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Songs of Love Sing

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“Songs of Love Sing”

By Thomas G. Palaima

 

Songs of love sing

fire, ice and stone

forever together

nevermore alone

 

hearts call out to hearts

gently, true and sweet

birds sing joyous songs

in songs, when lovers meet

 

arm and arm, hand and hand,

dancing at the edge of sand,

songs sing twining laughter

and happily ever after

 

Songs give love

their name of love

while friends arrived

disappear like smoke

 

become illusions

have lots of nerve

don’t think twice

get what they deserve

 

but lovers do do

—songs tell of this, too—

what they do

and do it well

 

suns go down

over the seas

while lovers listen

to lovers’ pleas

 

leave lights on

don’t wonder why

love outshines

the starry sky

 

songs of love

make love a boat

smoke and flame

snow and rain

 

blinking stardust

fringes of night

heat pipes coughing

wintry light

 

gold that isn’t

meant to shine

weeping clouds

and silhouettes

 

compromise

contentment

uncertainty

resentment

 

Russian roulette

lands of permanent bliss

tickets thrown out windows

betrayals with a kiss

songs of love

sing all of this

 

but true love

tends to forget

things that happen

or haven’t yet

 

true love forgets

its own name

and all the rights

and all the wrongs

that singers sing of

in their songs

 

love is in

the look of you

and all the times

that are too few

 

love takes our lips

from words to kiss

and right now

my love is this

/by
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“Don’t They”

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“Don’t They”
By David Sheftman

 

The rhymes don’t work

They don’t. Don’t they?

 

The rhythms gone

It is? OK.

 

And here I stand

At 83

Etched lines on my face

Weak at the knees.

 

Voice like a jaggedy blade

Eyes hiding behind shades

Dying a little

And some days a lot

Fading, fading

From the sweet spot.

 

The notes are off

They are. Are they?

Reviews tear me down

They do. Do they?

 

I can’t play

I can’t?

Can they.

 

I’m limbo-ing between

Earth and sky

Staring at truths

And turning from lies

They’ve buried me good

I’ve not said my goodbyes.

 

Give it up they say

Step on out of the way

Still, I do my stuff

When the lights go up

They’re dragging me down

But my spirit’s unbound.

 

I once was asked

At a presser in S.F.

“How do you see yourself?

Poet?

Musician?

Friend?

Maybe a politician?

At a dead end?

 

Maybe a prophet,

If so, what’s your plan?”

To which I said then

And I’ll say it again.

 

I see myself

As a song and dance man.

/by
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Kindness II

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Kindness II

After Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness”

By Thomas Palaima

 

When our evening suns leave gray

reminders we have been and gone,

we live in what we give away,

attention, caring, kindness.

 

Kindness keeps secure and close

much-loved and loyal companions,

making now fewer new friends

in these days of miracles

and wonders and fearsome news

fake and real, like God made man.

 

Steady streams of media,

antisocial vulgar 

and designed 

to make us

lose our minds,

ark flood our kindnesses

leaving nothing left to find.

 

The second great commandment

stands in Ozymandian ruins,

hopeless and forlorn.

 

We long since are become

algorithmic prisoners

handcuffed to handheld screens,

watching all the latest gossip,

hearing all the latest rhyme.

We drag our tired brains about,

put our better angels to sleep,

leave little room in our souls

for the saving grace of kindness.

 

Kindness waits and waits and waits.

 

Kindness is kind to us when

we forget to bring kindness along

in the lives we live mostly now

in bits, pieces, small moments

that will never make history

even from below.

 

Kindness, 

like a bird on the horizon,

sings a clear and joyful

promise song

at his own expense:

“I am here and will be, too,

the next time and the next.”

 

“I have no date to expire.

I’m not like Pretty Peggy.

I’ll hear you call 

through all that 

shmatta shmatta shmatta.

I’ll bless and keep you always.

You’ll have no need of wishes.”

 

Your own kind acts will be

the residue of you.

/by
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J. Randall Turner in “Anatomy of a Fight Song”

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J. Randall Turner in “Anatomy of a Fight Song”

By Chuck Sweetman

 

[Mid-shot of J. Randall Turner, songwriter, in his private recording studio in front of a drum kit. He is in full guitar hero-stance: legs wide, head back, one hand thrusting a guitar pick at the ceiling, the other on the neck of a black Les Paul slung low. He windmills his arm once, striking a power-chord pose, and then holds the guitar up, wafting vibrato. A placard, pinned to his guitar strap reads “Motivation.”]

