Mystic Mauve.
I’m eight miles high again, sweet Jesus
branded on my feet
been smoking that purple rain again
though I have no one to meet
in the jingle jangle morning
mauve shadows are forming
& I’m running out of time
still tryin’ to catch the wind, sweet Mary
still one toke over the line
There’s an engine running in my head.
A Chevy Silverado.
It’s revving up.
I fasten the seat-belt.
Grab the wheel.
Don’t know where I’m going.
All I want to do
is rest on this mattress,
have pudgy dreams.
But it’s grown wheels
zooming along the highway
and all the road songs come on the radio
‘It’s a Wide Open Road’
‘On the Road Again’,
‘The Long and Winding Road’,
all my favorites,
how can a poor boy rest?
and I’m belting the songs out,
the wind winnowing my hair
twirling my kiss curl
like a lover’s finger
*pic courtesy of pinterest
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.
I promise to corroborate, she says
behind the blue curtain.
I promise to corroborate.
Good, the male voice says, then keep still.
She does but her mouth doesn’t.
Any minute now she’ll mention the condescension running down the windows of her van and I’ll try to suppress a snigger,
but just then the doc comes in and injects me behind the blue curtain.
Jeez, I say. I felt that.
Sorry, he says, and you’re bleeding.
But I rally coz that’s what a man poet’s supposed to do.
It’s nothing, I say as I look at it, kind of mesmerized. It’s like that song says.
What song?
You know, Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. ‘Sometimes you bleed just to know you’re alive’.
When I was a horny teen, I sometimes dreamt of finding
paradise by the dashboard lights, but dad wouldn’t let me
have his car so that was that; my big brother who was into
philosophy, said, don’t worry, buddy, heaven can wait;
you don’t know what you’re talking about, I snapped.
I found a gal and we went for it. like bats out of hell.
I didn’t have a big motorcycle, or a belting voice
but I found a gal I hit it off with , so I said to my brother,
hey man, two out of three ain’t bad
*pic courtesy of Wikipedia
No wonder there are so many love songs.
There are so many ways of getting love wrong.
Most celebrate one or more of these.
There’s more mileage in them than in ecstasy,
a much rarer state to which we all aspire,
happy to burn in love’s all cancelling fire ,
shortcomings forgotten, emotions turbo-charged,
our lives in an instant totally enlarged.
These songs are the apex of creativity
even as they approach ineffability.
*what are some of your favourite love songs?
What’s that? Under the driver’s seat?
A silver hammer.
Maxwell’s?
Lol, No, mine.
What for? In case of a car jacking?
No. In case I’m caught. In a flood.
Pardon?
You remember the floods in NSW a few weeks back when a car tried to drive through a flooded road and the car sank, the driver died? You know what happened?
Not really.
The electronics failed. The driver couldn’t open a door or window to escape. Suffocated. Now if he had a hammer.
Gives a new meaning to the old song, doesn’t it?
What song?
‘If I Had a Hammer’.
I gave it an impossible task
but it was my mind
what could it not do?
There was a song
we’re talking way back
I thought the early nineties
an oddball song
with a female lead
and a bouncy backing group.
Can you work it out?
No?
Nor could my mind.
It bugged me all day.
There were some nonsense lyrics
but the song was catchy.
Any idea yet?
Nor had I.
I took a Bex and had a lie down
then the initials KLM came into my head.
Hang on, I said, aren’t they the initials of a Dutch airline?
But I hopped up anyway and keyboarded it into my laptop.
Have you got it yet?
Well, what popped up were the initials KLF.
Now do you know?
Then the name of the female singer came up, then the band then the name of the song,
one of the most oddball songs ever to become a # 1 or 2 all over the world.
Go and check it out on YouTube.
I did and yes I did get up and dance
and I was taken back to MuMu Land with Tammy and the KLF
all over again.
It had been bugging me for months so I took a clipping down to the Garden Centre.
What’s it called? I asked. What’s its botanical name?
I didn’t much like the sound of it.
So I asked its common name.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the man said.
I very much liked the sound of that.
so I went home and dubbed it with my royal ruler.
Henceforth you shall be known as Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, I announced with a clipped classy accent.
It sounded like a song.
Like something from ‘Revolver’.
John Malone 