Listen To The Music / The Doobie Brothers

Ever Read a Book Called Awe?
_____________________

Have you ever read a book called Awe?
I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.
I wrote that book. I wrote that one.
Some people read it, they said
We will make your book.
I said Really? I love you.
They said, We love you too.
I said Good then
I will love you forever
They said Great! and looked scared
Some people I love
Don’t love me
Others love me
That’s good
When you sit in landscape of snow
And you’re a bird, that’s Awe.
When you look over a big green field
And the dead soldiers lay all around you, that’s Love.
That’s Love and Awe.
Say it
That’s Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don’t care

Muppet Movie - The Rainbow Connection

Hello Operator

Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

islands in the stream

TORI AMOS--Crucify

A classic.

"My first band was another girl and me," Cyndi recalls. "She played the meat and potatoes on her guitar, and I played all the droning weird stuff. That's how I worked in all my bands: Whatever nobody else was playing, I played against it. I did the textural things that were always missing. And whenever I felt some other rhythm pulling at me, I played it. That pushing and pulling builds an interior rhythm, and that's the place where I sing."

I found this on Cyndi Lauper's webpage, the bio section: http://www.cyndilauper.com/uniquecirx/bio.php

Cyndi Lauper "True Colors"

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

April

Aside from being the cruelest month, April is National Autism Awareness Month AND National Poetry Month.
Diamond is the birthstone of April.
The daisy is April's flower.
It is also the month most connected with the sign of Aries.
It is not April anymore, you know. It is May.

Lisa Lisa Cult Jam Lost In Emotion

Fantasia - When I See You

Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper (HQ Audio)

Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

John Lennon -

Phil Collins In the air tonight Live NYC 88

In The Air Tonight Music Video

Talk to me - Stevie Nicks (HQ Audio)

van halen - jump

Gwen Stefani - 4 In The Morning

"The Shop" (A Photograph Essay with Christopher Roberti)

Stevie Nicks - Sara - Live

Crowded House - Private Universe

Fleetwood Mac Everywhere

Silver Jews - How Can I Love You (If You Won't Lie Down)

Silver Jews - Slow Education

bonnie prince billy

Tom Petty - Running Down A Dream

"marvellous artifice"

A face in the crowd - Tom petty

The American deadpan

Juice Newton -

Juice Newton Angel Of The Morning.

Juice Newton - Queen Of The Heart

stevie nicks

Fleetwood Mac Live Midnight Special 1976

Stevie Nicks - Stand Back - 1983 Appearence

"Coyote," Joni Mitchell

No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver, no, no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

Poets on Painters exhibition

An article on the exhibition at the Ulrich Museum of Art: http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Ulrich_Museum_of_Art_Poets_On_Painters.html

Also, the exhibition website:
http://paintersandpoets.blogspot.com/

Bruce Springsteen-Human Touch

"In the end what you don't surrender, the world just strips away."

Becky Rosen's new website

My uber talented friend Becky Rosen has launched a new site and it is just gorgeous. Check it out: http://www.dorkorbit.com/

Eddie Money-Think I'm In Love

One of the best videos ever made.

Feist: Inside and Out

janet jackson, all nite

Valentine for Perfect Strangers

Thank you Jason for showing me this!!!!

Broken Social Scene

Belle and Sebastian, "The State I Am In"

One of the most important inspiration songs to my new book, AWE. I feel like all of the poems are somewhere within this song and I just couldn't have written them without it. Has something better ever been written? I would like to see that, if there has been.

"I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream, stayed with me all day in 1995
My brother had confessed that he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while
He stood up with a sailor friend
Made it known upon my sister's wedding day

I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported
Now she's in love
I was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches
From my crippled friend
She was not impressed cause I cured her on the sabbath
I went to confess
When she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride
To whisky and gin

The priest in the booth had a photographic memory
For all he had heard
He took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket novel called
The state I am in
So I gave myself to God
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok
Now I spend my day turning tables round in Marks & Spencers
They don't seem to mind

I gave myself to sin
I gave myself to providence
And I've been there and back again
The state that I am in

Oh love of mine, would you condescend to help me
Cause I'm stupid and blind
Desperation is the devil's work, it is the folly of a boy's empty mind
Now I'm feeling dangerous, riding on city buses for a hobby is sad
Why don't you lead me to a living end
I promised that I'd entertain my crippled friend
My crippled friend"

