Bette Davis Eyes

Song for R. (The Be Good Tanyas)

You see people coming from all sides
With their broken hearts and hollow eyes
And you try to love but it's easier to hate
When the seed that was planted was watered too late
Oooh oh child
Oooh oh child
Your roots stretch down to grow up wild
Roots stretch down to grow up wild
It was late last night when the doorbell rang
My brother in some trouble
He stood shaking on the doorstep in the rain
With a freight train pounding in his veins
And I took him in and cleaned him up
Gave him some water and I put him to bed
Then I cried for the sadness of his life
And his lonely struggle with addiction
Friends say oh what a shame
Mum says no one but himself to blame
But I don't want to play that game
'cos I know the truth is not so plain
Call it a hard life or a lack of love
Call it passed down from his father
Call it lack of faith in god above
There are no easy answers
He is just a child
He is just a child
Arms stretched out for love
Arms stretched out for love
Arms stretched out for love

ACDC - Back In Black

AWE on Kickingwind

My book, AWE, is up on Kickingwind today. Check it out: http://www.kickingwind.com/

The Chinese Restaurant

They sat in the Chinese restaurant
With the sun lit outside, but there was no sun in there.

There was a green scorpion to the right of her on the wall.
A gold plant did not bloom on the baseboard.

The people came out with plates of meat and rice
And she gingerly fed her friend with her fingers.

They both had gotten the same letter the other day.
One with gold writing from the 14th century.

It told of a man with many properties
And these things were for them now.

“Shall we buy a truck?” she asked and her friend stared blankly.

His eyes completely like the sky and in him
Silent bugs that are even silent with themselves.

He took her hand and they slow danced
Over the baseboards, careful not to hit the empty tables.

The people clapped, everyone around them was good
And they had cut flowers for such a love.

The flowers scattered themselves everywhere
And then crawled and scurried into wreaths.

He took two wreaths and put them on their heads.
And an old king came out from the wall and blessed them.

And the cook came out from the kitchen and splashed them with holy water.

And the cook took out two syringes and did a medical procedure.
And their blood was swapped with rosewater.

And sweetly they laid down in front of everyone on a golden bed.

Kissing and caressing the bodies they had once hid from themselves.

Then the thief came in and stole their bodies forever,
But of course their spirits are still there

Playing hide and seek under the tables, and that sort of thing.

Catullus #5

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
And value at one cent
The talk of lousy old men.
Suns will fix themselves and rise.
For us, when the brief light has fixed forever
There remains only the sleep of one unending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then even another thousand, and then a hundred.
Then, when we have done a many thousand kisses
We will lose our counting, and will not know it.
Nor will any evil person look at us with disapproval
When he sees our kisses number in such neverending ways.

The Cure - Lovesong

Diamonds and the Earth

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/23/earth.diamonds.reut/index.html

New websites for readings

Please check out my new website www.birdinsnow.com for all kinds of information regarding my Fall 2007 Tiny Tour for my new book, AWE.

Also, check out www.dorothealaskyreadings.blogspot.com for other upcoming readings.

Some friends, The Quinz and Ohio, really like my new book, AWE

Pomposity versus Arrogance

Laura and I were talking tonight and she told me about a Harvey Danger song that goes "Pomposity is when you always think you are right and arrogance is when you know you know." Anyway, she and I decided we are arrogant, not pompous and I think arrogance is better. No, I know arrogance is better. Arrogance, not pomposity, is what we should be supporting in schools, as this is the kind of way of being that makes people strong enough to learn what they are supposed to learn.

Also, I have decided that I think (no I know!) that all good poetry is confessional poetry. The problem with the way some people think about confessional poetry is that they think of it as a style of oftentimes contrived vulnerability. But any good poem makes itself (and sometimes its author) authentically vulnerable and is likewise confessional. Confessional is not so much a style as a state of poetry that is good.

I know it isn't supposed to be right to talk about things in such absolutes, but I don't think these absolutes to be true, I know them to be. That makes it ok, right?

Anyway, Nelly Furtado says it better than I ever could in her joint song with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, "Give It To Me":

I'm the type of girl to look you dead in the eye-eye
I'm real as it come if you don't know why I'm fly
Seen you tryna switch it up but girl you ain't that dope
I'm a Wonder Woman, let me go get my rope
I'm a supermodel and mami, si mami
Amnesty International got Bangkok to Montauk on lock
Love my ass and my abs in the video called "Promiscuous"
My style is ri-dic-dic-diculous, 'diculous, 'diculous

The Way I Am-Eminem

Nellie McKay

Spoon, "Underdog"

Picture yourself in the living room
your pipe and slippers set out for you
I know you think that it ain't too far

But I hear the call of a lifetime ring
felt the need to get up for it
And cut out the middleman
get free from the middleman

You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don't understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive!

I want to forget how convention fits
but can I get out from under it?
Can I gut it out of me?
It can't all be wedding cake
It can't all be boiled away
I try but I can't let go of it
Can't let go of it

Cause you don't talk to the water boy
and there's so much you could learn but you don't want to know,
You will not back up an inch ever,
that's why you will not survive!

The thing that I tell you now
It may not go over well
And it may not be Photo-Op
in the way that I spell it out

But you won't hear from the messenger,
don't wanna know bout something that you don't understand,
You got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive! 

Spoon - Underdog

Complex systems

Laura Branigan - Gloria

Patti Smith - Gloria

"Everything is fine when you listening to the d-o-g
I got the cultivating music that be captivating he
Who listens, to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street"

-Snoop Dogg, "Gin & Juice"

Tori Amos Putting the Damage on

River in Spate

The river falls and over the walls the coffins of cold funerals
Slide deep and sleep there in the close tomb of the pool,
And yellow waters lave the grave and pebbles pave its mortuary
And the river horses vault and plunge with their assault and battery,
And helter-skelter the coffins come and the drums beat and the waters flow,
And the panther horses lift their hooves and paw and shift and draw the bier,
The corpses blink in the rush of the river, and out of the water their chins they tip
And quaff the gush and lip the draught and crook their heads and crow,
Drowned and drunk with the cataract that carries them and buries them
And silts them over and covers them and lilts and chuckles over their bones;
The organ-tones that the winds raise will never pierce the water ways,
So all they will hear is the fall of hooves and the distant shake of harness,
And the beat of the bells on the horses' heads and the undertaker's laughter,
And the murmur that will lose its strength and blur at length to quietness,
And afterwards the minute heard descending, never ending heard,
And then the minute after and the minute after the minute after.

--Louis Macneice