 

Fight songs used to be about your high school

or college hailing victory and other such glories. 

The Air Force Men of Note. The Allen Eagle Escadrille.

In the old movies, friends sing them, smoking 

cigarettes around a piano. They got you pumped 

up and made you feel you belonged and believed 

in what you all represented. Corny as hell sometimes,

but who cares? That’s how good it feels to root,

root, root for the home team. If they don’t win. . . .

 

[Close-up]

 

Now? . . . I don’t know. Fight songs today are more

about solo struggles. The push to overcome! 

To overcome . . . some dire situation or bad actor.

Some dire situation thrust on you by said bad actor. . .

Probably best to be a bit vague writing a fight song.

Listeners can fill in the blanks. Motivation is what 

we’re after. If only the juice to take on the stationary 

bike, the treadmill . . . the elliptical. . . .

 

[He strums, eyes closed.]

 

First thing a fight song needs is righteousness.

 

[He sings.]

 

I wanted to love and to belong, / but I let other voices . . .

drown! But I let other voices drown my song. / I’ve been 

away from . . . home? . . . from . . . me too long. . . 

 

[He flips a switch to sample some gospel piano.] 

 

Soul stirring. This journey is hard but worthy.

So I’ll start from scratch, / reach . . . come from 

behind. / This is my . . . my walk on the glass? / 

I’ve made up my mind. . .  – But wait! Your journey

 – no, worse – your belief in the journey is challenged.

. . . I don’t really care if it’s too much for you. / 

Go ahead turn your back . . . walk away! / 

Go ahead walk away. / It’s what  I’ve got to do. . . 

Now we’re cookin’. Let’s add a refrain that raises 

the roof: Now’s the time for second-winds and poker-fa

 – game faces. / It’s not too late to dust off. . . 

to dust off. . . It’s not too late. . .

 

[Long-shot, Turner stands without guitar in the middle of his studio.]

 

Tell you the fight song I wish I would have written. 

Might not seem like one. But it is. Carter Ready’s 

“The Distance.” Yeah the dis-is-tance is the har-dest thing.

Remember? Starts with Carter’s typical working-class 

guy in love with a working-class girl. And how good 

that feels. Baby, I like how it is when you’re so near. / 

Baby, you’re the only one who calms my fears. 

But when you get to the bridge you realize it’s about 

her. For reasons we don’t know, his girl is the one 

feeling the distance. And he’s worried about her 

and about what her struggles mean for him, too. 

So he takes her hands, or as I imagine calls long-distance, 

and says – pleads, Oh, don’t let them buy you, baby, / 

Don’t let ‘em spit on you. (And here they are – the bad actors.)

Don’t let ‘em drive you, baby, / Don’t let ‘em sit with you.

He’s losing her to them. She’s cracking. What’s he

got that can help her in the real world? Double-quick!

No time for Kristofferson. Just say something!

I’ll be your raging truck. / I’ll be your mud bridge.

Don’t get too far away. / Step back from the ledge!

 

[Mid-shot]

 

Only way this makes any sense is that he’s desperate.

He’s throwing out anything he can to prove his love. 

Problem is, he’s practically begging when he needs 

to project confidence – competence. That’s where 

Bill Driscoll comes in on lead guitar. Saves him really. 

Gives this inarticulate, grasping soul a voice 

in a solo that thunders like a chorus of bagpipes! 

 

[Turner assumes a wide-legged guitar-hero’s stance and scats the solo in between singing, eyes closed, bending frets of an air guitar, which he keeps playing as he goes on.]


Reveille to her ambitions. An anthem to courage. 

If only the courage yet to be born in her as he feels 

it born in him as he reaches into the well-spring 

of desperate hope. The same place where Dylan 

and Springsteen reach when they need a street-fighter’s 

reply to nothing left to lose. Tramps like us, losers, 

boxers, tambourine men. . . Now’s the time for second 

winds and game faces / It’s not too late to dust off 

and rise. / We’ll . . . we’ll catch the wind, run 

our races. / It’s our time now. Throw the dice.

 

[Randall lifts the neck of his air guitar high and strums quickly. He looks around as to gather the bass and drums in a big finale, then swings the guitar down in a flourish. Then, a bit out of breath, he turns back to the camera.]

