So Long, Lonesome

30. Windshield Wipers

September ends in rain
wipers going, window open, dampness

waiting at the light watching oncoming traffic
for a half mile in front, headlights on,
coming down the hill
depressing me

to a child this could be
a holiday parade, some wacky race,
but it feels like a mass evacuation,
some one's funeral

September, it ends in rain
just before whatever October
has in store
and the bite of dark November

I wish I had something lighter
to tell you

the streets are wet as are the
black trunks of trees,
the smell of rain, sound of your foot steps,
the dripping branches.

Fists in empty pockets,
you walked everywhere then,
always hungry,
thinking at least it's still warm.

You could feel your heart.

29. Tangled Alright

Never know who you'll see,
one of these days it might be me.

When the mask drops or
the grip slips or
the invisible line is crossed or
someone turns on the lights.

It gets closer.

Low -Lullaby

28. Not Without Glory

Warm and humid today for Fall,
but it progresses relentlessly
despite the daily skirmishes
put up by a few stray
raggedy assed
rebels of summer.

The hard framework of the trees begin to show
grey and brown and stark against the sky
which has gone the color of war.

At night we close the windows
and reach for blankets.

It's dark now when we rise, and
getting dark again on the commute
home from work.

It's the struggle that makes me love this season.
All in vain -

Winter howls in the near distance
running it down like a pack of
hungry wolves, and
the long cold darkness
inches this way steadily
and unblinking to
snuff this.

In the meantime, these
warm days of Indian Summer-
brilliant sunshine and dry pleasant air
or gentle rain, the smell of earth
and changing vegetation,
under magnificently clear and painted skies -
moments of staggering beauty.

Fleeting...

It should probably just quit,
give in to looming darkness,
surrender to the cold - lie down, let go...
it's inevitable...

But every year the struggle blazes -
orange, red and yellow - bravely,
as though there were some chance,
until it is quietly and finally
overwhelmed,
not without
glory.

Like us.

27. Haiku For A Late September Morning

Rainy morning breaks
Bleary, Weary, and Dreary
Three Dwarves of today

Goddamn Thing Keeps Stalling

You give the thing a violent shaking, cursing it, partly because the days and nights have conspired to seal you out, not overtly, but it's clear your access has been limited. Like a table of high school girls carrying on loudly as though you weren't there turning your questioning of crazy into knowledge. The leaves are gold in the warm dry air tinged with wood smoke and they fall intermittently to the ground already dry. It's too dry here now, you say to the dusk, who wants nothing to do with you, and you flash briefly on the whole area going up in a tornado of fire - the house, the neighbors, all. You cannot help but notice that half the world drowns while the other half burns. You'd better get the rest of the grass cut.

26. Infinite Samba

Brazil
is a place in my mind.
It sounds a little like this,
it feels a little like a soft
warm breeze,
and its gentleness is
almost too much to bear
if you think about it.

But you don't think:
you close your eyes, you listen, you feel
and this note of smooth beauty
just carries on and on - unwavering
unbroken.

Of course no one lives here,
and you cannot stay,
but it's a nice place to keep
tidy and tucked away.

1984 - Let's Go Crazy and 99 Red Balloons

1984 was the year I graduated high school and left home. It was a bad year on the pop charts as I look back. Here's a couple that I thought were pretty good back then. I would not have admitted to liking Prince at the time, but I kinda did.

1984 - This Didn't Quite Make The Billboard Top 100, But It Was Certainly My Theme Song

25. Open House

My wife went to the open house at our
daughter's new middle school,
a school that she - so far - absolutely loves.

One of the teachers told the parents a story about how she
had the students come up with the classroom rules this year.
Our daughter's contribution was,

"Be excellent to each other".

The town where this school is located is
currently embroiled in national controversy
over a case of school bullying that
resulted in the suicide
of a 15 year old girl
last year.

I couldn't help but wonder
who made up the rules in
her classroom.

24. The Hatch

I'm not suicidal, or clinically depressed
(most of the time), though my writing
often reads that way.

