Well hello there! This was supposed to be about mountain climbing and it just kind of morphed. It’s got potential, but if you want to see what by brain “spews” out before the final draft here it is. Sometimes it all just ends up on the page pretty quickly, but today it just seemed like I was missing something.
:: busts out his spice rack ::
“In the depth of winter”, he said.
Ice all around
Crashing and steel
As it pounds through your drums
And as if by magic
You feel the first drip
You see the first ray
And ponder the past
You ponder what was
And of what could be
As her winds blow cold
In the depths of this snow
A drip
Drip
And another Drip
Gives way to Drips
As it melts all around
Slow as may be
The rivers they flow
As if almost too deep
Yet just wide enough
Have I found my “Invincible Summer”
Now tropical island
I’ll have a beer
The tallest peaks
Are always the ones
That take the time
To Build your soul
Just call me “Mr. Obvious” with this one…. but it leads into another post, seemed to fit and well :: pauses :: you’ll take it and like it!
There are things that are just part of who we are as individuals. Everything from the accents that we have to style of music that we like. But there are also traits and things that just about everyone carries are the same no matter who you are…. think bruising, the desire to shave, we yawn when other people yawn (don’t you dare yawn….or else! haha).
There are some traits however, that you have that you think everyone has…but they don’t. Those are the ones that really make you who you are. It’s just sometimes they are just the hardest ones to find.
I realized this phenomenon for the first time when I after I was at least 10 years old. Although this doesn’t really define me as a person, it is something that really surprised me to find out. See I have a ringing in my ears all the time. But it took me over 10 years to realize that that the rest of the world doesn’t have a ringing in their ears 24/7. So I just never knew…
Well I dream of changing the world for the better… and I think I’m starting to realize that not everyone really cares to do so? Am I wrong here? I sure hope I am. Damn it!
The One Sure Bet
The countdown’s on
For the one sure bet
That Ace in my pocket
The one that you dreamt
The one that will pierce
Through the armors of kings
The one that will steal your diamonds and rings
It’ll leave you raw
No matter the cost
No matter the caste
Or the dirt on your soul
As we lay them all out
The eyebrows they raise doubt
Just like the size
of my stack seen on the floor
One day we’ll get two seven
And pay it all right back
This kid can only hope
His luck don’t change again
Will Chapin sing “The Cradle”
As we stand up from the table?
Will we just break even?
Or will I leave a mark?
Autumn. Great Salt Lakes
The reflections in our eyes
Leaves fossils lie still
So this one is going to be a twofer? What’s a twofer you ask? Why for counting silly… wah wah waaaaaaa
So this post is going to be about a poetry form, a band, and the place they both snuck off to when the teachers weren’t looking.
So boom… the band is called Fossil, and back in the mid 90′s this powerpop/pop/rock quartet put out an EP then LP on Madonna’s fledgling (offshoot of Warner) Maverick Records, annnnnd were never heard from again.
I first saw them on an episode of 120 Minutes that Matthew Sweet was hosting. The song was Moon, and video is made out to be like some old sci-fi “rescue the damsel in distress from the aliens” story. Although it had some lo-budget aspects to it overall it was a pretty solid video. Solid enough to make me buy their album. Well, when i was listening to it, I heard something that you don’t hear very often with really awesome tunes…. awesome poetry!
Sure there are tons of bands that have great lyrics and music… but there aren’t many bands that turn those dials to eleven and really pull off this elusive combo (if you know of any please share). Ed Sheeran comes close but he has a pretty “thin” style sometimes. It works great for a song like Wake Me Up and All of the Stars (such good songs), but the thinner the tunes, the closer they become to just plain ole poetry.
Anyway, back to Fossil!
The tunes had “meat” to them, were dynamically soft and loud when they needed to be, and overall are songs that I still find myself going back to today. What can I say I’m a sucker for a pop tune… yet as poetic as they are i didn’t really notice it until I heard their song Fall and then Ocean the second time through.
