The Memory Paradox

The Memory Paradox.

Not all words get through.

2.5 million gigabytes of memory

count for nought if words are stopped at the gate

The meaning of ‘lambent, for instance,

or the tricky title

of that Tony Joe White song,

the best cover Elvis ever did.

Not even the name of the new friend we made

at Church last Sunday,

starting with J: Jordan? Josh? Jaidin?

My daughter doesn’t remember either.

Maybe it’s a family thing.

Why do some words get blocked, while millions of others

get through?

The mind has a mind of its own.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Was it Worth It ?

Was it worth it?

Hell, yeah.

I got to drive during JJJ’s hottest 100 of 2022..

Got to hear the First Nation’s cover of Cold Play’s ‘Yellow’,

a wild, gritty banger

by King Stingray

the didgeridoo barking like camp-dogs.

Eat your heart out, Chris Martin.

I got to see a quilt of sparrows whirring across a blue denim sky

in a 45 degree tilt.

Wild and acrobatic.

Most of all I got to break free,

like those sparrows,

like King Stingray

tearing it up for freedom, togetherness

like the house parties all across the nation on this special day

with forty more tracks still to go,

and I’m in my car,

one part of me driving, the other dancing to the beats.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Surly

Surly.

Bono looks surly.

Putting him beside a book called ‘Euphoria’

did it.

Bono feels anything but.

Euphoric, that is.

He’s been languishing on the Express Shelf

for three weeks

while books all around him have been flying

off the shelf.

‘Pissed’ is closer to the mark

as in ‘Pissed off’.

Bono is not used to this sort of treatment.

I would take him home myself

but I already have.

If the book was as lean and finely crafted

as a U2 song

it’d be different.

But it is as bloated as a Pynchon novel.

Roughage

Roughage.

Like Tom Waits’ voice.

The grit and gristle of life.

The rumble tumble.

The rush and the roar.

Like Xmas. New year.

The whirligig and whoopsie cushion.

You’re on it, babe.

There’s no getting off,

You wouldn’t want to.

It’s the roughage that stirs things up.

That lets you know you’re alive.

Like them Brooklyn Girls on the downtown train

and you’re shining like a new dime.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

*lyrics tom waits

Tongues

on Xmas radio, divine eloquence: ‘Nessun Dorma’, Pavarotti singing in tongues

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Albatross

Albatross

You could have knocked me over with an albatross

when I heard that four off-kilter waltzes I was listening to

were by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Hang on, I thought,

my favourite Romantic poet [ sorry Wordsworth] whom

I studied at Uni, who wrote one of the great lyric narratives

of all time, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was also

a classical composer? How did this just become known?

Did he moonlight as a musician, did he snuggle up

to the great composers of his time? But then the announcer,

as if reading my mind, clarified that the composer was

Samual Coleridge Taylor whom his mother named after

the great poet. After I calmed my farm, I settled back

and listened to more of Samuel C.

Freakishly Thin

I didn’t know how freakishly thin he was till
I saw the photo in ‘Far Out’ magazine
of the young Nick
Cave
.
What a head of hair, a squall of black,
lean and loose-limbed, hardly anything of him,
but a chiselled face staring knowingly and determinedly into the future.
He knew what he wanted.
He had the bridled brawn to do it.
I have always admired thinness. the Nick
Cave
kind
not the thinness of the heroin addicts
I’d see in the backstreets
of the city
nor the thinness of the wan weakling
I saw in the fish ‘n’ chip shop
whom a mere breeze could bowl over
but a macho sort of thinness
that seems to have passed me by.

* pic courtesy of Pinterest
 

Poor Old Keith

 
My heart goes out to him.

Hey, Keith, I know it’s hard languishing on the Express Shelf still after three weeks.
I know what it’s like to be a wallflower
alone and palely loitering on the cold hillside..

I don’t know if he gets the reference. Keats.

Yeh, I know what it’s like, Keith, I say.
But don’t worry. Nicole still loves you.

He seems to lift a bit.

And anyway, I tell you what: if you’re still here when I come in next week, I’ll borrow you. I’ll take you home.

A bit of color seems to flush his cheeks, and there’s a glint in his eyes.

Hang in there, Keith, I say, on my way out.

Credenza

My parents partied to Mario Lanza.

His records littered the credenza

before ending up on the turntable.

[ it was the era of Clark Gable].

and everyone would their glasses clink

when Mario sang ‘Drink Drink Drink’

He had a big voice and big loves,

and the habits of a tiger cub,

‘impossible’, it was said, to housebreak.

He died too young at thirty eight.

Way way back in ’59.

Then along came Elvis. He was mine !

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

The Sky Goes Goth

the sky

has gone

Goth;

dyed its hair

inky black;

the dark clouds squinch

like too tight jeans

letting

no light

through;

a Greek chorus of crows

caw

from the bare boughs;

thunder

mumbles

like Nick Cave’s intro

to Red Right Hand