I am not really planning to fake my own death
and relocate to Brazil, though I have said so dozens of times
and would love to see Brazil.

I think about running 100 mile races, hiking from coast to coast,
dropping out of the world
and walking the earth in some kind of pilgrimage
until I expire or something
magical occurs.

Sometimes I think about dropping silently off
the stern of the ship and just
bobbing like a cork out there as
the sun sinks down
below the smooth surface.

I need an out to hang in, that's all -
even if it's just in my head.

Especially if it's just in my head.

Awakening

It was 1982 or 83 when I heard this song for the first time in the middle of the night on a little left-end-of-the-dial community radio station (god bless those that remain). The two links below it are songs that came out of that same time period and made deep impressions on me. When you're an angry kid, unable to relate, the energy of this music spoke straight to my heart. If it didn't save my life, and it probably did, it definitely saved my sanity.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hof4EESpe_k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIRCXJIAMJU

23. Mansion Squatters

Spend your time envying what you're missing,
shift gears to the single minded pursuit,
and before you even have time to realize
you've got it,
you start worrying about losing it,
your new pastime.

Yes, of course there's
medication for that.

All the while something whispers,
Give it up, let go,
commit to madness,
walk away
and away and
away
and
away.

Can you hear it?

22. Long Distance Call

He had someone call me today
after rummaging through his phone book
wanting to talk to someone.

He feels alone,
probably scared, wanting to recapture it all
before the light goes out.

Friendships are important to him -
were important to him -
how do you say it?

He's dying, actively,
this last month or so.

He's too tired to stay on the phone,
his voice is thin and too weak for understanding,

I tell him I wish I could be there,
he says he wishes I could be there too.
I tell him I love him,
he tells me he loves me too.

I have no more words,
I am too weak now for words,
and he is too tired to hear
them anyway.

Midnight Oil - Short Memory

This song came out in 1983, and this performance appears to have been given fairly recently. Regrettably, we have learned little from it.

1983 - I'd Have Gone Rockabilly If I Had Better Hair

21. Dining Alone

The man saying those bad things to you
is you, you tell yourself,
and that's a partial truth, but your white lie is forgivable
because taking control of it is the only way to cure it,
and you have to believe cure is possible.

There's a pound of ground beef sizzling
in the frying pan.
I smell meat and fire.
It makes me want to kill with my teeth.

You can get lost down this column of days and nights,
waiting for something,
being the unrecognized Prince,
it ain't long - the time - and you can get lost.

But it's so goddamn long,
too long to wait.
I'm going to kill something with my teeth.

20. Midlife Haiku

the barber shop: proof
enough - grey hair falls, squinting
to assess damage

Art Form

They went to a street art fair today - a family day under partly sunny skies. The boys stood in line for balloon animals and watched blacksmiths and break dancers do their respective things. The man wanted to ask the chainsaw sculptor to sculpt him as a corpse and float him across the pond of self-pity and duck shit in the park, and maybe set him alight after dark. Fire entertains, and the lack of it, well, it simply bores. The boys were smiling, eating kettle corn, and the grey clouds went on whispering hideous. The balloon man asked the older of the boys if he wanted a fierce face on the octopus or a happy face, and the boy chose the happy one.

1982

19. I Didn't Mow The Lawn, Again

And just like that
the stuff seems to have run out - some neurotransmitter
or another, and everything is grey and still
in such a way that irritates
like someone staring at you when your resistance is
low.

I'm clumsy, prickly, no spark, no ideas -
no fire,
and because it seems to have run out,
I can't imagine that those things
will ever be back.

Then you get into feeling like it's too late,
a feeling you've known since 22,
or was it 12?

Sometimes you just have to leave it
alone.

18. Apple Picking

Life is more than work
more than horror, more than pain
more than chasing a buck and paying your creditors
on time in hopes of getting out from under.

Life is more than conflict -
though it certainly is that too - all the goddamn time,
more than striving, struggling, worrying, suffering, bickering.