Ocean is a tale about a lost love, and the ocean. On the surface it is about a man’s dying wish to be buried in the ocean when “his body breaves him”, and although there are lyrics relating to lost love, try and peel these ones back and tell me what you see:
Now the sea is my kingdom My benevolent wisdom Stretches over the globe, embraces every coast I move with greater conviction than I ever did living My remains are in motion Bury me in the ocean
As mediocre as I think I am as a poetry anaylizer, I’m going to take a stab at this one. I see so much more than a the last wish of an unrequited lover, I see so much more than what is even written on the page. Either it’s a moment indescribable freedom, or one trying to fool themselves in to thinking they are free, yet no matter how many times the singer attempts to describe the feeling you never feel like he gets there…you feel like he’s still searching.
Moon also kind of does this, just in a different way. The first line is “How can I presume to sing about the moon?” and the next 3/4 of the song is about how the singer is beside himself with feelings of woe about not having the right words to convey the conviction of his feelings towards the moon..
Fall on the other hand, ties into the haiku theme of this post. I hadn’t heard the song in a while, and although I was familiar with the lyrics, I never made the connection, until yesterday. For some reason I decided that I wanted to write a haiku, so after brushing up on my Haiku “rules” I started getting into a 5 syllable “zone” and as I was thinking about nature and leaves this song just came to mind. All of the lines are 5 syllables ending with the lines.
“It’s so logical – death is beautiful”
And while the traditional Haiku has a 575 meter, these poetic lines not only reference nature, they are specifically about a season, and they also have a clear “kireji”.
A kireji is defined literally as a cutting point and it is considered to be the most important part of a haiku. Think of it as a pause between two independent ideas that brings emotion to the reader, in a way that sort of connects the two phrases.
So yea, I just learned all that, it is really fascinating.
With that, take a listen, and see how this band handles the balance of the lyric and the music:
Thanks again for reading…. This post was waaay on the serious side and was almost even a little… dare I say “intellectual“. Alright that settles it… the next post is going to be about bar brawls or something haha
Deep inside these woods The leaves of green and gold Reflect upon my mind The stillness of the lake
Not filling up with cloudy snow No path grassy, wanting wear No path’s leaves, untrodden black I stop regardless as the sun shines through
[I turn towards my back Not able to go back The time for turning back It has long since past]
For a moment there was silence Before the blowing wind Moves upon the water The waves upon my soul
I looked her in the eyes As she stood there in my view Unknowing of the reason I found her [she found me] there that day
———–
Woah…It still amazes me how my brain ends up putting some of these things together. I don’t say that in a way that means that I think my poetry is just that good (although I obviously do haha) It’s just that a lot of times when I write poetry it comes out in a stream of consciousness kind of way and when my brain feels it just was put through some sort of intense MacGyver last minute paperclip bomb diffusing situation.
This was no exception to that trend. With this one I started off with the lines “I looked her in the eyes as she stood there in my view”, all the while I had this urge to write about nature. I thought about a horse, and stopping in the wood, looking it in the eyes and wrote a line about not being able to turn back… but then I just started from the top, the lines just came out. I had stanza’s 1, 2, and 4 in place (which at the time was 1, 2, and 3), and although I felt like it could end there I really wanted to use that first line. I read it again and it took on a whole new meaning and just fit. I wrote the final 2 lines…. and then I got greedy and tried to squeeze in my line about turning back. I had already used the work back, and I thought my mind had just popped out some smooth rhyming scheme where all the words were almost the same, but once I read it it sounded like Dr. Seuss! (not that there’s anything wrong with that… it just wasn’t what I was going for). So if you are reading this thanks… and if you take out that third stanza, don’t worry I won’t hold it against you!
Through the dirt stained windows I flew
Past the bridges as the mission bells rang
Reminding me of a simple time
When it was you who looked me in the eyes
Your body so clear
And mind so smooth
Our hands came to be
What was once but a dream
Who ever said
No body cares
About the Railoads
Anymore?
