem
posthumous praise pours out
with all the bittersweetness
of too little too late,
a cascade leaden with regret,
a familiar call and response,
the side effect of death is appreciation.
now the solar flares
of overdue recognition
burst from every page and screen,
scalding you with their importunity,
obituary, tribute, overview, résumé.
resentment stirs for
the bandwagon jumpers,
their feet still trailing
in the dusty wake
of a beleaguered talent.
the johnny come latelys who
bask belatedly in the reflected glory.
daring to claim him now,
prepared to be generous
now he’s in the grave
and no longer the thorn
in the side of the establishment,
they gladly cut him the slack
so rarely afforded him alive.
I hold a long island
iced tea party in my head.
I do this in remembrance
of grant at first avenue.
Picture of Grant by Chantal Latchford
11 Wednesday Apr 2018
hearing a certain song now
resonates inside your heart
as if it really held strings;
and your eyes begin to leak the grief
that is drowning you by degrees.
your record collection
a roll call of the dead.
it carries the same unexpected pathos
as the accidental discovery
of something banal or mundane
– a note to the milkman,
for ‘one extra pint, please’,
a recipe or an address –
in the handwriting of
a deceased parent, so
familiar and now so seldom seen.
they will never put pen to paper again.
10 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry
Tags
blog, jarvis cocker, kodachrome, morrissey, NaPoWriMo, poem, pulp, ray davies
when jarvis cocker yelps,
aroused by acrylic,
remembering,
in kodachrome,
the first time.
when he tries to control
his sexual urges,
adolescence
drawing him surely,
irresistibly back.
when he revels
in illicit afternoons
under eiderdowns,
when his voice is
distorted by desire.
when he doles out
romantic advice
to someone else’s
girlfriend, forlornly
wishing to be noticed.
when he is thwarted,
passion unrequited,
and languishes in
the bittersweetness
of ‘I told you so’s.
when he resigns himself
to best friend status
and watches her
waste her youth
on someone unworthy.
when he talks to you
in a hollywood club
or sends you a postcard.
when he djs at a friend
of a friend’s birthday do.
when you ask if he’ll
give up smoking once
you’re married, and he says
something about filters
you don’t understand.
when you correspond
about sixth formers
in white lab coats and
your dad succumbing
for ever to prog rock.
when you and your sister
dance to songs that
actually mean something
at indie nights by the score
all through the nineties.
when he colours
his hair with glints
the shade of poppy
and the fans almost fall
through the balcony.
when, wearing sunglasses
on his head, he pokes fun
at the upper classes
or castigates those
who should know better.
when there is no one
else quite like him
for leavening disdain
with compassion,
a condiment of empathy.
when songs start in mid-
conversation and he beckons
the camera in closer,
confidentially
urging you: ‘listen’.
when he dissects
class divisions
with a scalpel of satire
but his tongue still
firmly in his cheek.
when, in a few years more
he’s what they like to call
a national treasure,
a sir ray davies or
a morrissey.
when there was never
a more heartfelt chorus
of ‘yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah’s,
when they somehow
kind of say it all.
More on Jarvis and Pulp on bashfulbadgersblog – lyrics; aside on his art school days, mentions here and here.
06 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in music, NaPoWriMo, nature, poem in a white ribbed vest
04 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry, US
the softest soft focus
on the bleached out face
of the famous old folk singer,
her features, once so strong,
so definite, half erased
by highlighting,
as if in mid-dissolve
to the next shot.
insubstantial
as a wraith
when she used to be
so vital, so present,
grounded as a tree,
an earthiness to her
that connected to the stars
and sun and sky.
now she is stripped
of personality,
rendered generic,
blonde and ironed out,
almost to the point
of invisibility.
her song remains
her monument,
vibrant, trenchant, true,
her stairway
to immortality.
22 Saturday Apr 2017
walking on a chalk hillside.
the going is deceptively
treacherous.
oasthouses in the valley
tip their tipsy hats to us,
a village dozes, mistily
picturesque in the distance.
picnic on a scarred slope
between stands of hawthorn.
everything you set down
slides and rolls away,
prompting swearing and
a general loss of temper.
reach out sodden cheese and
tomato sandwiches from
crumpled packs of tin foil,
flasks of tea, thin and lukewarm
with the instant plastic flavour
of a summer day’s outing.
arguments and alliances,
reggae on a cheap transistor
radio swinging on our hips,
sunshine through a speaker,
rescuing the day from a bad mood.
Song is ‘Zimbabwe’ by Bob Marley.