Life is also your boy playing flag football,
your girl taking pictures of the boy,
your youngest saying "this is the best day ever" yet again,
spilling coffee in the car, picking apples, leaves turning yellow,
watching your kids on the seesaw, drinking new cider together,
a petting zoo, playing volleyball not very well
with your wife and two older kids while the littlest
sulks on the stairs with his face in his hands
wanting popcorn just as though it was
the most important thing in the world.

All this is life too, not all bad,
not even half bad
and precious.

17. Transparent

A row of four trees with leaves still green.

I'm walking underneath
the sound of hundreds of birds
all talking at once -
a stock market rally, a protest nearing violence,
some total quality management team building initiative,
spirit pilots chanting honor to their emperor and to death.

The southern migration assembled,
and I never saw one of them.

16. Sniff? Sniff? Is that You?

We spent a summer together,
he and I,
facing Alaska - come what may.

Carrying shingles and sheet rock in Anchorage,
days and nights of endless cold rain in Seward
sealed in plastic on the rocky beach
under socked-in Nietzschen mountain
peaks, a month and a half too early for the salmon
run and ill prepared to wait it out.

Seals watched curiously from the water
and called us greenhorns telepathically.

Facing pneumonia and inevitable starvation
we hitched down to Kenai and camped in the gravel pit
with territorial red squirrels and the skinny and fantastic
Thompson brothers who drove up from Texas
and, ultimately, a couple of hundred other migrants
waiting for the fish and work.

He used to talk about killing a bear with his jack knife, just to piss
me off, and though I knew what he was doing, it worked every time.

We danced the Stations of the Cross on our hill top for the entertainment of others.

We spontaneously danced with three moose
we almost bumped into on the trail in twilight,
all five of us running in place in dangerous proximity,
caught by surprise, unsure which way to run.

We spent a lot of time in the tent reading with our
backs to one another trying not to think about food.

One day I was doing just that and he sniffed.
A moment later he sniffed again, louder.
And then again even louder, until I looked at him annoyed.
He was calling me -that sniff was my new name.
I think I laughed for days over that.

And I'm laughing now hoping that
the visitor to this blog
from Poland is you,
old friend.

Sammy Ramone

Someone commented that my boys look like my brother and I as kids. I was the older one with darker hair, eyes and temperment, and my brother, the younger, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, smiling. Maybe that explains this tension between the boy and I - this difficult thing. He recently learned to tie his shoes, I didn't even know he didn't know, so I taught him when I found out. This morning he tried on a black faux-leather jacket, and with his bangs hanging down to just above his eyes, I told him he looked cool like one of the Ramones. He didn't know who they were, but he was pretty pleased with himself none-the-less, and that was nice to see.

15. Stand or Fall

The scattered leaves of memory
suddenly whirl upward, and I can hear them -
many of them - browning and tattered,
crisp and crumbling interspersed
with an occasional brilliance
of color- orange and
maple red.

Like Mickey the Bus Driver who saw and
understood something about it -
going much further than he had to
to protect them and their bright and fragile parcel
from the cold slush and grimy snow
of winter there.

Maybe he wanted to be me then,
I was young and burning - hell,
I even wanted to be me,
for once.

There's a cover charge for looking back.
A price to pay for what you say.
The dull and terrible cost of silence.

14. Elders

The Alaska Native Elder,
Walter Austin, looked me in the eyes
briefly and told me the first thing
I had to do was heal myself of
Anger - the first negation of healing.
I didn't know at the time that doing so was a life's work.

The Lakota-Wasichu Elder,
Robert Morgan- man of many lives in
Massachusetts, Montana, New York City, New Orleans and Alaska
put his bear's hand upon my shoulder and told me
my job was to learn how to be a human being.
I didn't know at the time that doing so was a life's work.

The Yupi'k Eskimo Elder,
Rita Blumenstein, one of the world's 13 Grandmothers,
told me gently that medicine is a living thing
and it comes directly from the Eye of The Universe.
This medicine is also known as love -
and hearing that made me cry.
I didn't know at the time...

