3 Crummy Poems

From Another Lousy White-Collar Office

Maybe Yours

Date Unknown

Prose

If you write after left, what happens next?

If you're right but they're left, who writes best?

When you want to write but wrong the test

And leave the worst among the best

Well, right that wrong!

And sing this song

And then you'll get the jest

Haiku

Practice your axe kid

Didn't they tell you it's fun?

Guitar Hero sucks

Limerick

There once was a man from Nantucket

If he had a problem, he duct it

But he ran out of tape

Whilst out on a date

And now he can't get her to...aw, nevermind

correction

Hey Mike.  Thanks for sending this along.  Oddly enough, I was actually at this show!  Although it seems history has obscured a lot of the facts, or the raconteurs and archivists have outright discarded them, and I feel it’s my obligation  to remedy that for everyone’s edification. 

The show was in Burlington alright, but  it wasn’t at K.D. Churchill’s.  Fact is, K.D. Churchill's wasn’t K.D. Churchill’s until aught 5; prior to that it had been Whiplash Winston’s…of course the locals colorfully referred to it as Wet Ol’ Willy’s place.  I’ll tell you now Mikey, it was the kind of joint where you had to puke twice and flash your knife just to get in the door.  But I’m wide of the point; as anyone who remembers aright will affirm, the set actually was played at Mighty Mac’s Rib and Down ‘Em.  Funny thing about that is the show was originally supposed to take place outdoors, at the old sand pits near the edge of town. A local Burly and friend to all named Ned Ableness (nicknamed Abyssinian Ned, which rankled him no little) had built a make-shift bandstand out of old grain elevators that had been more or less abandoned there at the pits, and he wanted it accommodating the best live music around right quick; but either him or the boy he hired to steady the ladder  forgot to double-bolt the dern thing (isn’t that always the way?), so it came as no surprise when that morning the stage collapsed on itself like so many…well, poorly constructed stages, I suppose.  At any rate, when he heard the news, old Mac offered up his establishment, and the change was made only a few hours before show-time.  If I recall correctly, a friend of the band’s, who happened to be the groundskeeper at the local Latin Academy, took to his John Deere towing a car-load of the Girls Debating Chess Team around town to let everyone know that things had been pushed over to Mac’s, the thinking there being that between the ad-hoc advertising, and Mac’s existing Rib n’ Yam n’ Tomato n’ Cream Special that night, a decent crowd ought to make their way over.  Burlington thinking, to be sure.  Course this was 1992.  We didn’t have inter-nothing.  Matter of fact, most still went to the local barber shop to make their calls. There was two barbers in town, Wiley and Heckl, and if you wanted a chat you brought them your nickel; but that story’ll have to wait.

Anyway, round about show time I wrapped things up at the Rod and Gun Club, where I’d been preparing for the annual Ice Fish-Chili Fest, and made my way to Mac’s. Now I’m not sure where you got your information, but the name of the other band was actually Bill’s Little Timber Bifocals. My goodness how the years between have distorted plain facts!  Time was you couldn’t walk from here to there nor Boston to Austin without hearing a little bit about Little Timber.  They were a big band; too big for my taste frankly.  I couldn’t wrap my mind around the need for 3 Mandocellos and 2 Sousaphones.  But what they lacked in personnel discretion, they made up for with an overabundance of that good old down-home funky sound!  And with our boys sitting-in with them, heck, everyone knew we were in for a wild time at Mac’s that night. I myself bypassed the special and went right for the Rump n’ Waffles.  As I ate I wondered how all them musicians were going to fit on such a tiny stage.  Rumor had it that the stage was constructed, painstakingly I would imagine, from bits of the school bus that Mac had driven up to Burly from his former home, El Dorado Arkansas, which would have certainly explained it’s sturdiness but did little to calm fears surrounding it’s 10’ x 8’ proportions.  Well our boys’ll figure it out, I thought; they’ve come through stranger circumstances still a bit ahead of the beat.

After my repast I went and stood in the back of the room, and found my pal Jimmy “Stinky Fingers” McGurk.  Some thought he got that nickname on account of a bizarre habit involving everyone’s favorite Stones record, but the simple truth is he was the local mortician at the time, and all those embalming chemicals made his hands smell something awful.  I figure that’s why he’s since left town and taken up with some manner of guerilla soap outfit.  I can imagine some are saying, “what in heck does this have to do with the show?”, and to them I say, “be patient, hang it all!”  And also, Jimmy was as keen an observer of the subtleties of music as yours truly, so let it be known that my forthcoming opinion was not in the minority. 

Like I said, those boys was just playing so well that night, I could hardly believe it!  Of course you all have your own ears with which to sample the newly rediscovered evidence, but I’m wondering to myself if it will really do justice.  Bill’s Little Timber Bifocals, or whatever their current and erroneous appellation may be, were humming like I never heard nor seen.  And I mean really humming.  There were two numbers at least where the entire band just hummed, a capella style.  I guess that part of the show didn’t get recorded and is lost to future generations, to the detriment of all.  Bill himself was in rare form.  He had a portion of Mac’s Special right onstage, and when he wasn’t conducting the band or chatting up the girls in the crowd, he was shoveling that big red mess right into his gob.  Bill was one of those performers who always had a party favor or two in his pocket, if you know what I mean Mikey.  Well, James Brown wouldn’t of stood for it on his bandstand, but I’m not about to tell another man his business, and let me tell you, that wolf Bill had the whole place howling anyway, so I say “what of it?”.  Yes sir, Little Timber were really kicking out the jams, in the parlance of our times. And when our boys walked on to join them, well, I don’t need to tell you how the folks on hand reacted. I just smiled and yelled “kick it off, Mike!”.  How about that! The boys were back in town.

