Home » 2020 (Page 19)
Seated in the summer sun
drenched in heat
reading a novel, alone
how sweet.
With memories of you
drenched in heat,
feet stretched out
along the beach.
Where in the summer sun
you’d sit and read
a novel too, my mother
sweet.
While you’d watch us kids
the swimming sea,
and how you read
effortlessly,
I never wondered then
like I do now,
how a quiet lesson
could teach me how.
I turn each page
my mind at rest,
my mother’s sun
warm on my chest.
The breeze it blows my thought
Away unto the tree
Like branches stretching out
I rustle with the leaves
It’s there among the many
Shadows I can see
The physics of my body
Expand and cease to be
The brilliance and stupidity
of one lone soul
can unleash a myriad of question,
that which need, not always
be answered by anyone,
not even The Wild.
I’ve known a many artist in my day, say
Today old friend you come to mind
And how for a short time, your voice divine
Scratchy and old, though, you and I know
Age is just a number and it’s you who’d show
Me this: Dear, Gavin Heron Vante
Who needed a place to rest his weary head
For the night I offered you some bread
Where that night you had said, Ah man!
I haven’t seen this show in years, mind if I watch
Married with Children, Amen! Amen!
Then later I’d record you playing all the chords
I always had wish I could, watching your fingers
Slide and swoop through Sloop John B
I tried to sing harmonies but who was I kidding
Aloof in my eagerness to know everything and all
You had to offer and more, more, more I cried
Singing, drinking in the night like two old friends
Because we were in fact just two ageless nobodies
In the effortless night of somebodies
Giving me your time, cradling my wine
Looking through old photo’s now
I can still feel your spirit sing softly through
The air vents of my room
The next morning of course, saying farewell
Dropping you at Austin’s Coffee
Collecting your bicycle and taking the trash out for a buck
Needing my fix of early morning talkie
That I’m sure no one ever really gave a hoot about —
Now I hear you’re out of the Coma
That took you too soon like a phantom in the night
You were right when you told me
To take it easy man, oh man, Gavin Heron Van
Where there is no plan there in lies the plan
I now know the meaning of that age old saying
Those were the days, good sir, I give my praise
Sincerely,
Dave
P.S. There’s a place for you here, always
No one holds the answer
For the answer’s in the past
And the present’s always fleeting
Seems like nothing ever lasts
So hold strong for the future
The answer will unfold
Like mud beneath the lotus
Blossom and you’ll know
The butterfly in question
Steady flapping wings
A frenzy of direction
Who does not question me
Call me crystal and I’ll make this clear
The world’s your oyster, won’t you be a dear?
Remember us, when you’re famous
Such a dangerous manifestation
Bite the bullet trigger happy kid
They said break a leg behind closed eyelids
Opportunity, don’t blow it
You’re a shooting star, now show it
Call me Ishmael cause I am drowning quick
Wailing never got you through the thick
What more could we ask for?
Through closed doors
Another kid’s born in the grave
By the third day he’ll be saved
Another wick is burnt too late
Just one more spirit and you’ll feel great
Wipe the Chalice, next in line to drink
Every word has meaning, child
who’s never’d time to blink
This morning I am open
watching a flower bloom,
to all that now surrounds me
as nature is my womb,
born into the sunlight
I’ve one more string to tune,
as all that now surrounds me
my song sung unto you.
You know what they say, don’t yuh?
Can’t live with em, can’t live without em
But don’t get me twisted, I’m not talking about women
though the skin beneath my tongue’s still sore
my heart’s still heavy and well
there’s nothing quite like seeing her smile come morning
but anyway like I was saying to this jug of doom
in the evening gloom where I choose not one but two
and then two more to boot because, well, hell
who am I kidding? Nobody but the moon this evening
cause it’s this bitter sweet feeling
the kind you feel deep down in the rumbling, stumbling night
where it all gets so far gone, where nothing meaningful is born
where it all makes some sort of convoluted sense
and alas, once again I am but the floorboards dull creak
where I am like the riverbed flowing calmly and discrete
where life is but a dream and I am dreaming once again
of you dear friend, rustling like the leaves at my front door.
Oh dear friend, how I long to walk the beach again.
How I long to hear your sick, silly, sweet voice again
like those long ago up all Friday nights of old
all those Brooklyn winter blue’s and yellow streetlights
guiding us home, or at least to Crown Fried Chicken where
like two youthful bums we’d scavenge our pockets for change
enough to buy a couple chicken wings, coke, and pint
enough to settle the bone, cold, sidewalk snow till home
where we’d fall arm and arm up stairs
to that old wood, smoke filled, railroad apartment you’d call Grove.
And though I don’t often pray, in my own little way
I do for you now as I did then, driving back to my Long Island apartment.
I pray this little song of self, this little song of you, this small token of my appreciation
for your boundless soul and effortless style and class.
I ate too much cheese, I’d shout while holding a kitchen knife to my throat!
Where in a Polaroid our youth is kept,
where so many nights while you slept I wept,
where you’d give me your bed for a smile,
where I’d talk with Forest about everything and nothing for a while,
long enough not to feel alone in that maddening, crazy New York glow.
So I write this little poem, not enough but enough to show you
I’m still listening through the terror behind the walls.
Dear friend,
How are you?
I can’t live with you, but hell, I can’t live without you.
Manhattan’s in the Village
God knows we never had the scratch, aligned
I feel inclined to take this time and offer you my best
impression not impressed?
CALL ME SPIDER! CALL ME SPIDER!
I just had to get these salami’s off my back.
I just had to sing this short praise of you Mac.
Everyone I know’s the titles
They just don’t read the words
Writing’s an endless cycle
I start to feel the burn
Sunlight it is healing
Too much can make it worse
Moonlight is revealing
My answer’s questioned first
But who am I to argue
The writing’s on the wall
No pages left to sift through
Like dominoes they fall
Everyone I know’s the titles
They just don’t read the words
This feeling’s infantile
I know not which is worse
Words Of An Average White Male 