I miss them.

And I wonder who will
know what to do when they go?

1981- Devo and The Greg Khin Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEVqFB4WUo&a=GxdCwVVULXehz8fJa4HNjdK66sXP6b6K&list=ML&playnext=1

13. Oh Sleep

13 is a tough number,
or at least a good
enough excuse
for why
I have nothing to write about tonight.

I'm home -
not working, with a
very strong chance of sleeping in my
own bed
uninterrupted.

And this in itself is worthy
of an epic.

Wars have been waged for this, and
entire civilizations have collapsed for
want of it.

Tonight I close with
the hunted thing.
I shall covet you no longer,
track you no further.

I'm already tasting the moment
I tear into you
and fall down and
down wrapped in your
tender
mercy.

1980 - Gary Numan and Christopher Cross

I couldn't get enough of "Cars" back then - didn't sound like anything else on the radio, and my discovery of punk rock was not far away. The next one is a little more tongue in cheek - we used to mimic the backing vocals for fun. It's a good song though, revisited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur8ftRFb2Ac

12. Another Way Of Putting It

He lies out there
face down on the sidewalk
blubbering like some
pathetic
stage clown.

He's a grown man,
a drunken man,
and I am looking down
on the two police officers
who are looking down
on this maudlin
performance.

They're tied up now,
when all they wanted to do was drop him
at the shelter for the night.

He's wailing, can't walk under his own steam,
and he's not making sense
so, they have to wait
for an ambulance now.

One of the cops says,
"stand up !" , and I hear his frustration,
but he keeps a lid on it while
I am struggling to do the same -
the guy is very, very loud -
and I'm just a gawker in
the window.

I feel no pity for him -
only annoyance,
the way you might feel about a guy
trying to write a poem who
uses the word  "longing"
too damn
many
times.

1979 - Styx and Toto

The Knack's "My Sharona" was the big one for 1979, but I posted that not too long ago. Here's a couple of others that were significant to my brother and I that year.



Very honorable mentions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQ9dm7zaQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qqp_sBq47I&feature=related

Jack says...

The real poet in the house is four year old Jack. He'll stay quiet for an hour or so, just looking out the window, and then he makes some sort of pronouncement. A few minutes ago it was, "cheeks and eyeballs".

Then he said, "for a snack, let's have cheese and crackers, grapes and elbow".

I think I'm just going to pursue journalism (reporting what he says) and let him tackle the poetry.

11. 9/11

My 4 year old
closing his eyes for bed
tonight said,

"Never be afraid. Let there be hope."

1978 - Patti Smith and Sweet

Bethel, Alaska!

Hello, Bethel!! Thanks for visiting. I still remember well how Bethel felt in September - that cold edge in the wind, low grey clouds - a feeling of urgency with winter bearing down fast. I miss Alaska tremendously still.

In September, I miss everything.

10. Quit It

How do you know God's will?
What God wants of us?

Yes, I'm talking to you.

Because
somebody's wrong here.

And I think it's
everybody.

1977 - Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle

By 1977, rock'n roll had penetrated my psyche and I was well on my way to teen angst, frustration and  directionless energy. But the romantic was still there. Below are some links to honorable mentions from the charts that year that represent both sides.

From The Rock and Soul Side Side - Heart, Kansas, Stevie Wonder and The Atlanta Rhythm Section.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4nWy8pmIM4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw6_VXPwm6U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH36ugGsy4M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPdLb69-qk

From the Romantic Side - David Soul, Barry Manilow (yeah, and I'm proud about it too), Crosby, Stills & Nash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSF1CF2deA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRWMixC5jpQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbM7AOi2eXM

Wait Til Your Unconcious Gets Home

It scares the shit out of me to consider that the content, the color and tone, of my thoughts might have something to do with creating the outside world. I mean, we're all part of this thing - inhaling the outside and exhaling the inside, consuming as we are consumed. We make a contribution to the whole, right? So when we do really stupid shit like burn other people's sacred objects as a means of "standing up to terrorism" something happens to the world, right? Of course, when the world media hypes the threat of this cracker jack box full of kooks beyond all rational proportion, something even greater will happen to the world - if this logic is correct.


