Our Hearts Long to Sing a Melody

A little poem, from me to you.


Our Hearts Long to Sing a Melody
To be read aloud.

Our hearts long to sing a melody

our bodies can follow

 

The dropped beat of an averted gaze

A mother who won’t hold the hand of her child

Heart fibers pulled tight as an unplucked string

 

Oh, under the most silent tongue

there is a song to be sung

 

Listen to the naked hum of a voice awaiting harmony

 

There is no instrument that is not meant to be played

There are no notes that do not match some other

 

All our songs, these unstopped ears:

I will seam my voice to yours,

hold the rhythm, match the chorus,

clasp your hand

and pulse with melody

 

Blog-iversary

February marks my one year blog-iversary. Last year at this time I took the desperate measure of finding something fulfilling to do; the stretch between winter vacation and spring vacation is incredibly difficult for teachers-- students' bad behaviors amp up, the days are long and dreary, and it's hard to find opportunities for rest and rejuvenation. I was downtrodden. My early entries were time consuming pieces of writing that allowed me to stretch out in reflection, to re-enter places I hadn't visited in a while. I'm thankful for this space that is free of criticism and open to my writing whims.

During this last month, in thinking about various posts and not having the time/energy to complete the ones I started ("oh yeah, this time of year is really hard!" -- it took me seven years of teaching to notice the pattern), two recurring questions gelled.

Why do I write so much about the music of my youth?

Why don't I write more about teens?

Obviousness was tapping me on the forehead with her index finger. Writing about the music of my youth is my way of writing about what I do every day. Teens slip into my writing in moments when they seem least present because those little buggers have my heart. Journal poems about my garden become poems about my students

In the summer, the vines twist around each other like ecstatic children

They reach away from the wire fence and find each other in open gravity

Unfurling leaves taste the air like reptile tongues

and then poems that reflect the worries I harbor; I only have a year and a half longer to get them ready for high school!

Not all these green hearts will make it,

Some will harden through,

retreat from root and life,

crack from the vine.

I don't know what this year will bring, but I hope it will be full of more blog entries because the good it has done my soul to spend time writing is incalculable.

I lift an LP in honor of this occasion, my blog-iversary. Thank you, dear friend, for reading.

Suburban War: All My Friends, I Love You

I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks thinking about when I was younger. Music has been my pathway to writing about times I haven't allowed myself to visit much because there's pain inherent in craning my neck to look backwards. I finally got out all my old pictures (as you can see on Facebook!) and looked at them with smiles, and not absolute sadness. I find myself owing The Joshua Tree and Grace all over again (and a few other things that I think I'll finally be able to write about after this post). 

I'm a fairly reflective person, but the reality is that when I look at the past I focus on my mistakes, so my desire is to look ahead, plan how to avoid future errors when I should be examining the things in my past that were good and right.

"You said the past won’t rest
Until we jump the fence and leave it behind"

I find that I've lost people along the way to the present, lost their names, lost their faces, lost my connection like a fuzzy radio signal. Looking at these pictures, I think, "why didn't I spend more time getting to know these beautiful people?" I discover that I've dug a big old hole in the back yard of my heart and buried the bones of memories, but now they're more present, more welcome than ever.

What footsteps did I take in the dark that I can finally look my memories in the eyes again?

"They keep erasing all the streets we grew up in."

"Suburban War" has been traveling with me, recalling to me things I felt when I returned home from Lewis & Clark after my freshman year. Things I feel now.

"With my old friends I can remember when

You cut your hair, I never saw you again

Now the cities we live in could be distant stars

And I search for you in every passing car"

Today I remembered an (unfinished) poem from 2001 that parallels aspects of "Suburban War".

Living in Two Places

 

I guess the weirdest thing

Is always seeing faces

From the city I’m not in

On the bodies of strangers,

Phantoms of relation.

Location is a trench

Dug right through the middle of me;

Shadows of shapes pour down my concave skin

Like rainwater gathering in a pool of reflection

Slick-bottomed, still,

In the heart of me.

I was thinking that maybe this feeling is regret for things left undone, but it isn't so. This feeling is not regret, it is love, it is space and time separating us from each other. Do you feel it, too?

"All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends are staring through me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

They don’t know me now

All my old friends, wait…"

Maybe we all just want to say, "Friend, I miss you.

I love you.

I'm looking for you everywhere I go. Will I have the courage to reach out to you when I see you again?"

Ode to Brian Wilson

This is a poem I worked on for quite a while...it fell apart about 2/3 of the way through the poem and I couldn't finish it...gah!


Old Soul

           

I can see you

the darkness curving around your child-body like a globe,

your transistor radio like a moon,

all those notes encircling you like stars.

As in some bedside fable about the sea

you swallowed the gigantic moon

and it sunk into the core of your being,

waiting for its service to the sun.

Your axis tilted to pearl notes and then you shone.

When your father saw you shining like a jewel

he was at your ear

and put you to work chipping at the glow,

throwing his mantle over you to cover up the truth.

Every eye was on you in the studio,

each day longer,

each day hotter.

One day the dry L.A. hills bore up smoke like testimony,

and you were sure you’d lit the hills like tinder

with sparks of sound from your teenage symphony.

You closed your hands around the reels

and ash dropped from your fists like sand.

 

***Here's where the poem gets bumpy and I couldn't quite work it out...so my latest, way cut back version is below***

The fire wasn’t your fault.

It consumed you

until your moon blazed

your fingers hollowed with the emptiness of aborted songs.

You still feel the gape where it used to reside,

I know.  But Brian, I still see the moon inside you,

and all that bright beauty of your starry seashore transistor notes.

fin

***Okay, here's my tortuous crap-that's-left-over version ***

How long could you keep your sun reflector from (searing/burning) a hole (right) through you?

The sounds began to rain from your fingers,

the piano drenched in a quintessence of light,

the sounds of re-creation.

The more you (bled/poured/showered) song, the more mirrors you became.

The fire wasn’t your fault.

It consumed you

until your moon burst into char and ash,

the specks and granules like a broken artery,

your fingers hollowed, the empty (spaces/wombs) of aborted songs.

You still feel the gape where it used to reside,

I know.  But Brian, I still see the moon inside you,

and all that bright beauty of your starry seashore transistor notes.

Louie (inspired by a blues class)

Louie

Poverty set the table with the blues,

what else was there to eat?

Worryin’ about the next meal,

every meal,

and mama whorrin’ herself out.

Couldn’t learn schoolin’,

Couldn’t waste time complainin’,

Couldn’t believe

Jelly Roll’s skeel-deetlin doo-wa-tee-doin ivories.

Pawnshop trumpet and lips that fit the mouth.

scat / deet / doo-da

that Heebie-Jeebie jazz tinglin’ voice flirtin’ with the air.

This man’s a cornet inside!

When he was in Chicago every breeze was a tune,

the lift and settle, breath and sigh, solo.

The trash on the flurries was that holy Dixie band

couldn’t find no place to live.

No gig too small! No gig too far! No gig where we won’t play!

if ya pay us ‘nuf to live on, this here horn ‘n me,

an maybe if ya don’t.

Music.

New York, Chicago, Harlem, New Orleans.

Ain’t gonna be Gabriel blowin’ that horn