floating and leaving no trace
Last year, I posted a Christmas song every day of December. I don’t think that I can repeat that feat, but I will try to post a couple a week at least. I’d like to focus on the ones that make me feel nostalgic, not that nostalgia is always a good thing. But I think for Christmas songs, it works.
Feel free to comment, or post a link to your own favorite song. We can make it a party.
Christmas Time Is Here (Vocal), Vince Guaraldi Trio
in this darkened place
i put my arm around you
–sunlight finds a seam
something catches in my throat
something pulling the muscles
to contract
something hinders my fingers
as they type
something whispering
some thing
and closing my eyes makes them burn
makes river burn down my cheek
makes my breath shudder
and i
something is wrong
some thing is wrong
and it clatters and hisses
and i catch my breath and give it
the finger
and type
tranquility
is what you’re supposed to compose
in tranquility
a recollection
of a feeling
that stirs that feeling anew
and using it like seed money
for a gambler
rolls the dice
and see what feeling
what words
expose themselves
the cheeky little bastards
i am breaking
rending
splitting down the middle
and the words are failing
the words are falling
the words fall
leaves, all
and i am in pieces
and no hands will
bother to reassemble me
hard to write poems
when your mouth dries up, dusty
and the words wither
the minute hand waits
for the second hand
and for a fraction of a second
they touch
advance
and then the second hand is gone
in her point of view
is she racing ahead
or did the minute hand
let go too soon?
weaving
the shuttle moves and clacks
all the strands are the same color
save one
a single red thread
a thick as a threat
dark as blood
never pumped by human heart
the weaver
swears there is a pattern
though the skeins
seem all the same
colorless as dun
against the heath
the hands move
the threads move
save one
that wraps around stars
that wraps around us
bright-burning, but not enough
to drive out the night
her bared skin reveals stripes
scars made by other hands
where she was seamed together
assembled by who knows what hands
not mine is all i know
there will be fire yet, oh yes
and there was blood, for certain
and lost feathers from wings refusing
to be broken. freedom and will and safety
one she wants, the other she has
the last a consideration
you may pick two, of course
these crepuscular woods fill
with birdsong and the sound of flight
the ringing of an anvil
delight and tears
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
–William Blake,
from Auguries of Innocence
Today is William Blake’s birthday. He is one of my favorite poets, one I still turn to when I want to see how someone forcefully made the world into a place habitable for himself.
all lean muscle and taut nerves
something there in the trembling
in the hand
in the clenching
of the stomach
of the small fibrous tangle
muladhara
open and expand and explode
lower your lids like sunset
Words and Feathers 