I hope it's not true that my thoughts can take the entire human race by the throat and give it a good, strong, five-minute shake because that just wouldn't be nice

9. Walking In The Sand

Unexpected,
this sudden feeling of falling.

A sensation of the
heart
firmly squeezed
and wrung -
just once.

You're a fool
for this
but still alive
after all.

1976 - Rhythm Heritage - The Theme From S.W.A.T.

Oh yes, the SWAT theme. My brother and I and a friend of mine used to do what we called "neat moves" to this theme. Wait a minute. No, it's not like that. And the moves were nothing like the quality of those demonstrated in this video. It was more like throwing ourselves around, diving over hedges, running summersaults and that kind of thing. We wanted to be stunt men. I was10 years old. I also wanted to be on Soul Train.

8. This Year You Write Your Novel

I went into a bookstore tonight
with the intention of breaking
a taboo.

Nothing to get jailed over,
but I
was planning
on reading
a book about writing -
novel writing.

Taboo because I get
all precious
when I think about writing -
like it has to come completely
unsullied
direct from the source
without influence
or external
direction.

Raw -
no tricks
no technique

If someone teaches you how
to do it,
I think to myself when I'm precious,
than it is probably not
it
after all.

And I'd like to believe
I've got a little of it
in me,
you know?

Truth be told,
I'm a little afraid
I don't.

In the local section
I saw the cover of a book
featuring a portrait of a
familiar face.

The author is a former co-worker.
A clean, slim volume of poetry

Why so hard to accept
that you are
a writer?

Is it any harder to believe
than
you, of all people,
are a
psychotherapist?

Get to work.

1975 - Janice Ian - At Seventeen

This song staggered me back then, and it still does. Here is a song that was definitely not background music. Hearing her sing it is like reading a desperate letter from a friend or having the song whispered in your ear.

I posted Ballroom Blitz last week, that was the other big song for me that year. The expression of an entirely different impulse. .

7. Main Street

George's Flowers,
in business
on this block for 20 or 30 years
is suddenly gone
and the building is for
lease

The exterminator
a few blocks down
also very recently
closed
and that building is for
sale

Across the street
the Asian market and 99 cent store burned
but they gutted
the building
and seem to be trying to
rebuild

There are at least 10 churches
and a botanica
on this end of Main -
I was baptized in one of them

Half the churches
are in storefronts now,
maybe there's room
for two
more

It just turned 6 o'clock and
one of the fortunate ones
with a steeple
sings out with its chimes for a minute
and then
stops
self-consciously

I'm in the bar
across the parking lot
writing this and
drinking one, maybe two
but stopping there

There's a soldier wearing utilities in here
an old man with a dull eye and cane
and the bartender

For a moment they watch a man
in black and white
sinking in quicksand


The old man is talking to the soldier
loudly about crack (a competing religion)
crime, tornadoes and hurricanes...

"It's gonna happen!"

He says he carries a gun at night
and the soldier changes the channel
to CNN

Maybe they can tell us what's going on

When that fails
he changes it
to baseball

Jack Says...

"It's not hard being four. I want to stay four forever" spontaneously from the backseat while the two of us are riding home.

Strangers in The Garden

We went to Plymouth Plantation over the weekend to do something vacation-like before we are seized in winter's icy grip. There are basically two parts to it, a Wampanoag village and a pilgrim settlement, both staffed by people in period costume doing the work of the day - tending the animals, working the gardens, repairing buildings. In the Wampanoag village, two of our kids were making corn husk dolls with a Native man, and the third was walking around with me. I got the notion to take a picture of a sunflower and took a step into the garden area to do so.

" Are you a stranger?", asked a little barefoot girl dressed in buckskin, "because strangers can't go in the garden".

"Come on" she said, taking both of us by the hand "let's run".

1974 - The Loco-Motion - Grand Funk Railroad

It's This.