"Some have a style
That they work hard to refine
So they walk a crooked line"

––The Bangles, "If She Knew What She Wants"

in the aeroplane over the sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

Feist: One Evening

Feist - 1 2 3 4

Teaching

Mushaboom

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Feb 2006 : The Matty Groves Perform

The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

"I hear you be the block, but I'm the light that keeps the streets on."
––Beyonce, "Upgrade U"

I just feel so bad

I just feel so bad
I don’t know
How to overcome it
Skinner says that it is my
Way that makes me function
In this world
I like to think
About things that are nice
And pretty
I like to plant purple flowers in my mind
That dazzle the starscape
There is no one for me to talk to
Except you dear reader
When there is no one else
To love, there is only you
To pour my love into
The snow
Echoes out the landscape
I have no home
No bread
I am destitute
But inside me
Is a little voice
That must speak
It gets louder when you listen

Check it out

Check it out: Noah Eli Gordon's new interview in Rain Taxi

Gypsy - Fleetwood Mac (HQ Audio)

Fleetwood Mac - Seven Wonders

Dolly Parton -- Puff The Magic Dragon

Amelia

Sonnet to Eric Baus (Dorothea Lasky)

Sonnet to Eric Baus
_______________

There is the beauty that I felt
And the beauty that I felt because I met you
And without that there is much
That would not have flown
Through the sky like balloons
There is one thing
A balloon
Kierkegaard said
There were many who knew the story
But only one who it made sleepless
That one is the saved one!
The saved one
I saved you
But you saved me, too

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself (Wallace Stevens)

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry–-It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Charles S. Peirce, "On a New List of Categories"

http://www.peirce.org/writings/p32.html

Parallel Bars Reading Series

Laura Solomon and I are starting a new reading series in Philadelphia. Please see http://www.parallelbarsreadingseries.blogspot.com/ for more information.

The Self is The Universal

Cat Stevens - Peace Train (live)

It's not an idea

Love is not an idea.

The Magnetic Fields - 100,000 Fireflies

Jean Michel Jarre - Magnetic Fields 2

Magnetic Fields - Born On A Train

Pootie Tang for Congress

Cyndi Lauper - I Drove all Night

I drove all night (Cyndi Lauper)

Cyndi Lauper I Drove All Night Japanese TV 1990

DROVE ALL NIGHT

No Doubt - Bathwater

Prince "Let's Go Crazy"

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here 2 tell u
There's something else
The afterworld

A world of neverending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night

So when u call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
U know the one - Dr Everything'll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cuz in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own

And if de-elevator tries 2 bring u down
Go crazy - punch a higher floor

If u don't like the world you're living in
Take a look around u
At least u got friends

U see I called my old lady
4 a friendly word
She picked up the phone
Dropped it on the floor
(Ah, Ah) is all I heard

Are we gonna let de-elevator
Bring us down
Oh, no Let's Go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Let's look 4 the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

We're all excited
But we don't know why
Maybe it's cuz
We're all gonna die

And when we do (When we do)
What's it all 4 (What's it all 4)
U better live now
Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door

Tell me, are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Look 4 the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

C'mon baby
Let's get nuts
Yeah
Crazy

Let's go crazy

Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!
Go crazy

I said let's go crazy (Go crazy)
Let's go, let's go
Go
Let's go

Dr. Everything'll be alright
Will make everything go wrong
Pills and thrills and daffodils will kill
Hang tough children

He's coming
He's coming
Coming

Take me away!

Two Poems from Eric Baus

To The Sound
_________

It's always turning 12:34. The pain in "The pain in my sheets won't go away" won't go away. It's always turning. I can feel the tuning in The, the actual overheard A. It's always the same time, the same tone, the same room I'm turning away from. I'm turning away from my sheets again, tuning to A. If I turn away from my sheets, I have no evidence. I have no evidence.



Reverse Mercury
___________

It is best to enter the station at 200 feet above sea level. Disregard the music of the tundra. If turbines dot the omitted plains, omit the. Omit the city's tinted view. Nothing inside a good song looks like snow.

--Eric Baus

Neo-Romantic

I am a neo-romantic.