I remember a sensation of notes as more than sound but springs of color, pouring from corners of the room that otherwise might have gone unheeded, dark geometric  necessities now vibrant and fluid, superfluous and immersed in light. The players seemed to move little, and whatever minute machinations their hands performed did not immediately correlate to what we heard, and the schism was enough to push the passage of time from  this animated equation. I danced with one hand waiving free and yet I can’t recall choosing to; I sang along and watched as words foreign to me wafted away upon the living air; those around me were the neighbor from yesterday’s breakfast and the aunt from next year’s picnic and I knew no strangers; the trees and flowers and birds and bees gathered around the windows and sang along in whispered tones. Live music.

Yes Mikey, it was quite a show. Our boys really did it to our ear drums.  Riffs, hooks, licks; guitar, bass, drums, keys.  Parts unrecognizable in the sum thereof.  At the risk of going too far down the “those were the days…” road, well, those were the days.  We were young and our band seemed to be possessed by a purposed abandon.  Whatever is going on today, well… it’ll do I suppose.  And I’ll raise my glass and throw in with the rest of them.  But something in the sinews of my body and the electricity of my otherness says, “no, we had something then and those days are gone forever”.  No matter how big the whole parade gets, I’ll take the little gathering we had there at Mighty Mac’s Rib and Down ‘Em.

I hope you’ll forgive an old man for his ramblings, but I couldn’t let the aforementioned misinformation pass uncorrected. The truth must be heard, as they say. 

So there.

Thank you, Don Henley

Recently I was watching my loved one’s family home movies.  I was unexpectedly delighted when I saw that black and white “static”, once so common to your average TV and/or VCR viewer, now about as rare as a family sitting around the radio of an evening.  There was quite a lot of hick-ery to be seen; dirt bikes, dirty jeans atop dirty horses, dirty faces beneath dirty haircuts, country music, poor grammar.  I tease her about her family from time to time but really her upbringing doesn’t seem to have been terribly different than mine, and at any rate she emerged unscathed.  Moreover, if I’ve learned anything whilst eking out the last 10 years in a major metropolitan, it’s that being in the middle of nowhere is good for you.  Perhaps, as the Confucians say, an uneventful life is best.

One portion of the movies was shot at a wedding.  A forlorn spectacle right off the bat.  The venue seemed an ungainly cross between a bowling alley and an elks lodge, and the vast majority of the affair seemed to have been dedicated to a group performance of a dance not all that dissimilar from the Hustle, a sight that, due to the assorted 1980s garb worn by the participants and the mixture of joy and gravity on every countenance, I won’t soon forget. Trying so hard to have fun, or dance correctly, but probably not both. I suppose that’s weddings for you.  Presumably there was at least some some amount of booze to be had to account for any shortcomings.  I found myself wondering, “what happened to these people?”.  A wedding day means a great deal to more than a few, and what do they amount to, 20 years on?  I suspect little, besides forgotten videotape and most likely a divorce.  How many of them are dead now?  Or so wildly different from the person they were?  Do any remember the day well?  I’d like to hope so; I’d like to hope that more than a few golden moments of that day have not faded. And what happened to all that stuff?  The dirt bikes, the clothes, the cars, the wedding china, hell the video camera…..a junk heap?   A closet void?  Our lives can so easily be reduced to so many piles of things.  And where does it go? Alas for the sorrow of modern man, a life measured in plastic accumulations, weighing him down and choking his planet.

It was around this time that I also found myself drawn to Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence”.  As if this song didn’t ooze 80’s nostalgia enough, Bruce Hornsby also plays on it, and as everyone knows his piano parts are more or less the equivalent of a Doc Brown Delorean, only they require less plutonium.  This has been the way of it, I suspect from adolescence onward; songs bubble up to the forefront of my consciousness and demand a prompt listening (In regard to the potentially perceived cheesiness of this particular number, well, I’m cutting myself some slack on this one; Dylan covered it in the early 2000’s), although only in the last year or so have I begun to understand why.  Songs themselves have formed my ethos, or a belief in their healing power has replaced the need for one.  The right song at the right time can be the perfect prayer.  A life can be, and almost certainly is, little more than a long succession of trials and aggravations, rarely if ever achieving perfection.  But a song, through at least some degree of perseverance  on the part of its writer, can be perfect.  Melodically, lyrically, in simplicity or complexity, a song can be the answer. Exactly what you need to hear, leaving us only the job of knowing when to hear it;  “In My Life” when someone dies, “Forever Young” when someone is born, “Let’s Go Get Stoned” on Fridays at about 5pm, etc. etc.   I remember a long anecdote told to me by a cab driver on my way to a rehearsal once that more or less addressed this sentiment; several times he would say “there is a music for…” and then list some life event or another, and though his English was broken, I think natives drumming around a fire and a conductor pacing through the Pastoral would agree.  There is a music for every occasion.  I just can’t imagine how talking (or more likely venting) to someone about one problem or another could offer the same relief, or perspective, or reliability, as listening to a song you know will help.  People will invariably let you down sooner or later, but “Don’t Let Me Down” never will.  It will always be “there” (where?) right when you need it, and it will always be right where you left it last.  

Very soon I’d like to take ol’ Don’s advice.  Find a nice warm spot, in an open field miles from nowhere, lie down and look up and breathe deeply, make the decision to let all the noise and nonsense not matter.  I’ll look up and pretend that I’m in that same spot only hundreds of years ago, in a raw land, living free.  I’ll let the bittersweet, autumnal glow of reminiscence fill me, and longing, grief, joy and wonderment will be as one.  Life will slow down….”the clouds roll by, tall grass waving in the wind”…

…I’ll go back soon thereafter and bring her along.  Let her long hair fall all around me.  You heard it here first; thanks Don Henley.