If you happen to be just tuning in and wondering about all this easy listening music from the 1970's and these numbered entries, well, here's the deal. I'm trying to write a poem a day during the month of September. September introduces Autumn, and Autumn brings with it nostalgia. This got me thinking about the background music in my life - how it kind of seeped into me, like it or not, and contributed to me becoming who I am . I thought I'd look at the Billboard charts and try to pick a song that made some sort of impression on me for my first eighteen years. I'm about 7 years in and it's been tough narrowing 100 songs down to one. Anyway, that's what's going on.

6. Labor Day

There are 47 minutes left
to the sixth day of September.
And midnight is the deadline
to have a poem typed -
good, bad or otherwise.

It's Labor Day, and I'm working an overnight shift
trading my time for money then
giving the money to
the entities that own me.
This is the economy
at work.

It's a bad trade,
but I don't see any options.

A part of me shivers a little
like, by saying that, I might
jinx it
and end up like so many others -
unemployed, losing their homes,
life turned on its head.

The other part of me
says,
SUCKER.

Today we stayed inside,
because any sort of movement
outside
seems to cost a fortune,

and I listended to the kids
laugh and fight

and remembered that
I am
fortunate.

1973 - Another Selection Because Rock Is Necessary, and Silly Rock Is Good For Your Health

I'm including this just because it rocks and used to get me in trouble on the school bus for flinging myself around, the lyrics are profound,these guys are Dutch and they made the charts. Some times when the people speak, they do so in wisdom.

Two for 1973 - Jim Croce and Paul Simon

1972 - Saturday In The Park - Chicago

There were too many omnipresent songs to pick with confidence in 1972, but this one fits the bill.

1971 - Joy To The World - Three Dog Night

This seemed like it was always in the background back then too, and it was pretty hard to feel bad when it was.

5. Octopus Song

Occo-pusses never be in the su-u-un,

he sings over and over
with arms stretched wide,
operatic visage,
vibrato in full effect.

The spelling and grammar will come later.
The passion, the lyricism,
the use of metaphor
tapped directly from the
cosmic
unconscious
are here
now.

Jack is four years old,
and he is singing me
his song
first thing
in the morning.

1970 - B.J. Thomas - Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head

This song was in the background during most of my childhood. B. J. Thomas had quite a few hits during the 70's, and Burt Bacharach's songs were all over the charts.

4. Spared

Outside tonight, it's warm
and so humid
I believe I can swim through it.
Hurricane Earl hasn't done much here
but drag in half the ocean's moisture
stored in low-hanging
clouds like full cheeks.

It's been like this for eight hours
now,
like it's restraining itself,
waiting for the perfect moment.

I stood out there on the quiet, muggy street and
noticed the trees and shrubs
were
tensely attentive,
like they know something.

I listened to the trees to see if they could tell me about the weather.
I listened to the trees to see if they could tell me about our fate.

They knew I was listening
and tolerated me
as though I were a fly on the screen
which is right.

But they weren't telling,
and so I fell asleep.

Morning would bring sunshine
with drier
cooler
air.

To My 6 Sentences Friends in New Orleans This Weekend

I wish I could have joined you all and hope that the collective you find the time to get away from your writing long enough to GET DOWN.

If you get a chance, dance a little move to this number for me or, better yet, sing it at karaoke!

1969 - The Fifth Dimension

When I began this venture, I did'nt have a single thought in my head about The Fifth Dimension. I never would have realized they were such a presence in my life. I don't know whether I like this or hate it, but I remember loving the clean, trippy, space age feel of the beginning and the passion that comes later in Let the Sunshine In. I hope you enjoy it. Peace, Aquarians.

3. Welcome, Earl

The storm has arrived,
and I feel no distress
fifty miles inland
and comfortable here
on high,
dry ground.

This is just exactly how it is
for most of us,
isn't it?

Right up until...

Yet somehow we manage to believe
that we are safe
and okay

(unless we've been shown
otherwise,
then we struggle to ever
feel safe or
okay again)

because we have to believe
to go on.