The Moon and The Yewtree

The Moon and The Yewtree
________________________


This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritious mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky -
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

--Sylvia Plath

shoes

I’ve had a million friends

I’ve had a million friends
__________________________

I’ve had a million friends
Lived a lot of different kinds of lives
Said “oh how’s that one?” to a many different kinds of people
I have rode on the busway with my new friend and then
Found out that I see an old friend
I’ve talked on the phone to a lot of different people
I’ve said hello to lots of people and I didn’t know their names
I’ve written letters to friends and mailed them
In the clear light of day, the sun beating on the mailbox
I don’t care much for things like that, like friends
I care deeply and when being in love
The sheets upon my face coat over with regret.
Such a wondrous regret! You couldn’t even imagine
The ice-sheets on my face, the red flowers of numbers.
The red flower blooming out on the vine
By the stone house where I walk
Humming to myself
See the way the flowers burst out like birds
That’s the kind of thing I value

This Side of the Blue (Joanna Newsom)

This Side of the Blue

Svetlana sucks lemons across from me,
and I am progressing abominably.
And I do not know my own way to the sea
but the saltiest sea knows its own way to me.

The city that turns, turns protracted and slow
and I find myself toeing th'embarcadero
and I find myself knowing the things that I knew
which is all that you can know on this side of the blue

And Jaime has eyes black and shiny as boots
and they march at you, two-by-two (re - loo - re - loo);
when she looks at you, you know she's nowhere near through:
it's the hardest heart beating this side of the blue.

And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
in a steady, illiterate movement homewards.

And Gabriel stands beneath forest and moon.
See them rattle & boo, see them shake, see them loom.
See him fashion a cap from a page of Camus;
see him navigate deftly this side of the blue.

And the rest of our lives will the moments accrue
when the shape of their goneness will flare up anew.
then we do what we have to do (re - loo - re -loo),
which is all you can do on this side of the blue.


I got this here:
http://www.bentclouds.com/music/newsomlyrics.html

The Seeker (Dolly Parton)

I am a seeker
A poor sinful creature
There is no weaker than I am
I am a seeker
You are a teacher
You are a reacher
So reach down
Won't you reach out and lead me
Guide me and keep me
In the shelter of your care each day
'Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won't you show me the way
I am a vessel that's empty and useless
I am a bad seed that fell by the way
I am a loser that wants to be a winner
And you are my last hope
Don't turn me away

I am a seeker
A poor sinful creature
There is no weaker than I am
I am a seeker
You are a teacher
You are a reacher
So reach down
Won't you reach out and lead me
Guide me and keep me, Lord
In the shelter of your care each day
'Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won't you show me the way
Oh, I know you are a mountain
From which there flows a fountain
So let its water wash my sins away
'Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won't you show me the way




I got this here: http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/D/dollypartonlyrics/dollypartontheseekerlyrics.htm

The living room

The living room
________________

The living room did not exist
I wanted to go and lay on the carpet
In the middle of the afternoon
I knew the carpet was dark grey
And in the afternoon sun, I would take a nap
But the room did not exist
It was gone like everything else
In its place was a black bird
That flew and flew
Through the sunlit heavens
With bitter songs in its head
That sounded like two tin cups
Ringing round the world
Intergalactically the world does not seem so large
When things leave as they do
It is not so
What it was before
It is not so large
The black starry dome
Is a room you sit in and smoke hash
What is hash?
I don’t even like drugs
What I am trying to say is this:
A great red universe exists and I can’t get to it
Somewhere there is a home for me
And I can't ever find it
O Lord, please let me find it
I have been willing to fly anywhere
On a jet plane to get anywhere
On a spaceship I would board with
My suitcase and dog, her head ringing with yellow stars
And rung around a great heart
That keeps popping like a red balloon
Somewhere there is a room
Where I can sleep the whole day
And when I wake everything will be so snug
I am what I awake into
I am what needs to be wrung
From a soaking wet thing
Touch my lips and they are damp
With glistening joy
That was once like stars
But is now something like a forest

Black bird

Black bird
__________

I understand that which is my burden
But not that which is my fate
Little bird with black wing
Who goes flying thru your room
The red music that plays
Is from many centuries ago
So go, little haven
That we call time
Into what we cannot recall
The best thing of all it was
To not know anything
And still be breathing

Postmodernism

Any true believer in postmodernism has never been around an animal.