 

It’s a young person’s genre – the fight song. . .

I like that about it. 



                                    [Fade]

/by
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Steel Rails Hum (song for a singer)

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Steel Rails Hum (song for a singer)

BY Richard Morgan

 

If it should happen like this:
That one day you are gone
And I myself still hanging on,
I will break down in tears
When I hear the news
I will be listening one more time
To your ragged song.

 

I will sing lightly, gliding on
The thunder echoes of your voice
Not diluting your expression
Nor can I forget a word.
Minstrel horsemen mount and ride
Valley descants, rising hills
As steel rails hum, we sing along
To hard-time working blues.

 

Lonesome rider for so long
But I will never come to know
The weight and daily burdens that you raise.
And if one day you will be gone
And I’m still standing in the rain
I will not claim to know you, nor say to anyone
That I saw you in the distance
Reaching out to recreate
The delicacy of your song on stage.

 

But for myself I take the stand
And trust with all my certainty
To recognize the hum of rails

 

Vibrations of approaching trains,
The metal wheels that churned your mind
Intoning their redemptive sighs of pain.

 

And I will harmonize with them
While I remember, just as long
As I am standing by your tracks –
If ever you are gone.

/by
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The Progress of Man: Paradise Paved

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The Progress of Man: Paradise Paved

BY Thomas Palaima

 

Maybe it’s the color
of the sun cut flat
hinting at colors to be
out on the 86 highway
stretching out
and luring me
as you gently do
to your side of our bed
where you and I
are we.

 

My heart
misses your heart,
pussycat Penelope.

 

I’m driving this rented car
as far as I can
from Cleveland eastward
towards New York’s Ithaca,
not Odysseus’s hometown,
not Kavafy’s poem town.

 

Like Lambrakis’s soul [1]
watching his body
borne by train
Thessaloniki to Athens,
my soul in tandem,
hovers and glides
above and along
roadside purpled nature
where wild grasses,
like Van’s
and Bob’s
highland heather,
thrive in springtime joy.

 

My soul invites me
to go forward
through corridors
of towering long-lived trees –
my soul’s own friends they are –
reaching skyward
sunward
in growth that ends
almost never,
like my love for you.

 

If not for you,
nature for me
would be
the landscape of the moon,
the real moon,
as we saw it once
in black and white,
when a man touched it,
a big-white-suited man
his head encased
in a fishbowl helmet,
inventing his and our doom,
like a careless mindless
ridiculous child
with a golf club.

 

The hybristic aspirations
of all mankind
the strong-armed star-sailor
distilled into one giant step,
a leap he called it.

 

Now a single man,
our Texas neighbor really,
in the grand scheme,
a wanton child really
at home in Hesiod’s
Age of Silver,
builds and propels
his own rockets skyward,
and sends humankind doomsward,
as humanity’s dusk
deepens and deepens.

 

They call him Musk.
But he’s Icarus to us.

 

And no good fence
will ever make him
a good neighbor.

 

Somewhere out here
in the northeast wilderness
a cold coyote calls
with pure instinctive sense
for uneventful morns.

 

Later we sit in bleachers
put out in the sun
and watch our gifted children
celebrate the quadrennial skills
they will use
in once our,
but now their,
timber-tortured
land-stripped world.

 

If only we had taken in
what John and Joni sing
and stopped, coyote wise,
at merely paving paradise.

 

[1] See Vassilis Vassilikos, Z (1966/2017) and Costa-Gavras’s film version (1969). The body of assassinated outspoken socialist politician Gregory Lambrakis travels by train from Thessaloniki in the north to Athens in central Greece. People line the railways along the entire route in small villages, at road crossings and larger towns and in suburban and central Athens to honor the martyred hero. The whole while, Lambrakis’s psyche (modern and ancient Greek for soul) flies above, looks down upon and thinks about the passing scenes, much like the spirit of the assassinated JFK in Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul.” Both were killed in 1963.

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IF YOU SAY HE’S SERIOUS

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If you say he’s serious
BY Justin Hamm

If you say he’s serious
you can be sure he is not.
If you say he is not
you can be sure he will
pry open the liquor cabinet
of the divine
and fill up two shot glasses.
Reach for one. He squints
and tilts his head,
maybe even offers up
the impression of a smile.
Now look back down.
Both glasses are raven’s feathers,
the table a wooden galleon
sailing the constellation night.

