Up and down swing the musical notes
The piano sings like thunderstruck
Under the masterful touch of the jazzman
No need for birdsong, listen to the keyboard
And if you listen deeply, you’ll feel it
The shivers of others’ experiences
As they cry out in song
Cries of love and desparation
Reflect on how good it is to feel
To feel humanity in unison
with the guitars, drums and all other
shivermaking sounds
I want to write a poem about Christmas
About love, and the tender caresses
of good, home-cooked food,
of the shadows of a love
and of last year’s shadows.
How this is the last Christmas I’ll be spending here
A new house, a new home coming near
This one will retire to memory;
as I suppose we shall all one day
one day, it’ll be me and you
memories of us—
reduced to spiritual dust.
But I fail to do that:
I can’t write of Mary
and the way I wished she’d travel
through our souls, our bodies
but maybe I should write of Mary and Joseph
after all, their lad’s had a birthday.
Neither of us will be doing any travelling:
my Mary, well, she was very clear
and the famous lad, well,
he’s a bit on the pale side
(to put it very mildly)
and Santa’s monopolised the market.
In the last minutes of Anglo-Saxon Christmas Day,
writing this in bed, and as proud as a sticky sun ray
with Joni Mitchell lodged nearby:
I’ve yet to see life from both sides
and I’m bloody well looking forward to it
to find out where peace, love and all that waffle resides
maybe on the other side of December 31st
maybe Mary will show me one day.
Then I’ll discover what life’s both sides are
by then I hope to have refreshed my repertoire
and replenished hope’s anguished reservoir.
There’s nothing quite like a bit of Rachwhat’shisname
That Russian guy,
Not the Chai guy, the other,
Not Theother, no! (although sounds like Theodore)
Pro-cough guy? no, not him,
different guy
why are they all guys hm?
Good thing society’s evolved now.
Right, so famous contemporary Russians:
Putty-guy must have a lot of putty
but who else is there
must’ve been a -kovcoughovoff somewhere.
So this Rachamagicoff guy I’m telling you
he’s pretty good!
This poem is rather different from some of the other ones I have written, as you might notice. That’s why it’s marked as ‘experimental’.
Your rhymes echo through the darkness
the verse glows in all its beauty
bringing a hint of light to the blackness
imagining what it would be
to hear your grovelling baritone
on a cold Montréal night
now I listen to your voice flow
an artist truly in all his might.
Immense respect I have for you
Clapton, Dylan and Shakespeare too
Your revolutionised the audible art
warming humanity’s dead cold heart.
When outside it all seems black and white
or a rather dull shade of grey,
everything’s a depressing sight
your eyes look whichever way.
In times like these, it is music that brings colour
all you need to do is sit still and listen
it really is a kind of emotional juggler
as the orchestra glows in unison.
Yes, it glows—a radiating hue
deep crimson to soothing navy blue
its crescendos pulse in the dark
and, in a way, so does AC/DC’s Back in Black.
Do you know the genre named “blues”?
It’s got its special moves.
Some say it’s a type of jazz,
it’s got a similar type of pizazz
But both no longer feature in the news.