Hey Ya lyrics

You think you've got it
Oh, you think you've got it
But got it just don't get it
Til there's nothing at all

--Andre 3000

Emily D

Emily D

Dear love you tell me of Emily D
Who locked herself in the closet, oh did she lock
Her heart away, it was sailing
Across the great oceans with blue night, I knew her once
When I went to that house that she did the writing
And I saw the insanity that makes a man
I am insane
But only in my heart
My mind is lost forever in its inequity
It rations the deed and dead like the rest of us
Do we even know the lesson we are left to learn?
Are things not fully spaced, the heart it did fold
I felt myself lessening, my mind was locked
Upon one door in one house
I left my rat heart on the table
I took my bird mouth to the door
I let out a cat scream
It echoed through the halls
But they didn’t hear me, the house was full of fire
The smoke is blinding, but then it is the fire
That burns you, you have no mind
And you lessen within yourself.
And you don’t go awry as much as you leave.
And hide in another universe where things don’t burn
Did Emily D even have a shot?
She had one chance lost and locked in fate
I guess that is what we all have
One chance locked in fate
A fixed thing we can't ever move

The love which brings the right answer [to the question of how to respond to the other] is an exercise of justice and realism and really looking. The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy, and despair....It is a task to come to see the world as it is.

--Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (p.91)

Ice trees

Ice trees

On any position don’t forget to cry
Don’t stop if you get the answer
The moon is full of green trees
Just don’t cry
Don’t behave calling me more
Light up the trees, they are furry
Furry trees of green
Don’t stop to cry
I will be very pleased to answer you
Just call me whenever you want to hear me
And when we want to hear each other
The icicles will be tree green
The moon will be icy
As we walk
Don’t forget to cry
No to hear
No to face
Don’t forget to face
The wide trees of lace
They are bright and wooden
The heart of them is wood
The wood trees, they itch
To behave
The way we made it so
I want to know
What you saw
When you went down
The icy blue mountain
On your back
And the birds were ice
I want to feel what the tree tasted like
Or what the ice was
I want to eat the cookies that we make
I want to cut the moon from its holder
The icy-covered moon
It shoots out furry tears
I feel them in my palm
And I want to hear each other
Furry trees of palm
I want to hear them in my wake

I am Like a Rose

I am Like a Rose

I am myself at last; now I achieve
My very self, I, with the wonder mellow,
Full of fine warmth, I issue forth in clear
And single me, perfected from my fellow.

Here I am all myself. No rose-bush heaving
Its limpid sap to culmination has brought
Itself more sheer and naked out of the green
In stark-clear roses, than I to myself am brought.

-D.H. Lawrence



(I found this here.)

Portrait of Me and Vladimir Mayakovsky

Portrait of Me and Vladimir Mayakovsky

Possibly all we have is chemistry
Perhaps it is chemistry that
All we have, this said, the fat man.
It is fire that turns the word.
God has only to turn a letter
To make one word another word
In Russian, God only has to turn
One letter to turn towers into
pastures. What the cold star of pastures!
In Russian, it is I God
In the Russian, the horses here are burning
That God may speak to us, it is towers
We too must take, that we
Refers to the star-infested,
That the cold-star bane is a huge ear.
That the soft flesh is a huge and horrible
Lady, yes, you Vladimir
And we too in the kitchen we too
The stars too, in horrible black trousers
We sit together at light, its huge ear
At tea cookies and violet and the stench of sweet
It is sweet that is the seed.
We sit at tables, it is Russian
That gives us the wood and the seed
It is tables that we sit
In the Agent District of the Third Moscow
A great cat, the provocateur.
And the Alluder, lit where
Mayakovsky lived. It is I
in the light we clink
Together the Tsarist with coffee
It is across the bodies that we eat meat.
It is across the bodies of the stars
You, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and I
Bend down to kiss you, milk aching
From my breasts, and the chrysanthemums of the age
A chemical unlike space here or time
It is you, with gargantuan lips and me
In tribal lip that we here too the stars do speak.

The dodo bird

The dodo bird
______________

(Raphus cucullatus)

Some have described
The dodo’s beak as actually grotesque.

It was long, pale yellow, and crooked.
But what other thing is like that? The sun!

And the sun upon my winglets
Has made me something no other bird or sun can compare.

And in mediating myself upon the bird
I have found that I could actually love.

My love, what are you that the dodo isn’t?
Economy, the black mark on the sun,

The childless watch over the heavens?
Or is the dodo the thing growing from the sun spoke?

Yes, yes, that is you.