Tag: Autobiography

Then Music

Then music gave me walls when there
Was no place left to hide,
And lyrics made me you, so I
Could lay down by your side,
We danced there in my silver dream,
And joy was running free —
For music gave me hope when there
Seemed no hope left for me.

There was a bitter time when I
Felt ringed in with despair,
Exposed to all the elements
And bowed beneath my care,
An open sort of laughter rang
Of onlookers’ derision,
As second- and third-guessed I was
For ever damned decision

Then music made me walls when there
Was no place left to hide,
And lyrics made me you, so you
Would be there, by my side,
We danced there in my silver dream,
And joy was running free —
For music gave me hope when there
Seemed no hope left for me.

I knew one day I’d know you, I
Had met you in a song,
The twisting roads of loneliness
Had stretched on for so long,
And all the earthly signs had said
“Go back. You had your chance.”
That dreams were made for other heads,
By fate, or happenstance —

Then music gave me walls when there
Was no place left to hide,
And lyrics made me you, so I
Could lay down by your side,
We dance now in a silver dream,
And joy keeps running free —
For you’re the music of my hope
My life’s best melody

For you’re the music of my hope,
My life’s best melody

The Swirl of Seasons

He loved the colors of the swirl of seasons,
The semiotic utterance of youth,
How lassitude gets tangled up in reasons,
And how all our finesse becomes uncouth
In search for just a little bit of truth;
Like pictures in a child’s book we see
The swirl of seasons and mortality.

She asked for loyalty, some faint allegiance,
For love to see the soul and not the form,
And set to seek among the swirl of seasons,
To find some shelter from the coming storm
Where laughter was the rule, the gauge, the norm —
Like stained-glass colors: clear and autumn bright
That herald morning after dismal night.

The met when each was searching for an answer,
An image each had carried in their heart,
A silent singer and a secret dancer,
Who joined, then hoped to never be apart,
As though each ended in the other’s start;
The swirl of seasons, now, in polychrome –
And how the search for love, sometimes, hits home

Spelling Bee Pointless

At nine years old…

At nine years old, I won the spelling bee,
And it has all been downhill ever since.
You’d never know it now from reading me,
So error-filled, the editors all wince
At those few language skills that I evince.
So if I could, I might go back in time
And stay a spell, instead of work in rhyme.

But no: I now recall I was abjured
For winning weeks on end without a pause.
The first time I misspelled some stupid word
My fourth grade class burst into wild applause
For I was widely hated – with some cause.
I learned my lesson, though, and learned it well:
And ne’er again in school did I excel.

For athletes and musicians, it’s all fine
To be, or strive to be, the very best:
To push your way up to the front of line
And stand out from the mass, the crowd, the rest –
Just do not do it on an IQ test.
For as they say in Tokyo, I’ve found
The nail that lifts its head gets hammered down

a memory of my father

a worker in brass, my father was.
in felt, and silver, too:
a sax is then a different thing
for me as (prob’ly) you

for hours and hours out in his shop —
i still recall it clear —
my father would work with bits of brass,
and make music
appear

True Stories from My Past, Episode 1

So once, in this human terrarium,
A guy asked a woman to marry him;
She promptly said, “No.”
And then turned to go,
While he wished the ocean would bury him

 

(“True Stories from My Past, Episode 1” – 8-14-2016)