The Crystal Tambourine

Opening Act

dylan618 — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:22:14 +0000

Surreal anthems from the fire escape, forsooth.
Mending his mind with strips of thin Scotch tape, forsooth.

He wrote “Apostasy” at age sixteen –
Flushed with the blood of Baudelaire’s grape, forsooth.

Brooding lad from Eastie, precocious tippler,
He wrapped himself in Superbard’s cape, forsooth.

Young and difficult under the triple-deckers,
He got himself into more than one scrape, forsooth.

He learned the right words for all the wrong things
And sang mellifluously as any ape, forsooth.

Nursed his wounds by the cramped bedroom’s window.
A breeze from the back would startle the drape, forsooth.

He carried The Map of Love wherever he went.
His dream (dark Beatrice!) took shape, forsooth.

Grabbed rhetoric, Rimbaud-like. Twisted its neck.
Poems sprouted like hairs on the nape, forsooth.

Saint of the city. Columbus of the Blue Line.
Sage subway litany, blighted landscape, forsooth.

He cracked sarcastic jokes. More tame than Wilde.
He was the victim of his own crude jape, forsooth.

Dylan’s performance during the opening act
Left friends and enemies speechless, agape, forsooth.

Ghazal from Qatar

dylan618 — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:50:40 +0000

Formality in verse might not please Sabrina.
The eye rejoices whenever it sees Sabrina.

The skies of Amherst are thick with snow-clouds.
Behold, a poetaster on his knees, Sabrina!

It is 1990 and I am twenty-one.
I drink large draughts of wine to the lees, Sabrina.

You like Public Enemy, I like the Cocteau Twins.
I love your voice, a soothing breeze, Sabrina.

My love is a fever, a mania, a spell …
A happy madness, a healthy disease, Sabrina.

You are my sovereign queen, but please don’t say
Anything nice about the New York Yankees, Sabrina.

You are springtime in December, gentle warmth
Giving life to the shyest leaves of trees, Sabrina.

I love you in your fierce disconsolacy,
In the righteous wrath that I cannot appease, Sabrina.

Dylan the doltish worships you from afar
With your jet-black hair and torn dungarees, Sabrina.

Sestet

dylan618 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:25:35 +0000

‎’70s music makes me travel back
To those days when the world was young and new.
The mellow, sentimental soundtrack
Of Karen Carpenter, Marilyn McCoo,
Of “Summer Breeze,” “Brandy,” and “American Pie.”
Hard to believe four decades have gone by.

Contra WSM

dylan618 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:52:21 +0000

I must confess I haven’t read enough of William
Stanley Merwin to produce an adequate parody
but I have opened one or two of his more recent
books and have seen the endless verse paragraphs
of slippery prosy English unpunctuated with nary
a word that sticks in the mind for longer than thirty
seconds and they give this fellow a phucking Pulitzer
I give up I simply give up I don’t know what’s wrong with
the world today I am sitting drinking coffee at my laptop
incredulous over this state of affairs to paraphrase
Villon where are the Dylan Thomases of yesteryear where are
the poets who’d come out with trumpets blaring
the poets who blazed across the heavens like fiery comets
who erupted with irrepressible life like verbal
volcanoes where is Hart Crane where is Father Hopkins
anybody but this octogenarian Buddhist bore to whom
everything including conventional punctuation is illusion

when estlin cummings drank

dylan618 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:38:04 +0000

when estlin cummings drank
the moon and stars would dance
him i should like to thank
for his great innocence

an understanding child
who sang as trees would sing
amid the zephyrs mild
of an eternal spring

so praise sir estlin yes
the wise and happy fool
whose laughing gentleness
defeated every rule

Winter Rhyme

dylan618 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:50:40 +0000

I like to party in the blistering snow
When temperatures are roughly ten below
And eaves are fanged with drastic icicles
And streets are free of summer’s bicycles
And lips exhale an icy dragon-smoke
And words freeze hard as soon as they’ve been spoke
And flowers are crisped to flakes by the searing chill
And arctic draughts creep past the windowsill

I like to party beneath glacial lights
That dot the cold black sky these winter nights
As darkest air is blurred with magic stars
That frolic to the tune of blind guitars
And slam-dance in a polar vertigo
I like to party in the blistering snow

American Pied Beauty

dylan618 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:20:20 +0000

Glory be to God for levee’d Chevys,
For jesters playing for the queen and king,
For the pick-up truck of a lonely teenage buck;
For February-shivering paper-deliveries,
For good ol’ boys that whiskey-and-wryly sing
As the music dies in a stroke of rotten luck:

All things rocking, rolling, rhythm-and-bluesing;
Every heart-rending pluck of a guitar-string;
Songs heard on the radio, oldies often played;
Boys and girls, glad-brash, sad, crashed; dancing, boozing –
Whom God hath made.

Ironing Board

dylan618 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:46:12 +0000

Somebody might not be able to sing certain words. It’s like working with Elton John or Bryan Ferry. You can’t put a phrase like “ironing board” in a lyric because they can’t sing it. But luckily Glenn can!

– Chris Difford, songwriter for the band Squeeze
(here)

I am a bachelor, aged forty-two.
Through many lands, mostly alone, I’ve wandered;
And one thing, above all, I like to do:
I keep my blithe apparel freshly laundered.
I wash the clothes, oh, every other Sunday –
A fortnight’s laundry cannot be ignored!
You’re indispensable, you’ve never blundered,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

You press my Arrow and Van Heusen shirts
Until they’re stiffer than my evening drink;
You crease my slacks so sharply that it hurts –
You’re more domestic than the kitchen sink!
O foldable flat surface, thee I thank!
For wrinkled clothes are things I can’t afford.
You are sartorial splendor’s stilted plank,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

Excellent at their humble offices,
The washer and the dryer are both great –
A pair of useful smart appliances,
More awesome than a knockout of a date!
But you, O simple sturdy smoother-out,
You really take the cake! You strike a chord!
Your steady service I can’t do without,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

O patron saint of the last spin-cycle,
Angel on high, defend me with your sword!
O Blessed Lord, dear Lady, good St Michael:
Make sure nobody steals my ironing board!

middle age

dylan618 — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:07:58 +0000

the trouble with my poems recently
too much lawrence welk not enough mick jagger
not enough sex machines indecently
cavorting with a histrionic swagger

too much tennyson too much modesty
not enough mudwrestling not enough beer
too much lucidity too much honesty
not enough lies told with a practiced leer

too much risk-averse pre-strategizing
not enough whiskey too few cigarettes
too much calisthenic exercising
no chances taken too many hedged bets

too much looking back on early promise
no royal madmen raging on the heath
too much millay too little dylan thomas
no black eyes no wrung necks and no smashed teeth

Song

dylan618 — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:01:54 +0000

Dark art thou, and lovely.
Sun-bright, thy soul. Thy smallest gestures I venerate.
Thine eyes deal death to cold despair,
Thy lips and voice are as the spring’s delight,
Thy silences are luminous
Even as the constellations of the nighttime sky.

Stealth cannot steal, wealth cannot win
Thy clear and gentle speech
Whose words disdain mendacity
But bid the soul rejoice.

The light of love transfigureth thy face.
Thou knowest that nothing flourisheth
Apart from the grace of God.

More beautiful than mountains, than rivers flowing fair
Are thy hands clasped, is thy head bowed,
In morning orison.

Through grasses green and meadows mild,
With feet that kiss the earth,
Thou walkest, my lady, my sovereign, my only light,
In happiness and peace.
Thou hast slain sin, thou hast given my soul new life.