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STRUTTING AND FRETTING

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Strutting and Fretting
BY Thomas Palaima, University of Texas

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi”

 

You were seventeen
when the explosion went off
when a plane went down
when you were transported
through “Cottonfields”
into a world you’d never known
walking in darkness
and then there was light.

 

Then you were nineteen
winter of 1960
the cruel rain and the wind
blowing in early.

 

Lyn Castner gave the okay.
Flo’s brother, you recall.
You used his turntable,
played one by one
his eighteen
double-sided
Woody Guthrie
78s.

 

Each time
the needle dropped
your head spun
the land parted
some heavy anchor plunged
into the waters of the harbor.
You felt more like yourself
than ever before.

 

Now you’re eighty-one.
You’ve songed and danced
masked and anonymous.
You’ve slept down in the parlor
as Alias and Jack Frost.

 

How does it feel?

 

How does it feel?

 

You’ve been to the bottom
and followed the river,
saddled a big white goose,
imagined life as
one big prison yard,
stood over a grave,
and hurled seven
incinerating curses.

 

You’ve left your heart
in the Highlands
while drowning in the poison.

 

You nearly drowned
in Delacroix.

 

You’ve been hunted
like a crocodile.

 

You’ve taken in,
relived,
peeked on your knees at
and looked right through
lies, dreams,
forgetful hearts
and some kind of pain.

 

Over by the cypress tree
enroute to Parkland hospital
between the windows of the sea
you’ve heard sirens and mermaids
and hoot owls singing
above and near
revival tents, slave markets
and medical butcher’s shops.

 

Their song has been
a fitting soundtrack
for Zapruder’s film
for sixty long years,
years that someone called,
you remember,
the age of the anti-Christ.

 

Sir Christopher asked you,
“Read any good books lately?”
You were re-reading
Richard the Third.

 

Do you ever wonder
whether your pasts
have ever been?

 

And if they were,
what scenes you were truly
featured in?

 

Is life a walking shadow?
If we’ve been poor players,
where was our director
and who wrote our lines?

 

Who staged our scenes?

 

And who kept hidden
all that went unseen?

 

Did the needle just skip?

 

And where must you and I have been?

 

My deep thanks to my many UGS 302 students over the years and to Tony Attwood for their many questions and their thoughts towards answers, darkness to pre-dawn light.

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SOME OTHER KIND OF PLACE

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Some Other Kind of Place
(Birmingham, Alabama, June 1991)

BY David Bond

 

1

Once, in late August, I was in the mountains,
almost six thousand feet. It hailed golf balls
of hard, pure ice. I knew nature included
the mind. On that day I believed it.

 

2

Today, I watched a movie in technicolor,
ate chocolate milk duds and saw the true
incongruity of past and present. I saw
Thurgood Marshall leave his post: the only
one able to understand his loss. I saw a Black
father gently monitor the wandering of his five-year
old son in the pre-film darkness of a movie theater.

 

3

I have talked about Jesus. I have talked about the rain.
I have stolen words. Elvis. Memphis. Sophistry.
All of them ripped off from the ancient Greeks.

 

4

It is easy to use we, or they, or you, almost anyone
else. It is horrible to use I: almost as bad as trying
to finish the latest self-help book, or finding myself
so close to it, I can’t even remember when I last
put it down.

 

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FIRST THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BOB DYLAN CENTER

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BY Randy Turley

I’m in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
Where the oak and blackjack trees kiss the playful prairie breeze,
Where the Bob Dylan Center casts its dancing spell my way.

I am tangled up in Bob

As the snippets of songs, albums and photos, and
The mumbling voice of the reluctantly interviewed poet
Loose me across the swamp of time—propel me through my life—

I am fourteen,
Forty-eight,
Thirty-six,
Twenty-one,
Seventy.

I am a high-schooler lost in my room,
A love-crazed man,
A law student,
A rotten doctor commie rat,
A divorcee,
A teacher,
A father,
A human being,

Simultaneously confused and comforted by nasally sonics
That impart more meaning than the naked words and tune,
That dredge the cryptic, mystic lyrics which convey more than they say.
I am in Oklahoma where the words hit heavy on the border line
Where the music and a tapestry of rhyme define my life, my soul, my time

I am at Bob Dylan’s Center
. . . and he is at mine

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