The lion hasn't taken me
not because
I am
a father of three
or fierce
or deserving of reprieve.

It's only because
she
hasn't seen me
when she's
hungry.

What we call the Grace of God
terrifies.

These
delicate lives,
thin hopes,
brittle loves...

protect them,
please.

1968 - Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 - The Look Of Love

I'm becoming a little obsessed with this. 1968 produced several songs that are definitely bricks in my foundation. It was impossible to choose one over the others, but when I listened to this I remembered this song making me feel kind of "funny".
I knew being in love felt like this.
There are many other versions out there. Dusty Springfield had a particularly nice one.

1967 - The Fifth Dimension - Up, Up And Away

The 1966 Billboard Top 100 churned and spun through my dreams last night. What an interesting contrast and statement of the times. The number one song was The Ballad of The Green Beret as the country answered the call of the war drum and rose to stop communist aggression. Other wholesome songs like Born Free, Strangers In The Night, You're My Soul And Inspiration were on the charts at the same time as the Rolling Stones with Paint It Black, and  19th Nervious Breakdown and Donovan with his Sunshine Superman.

I went a little crazy trying to figure out what to play. It was a good year for catchy garage rock hits - 96 Tears, Wild Thing, and Dirty Water - all songs I came to love a few years later, but my world in that first year was probably shaped more by the radio in the kitchen - my parents' music.

So I decided to leave '66 represented by Sunny and move on to 1967 because, if you can't sort out the past, you can at least run from it.

The Fifth Dimension was ubiquitous during those years. This song definitely echoes across time to me. Sometimes it's straight forward and optimistic, and other times it's surreal and part of a horror movie soundtrack.

Soundtrack

Did you ever stop to think about the music of your life? Not just your favorite songs, but all that stuff playing in the background all your life. Love it or hate it, it's a part of your superstructure and is partially responsible for who you are today. Since Autumn - the season of memory, nostalgia, longing, and maybe some regret - is upon us, I think I'll take a peak at the Billboard Top 100 from across my early lifespan and post a song a day here. Not necessarily because it was a favorite, but because it's built into my superstructure.


So we begin at the beginning, 1966, with a song that struck me as the real thing a long time ago, and it still does today.




Sorry, if you want to hear the song you have to play the bottom one - copyright stuff I guess,  and I couldn't figure out how to delete the top one without reposting. How inconvenient!

1979 - The Knack - My Sharona

This song was iconic back in the corn field running days, but it didn't have the spirtual quality of night running. It was more of a day time song for jumping around and raising some dust. It captures pretty well the manic frustration of that age for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F69Kg65kt6s&feature=related

2. Run

Fall carries memories.

Running
through tall corn fields in darkness,
dew wet grass,
bright moon,
crisp night air,

heart pounding,
the rows of stalks a blur,
my blood sings,
I all but fly.

Rendered
pure and open
all the way
to the cold stars -

the only eyes to see
and
know
how much
this
means

A Virtual Choir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs&feature=player_embedded

1. Sombrero

September begins
and the weather is like this:
tense
with a strong chance of hurricane
by week's end;
the kids are scattered in three directions
for the first day of school;
the temperature
will reach the high 90s;
and the leaves are turning
orange,
red
and
yellow.

I'm collecting images in my
head
that
I wish I had photographed
instead.

This morning it was this hazy valley
with silhouettes of rounded
blue mountains as a backdrop, 

a bend in the railroad tracks lit
by slanted rays of the rising sun,

and then a homemade traffic sign
warning of turtles
crossing
along the next seven miles of road.

But there was no time to stop.
There never is.

A cat sitting bolt-upright
near a cut in a grassy field,
staring down,
waiting.

The cat is orange,
and I've seen it in
that very spot
before doing
that very thing.

An ornate black sombrero
falls down
from somewhere and
comes to rest
up-ended
on the sidewalk.

No one rushes after it -
nothing else happens.

I don't know whether
to laugh at the
absurdity

or
fear the
consequences.