• about the header image

poem in a white ribbed vest

~ poems every day of april

poem in a white ribbed vest

Category Archives: music

unfinished

27 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, nature, poem in a white ribbed vest

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

fun boy three, spring, terry hall, top of the pops, tunnel of love

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 …

Advertisements

plain sailing by tracey thorn

22 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in love, music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

a distant shore, plain sailing, poem in a white ribbed vest, tracey thorn


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.

‘if your heart is a flame burning brightly’

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, US

≈ Leave a comment

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.chanspicofgrant

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

death and the musician

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in family, music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry, US

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blog, death, grant hart, grief, husker du, nostalgia, poem, rip

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
grant et al
 familiar and now so seldom   seen.
they will never put pen to
paper again.

‘well it happened years ago’

Featured

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

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.
jarvis

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.

afterwards

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, nature, poem in a white ribbed vest

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blog, NaPoWriMo, poem

he is an imperfect
reflection of himself,
in a stream disturbed
by a thrown pebble,
his edges ripple out
in distorted concentrics,
unrecognisable,
a song played
at the wrong speed.

swansong

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry, US

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

carly simon, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, you're so vain

carly

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.

daytripper

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by bashfulbadger in family, music, NaPoWriMo, nature, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bashfulbadgersblog, blog, bob marley, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, reggae

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.

rhapsody

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by bashfulbadger in music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry, television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

evan williams, george blagden, mark rendall, take me away, versailles

he sings a song in church,

absorbed by a melody,

transfigured by

something not quite holy.

his sweetly solemn face

as serious and intent

as a choirboy’s when

tasked with a tricky solo

at a special sunday service.

 

he avoids all the kind eyes

that graze his skin with looking

and pierce his heart with longing,

directs his gaze up and away,

as if to apprehend grace.

 

he clears the nerves out of his throat

and shakes off shyness with a smile,

swallows once to prepare himself.

and the onlookers drink him in

like a long cool glass of water.

 

he turns, unfurls like a flower

to sabbath’s stained glass sunlight,

throwing spangled jewels

of ruby and emerald on wood and stone.

his face upturned, gleaming,

he is the most radiant of them all.

 

Video is Evan Williams, George Blagden and Mark Rendall of Versailles performing Evan’s song, ‘Take Me Away’.

‘wolfman agenda’

15 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by bashfulbadger in alejandro rose-garcia, love, music, NaPoWriMo, poem in a white ribbed vest, poetry, shakey graves, travel, US, weather

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

alejandro rose-garcia, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, shakey graves, wolfman agenda

it’s the lonesome sound

of the north wind outside

a mountain cabin

in a winter deep as forever

in an old fairy tale;

where a jilted lover hanged himself

one desperate christmas morning,

his feet swinging loose and free

in old sports socks from a used to be

a dollar store, threadbare at the heels

as the fabric of his life,

wrung out in its final spin.

it’s the lostness of a traveller

weary of new horizons and

hungry in his bones for home.

it’s the fierce and burning longing

that repossessed his soul.

 

Video is Shakey Graves’s ‘Wolfman Agenda’ from album Nobody’s Fool.

← Older posts

your chance to choose

age aidan turner alejandro rose-garcia bruce springsteen children's novel emily dickinson family generation war greece love movies music nanowrimo NaPoWriMo nature poem in a white ribbed vest poetry prose rome shakey graves television tennis timothy b schmit travel Uncategorized US war weather writing youth

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • April 2018
  • April 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014

‘forget that I remember/and dream that I forget’

  • court yard
  • cloak-and-dagger love
  • ptsd
  • unfinished
  • sundown
  • head teacher
  • primary
  • ornament
  • plain sailing by tracey thorn
  • thistledown
  • abduction
  • privilege
  • ‘if your heart is a flame burning brightly’
  • voyager
  • nonhuman
  • diminishing returns
  • malpractice
  • loose cannon
  • unreconstructed
  • death and the musician
  • ‘well it happened years ago’
  • 31 upland road no.2
  • 31 upland road no.1
  • inclement
  • afterwards
  • dickinson
  • swansong
  • leave-taking
  • wedlocked
  • ambergris
  • the way he leans
  • vanquished
  • hieroglyphic
  • probationer
  • root canal
  • trespass
  • peripheral
  • morning after
  • daytripper
  • transported

musings on music, tv, tennis and the kinks: bashfulbadgers blog

John Inverdale infected with chronic case of foot in mouth disease

John Inverdale infected with chronic case of foot in mouth disease

‘I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show’: connecting the careers of Ray Davies and the man cast as him in Kinks movie

‘I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show’: connecting the careers of Ray Davies and the man cast as him in Kinks movie

‘He stuns you by degrees’: Benedict Benjamin at The Harrison

‘He stuns you by degrees’: Benedict Benjamin at The Harrison

You know what rhymes with happy? A jaded armchair viewer on the sappy Christmas movies blighting the TV schedules this holiday season

You know what rhymes with happy? A jaded armchair viewer on the sappy Christmas movies blighting the TV schedules this holiday season

Celluloid villains and heroes: casting news on the Kinks movie

Celluloid villains and heroes: casting news on the Kinks movie
Follow poem in a white ribbed vest on WordPress.com
Advertisements

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy