Best Guitar Player Poems
*****This poem inspired me to show or make sentient as possible a woman of special appeal, which provided an apt challenge of my poetic Powers. Such words as 'countenance opulent' 'L'Amour and debonair' and the rhyming structure creates the 'magic third' as Bach said of music; this exists throughout much of my works. I am a professional guitar player, lead guitar; my sense of timing and feel --- creativity, must have helped my poetic abilities since music is poetry in motion. To express oneself sincerely is good enough, yet why the expression? What makes the poet express a line, stanza or the poem itself?*****
A softer silk she came,
with tresses as a willow
weeps long to seeking love;
Her air as stars and moons,
of countenance opulent,
L'Amour and debonair;
Whose eyes seek the hidden bloom....
(such goddess of slender strides
and aerie chimes)
She hath not heard of death ----
knows it not,
and only life knows her,
for a softer silk she came
Endeared she whose lips speak as rushing waters
and mellow cinnamon climes,
whose whisper furled Apollo
and all the rhyme he felled;
Whose ear heard never a temptress distant knell,
nor some grim hades from some bitter-wrought hell,
for 'o what a chartered hope,
the lovely of her spell!
Pursue your dreams even when
Circumstance tells you no!
It's not life that gets in our way
Or prevents us from going forward.
It's circumstance; it will put you down
And keep you there If you let it.
Understand life is full of circumstance
good and bad.
When a circumstances
is good we pay it no mind.
When it's bad we blame life instead.
Stop blaming life and stop letting circumstance win.
Take note of the blind guitar player
The one arm surfer, the wheelchair Olympian
And pursue your dreams even when
Circumstance tells you no!
Inspired by Arthur Vaso's poem Try
Please read it
Golden sincere guitar player
Serious musical slayer
True love lightening bolt stayer
Strong diligent brave man
Kiss bare neck hit a new layer
I love more than I plan.
For Rime Coulee Contest
Autumn Ehrhardt
Greasy hair under his baseball cap,
day-old stubble on his double chin,
he picks away on his Gibson guitar,
eyes half shut easing the guilt
of leaving his family behind.
Miles of road ahead of him,
rain hits the windows of the tour bus,
he's seen them all----the farmlands,
mountains, deserts, woodlands
and skyscraper cities.
Booze and smoke cloud his brain,
he can't remember when he had a
home-cooked meal last,
he's played in all the honky-tonk dives
from here to there where he still
smiles at the pretty women who
give him the eye cause they love his
music and masculinity,
he's the guitar player.
Whatever you want to do.
Whatever you want to be.
I’ll always stand by you.
You want to be a guitar player.
You want to be a soccer player.
You want to be in a band.
You want to be in a choir.
You want to be a dancer.
You can do anything,
I know you can do anything.
Be whatever you want,
I’ll be here supporting you.
1. Inevitability
The rain will come
and be rude.
The wind blow away
all quietude.
Erase it?
Debase it?
You have no power
and when it's
your hour, you'll
go, you know.
2. Drowning
My foot tapping time, O sweet,
he cannot know he echoes mine.
He's not in this world, but I am.
Take me there! Right foot: the Koran,
the Old Testament. He's young,
I'm not. He's playing for Happy Hour,
while his girlfriend sells her jeweled
stones her shiny koans, One,
Two, his right foot beats rhythm.
Testing,Testing. he doesn't know
he keeps me from the ocean
the dolphin and the whale,
the ashes of my brothers, his
sandaled foot, beating time,
beating time.
Little Jenny was always found to be very prim and proper/
Outside reading her cook book by Betty Crocker/
Lazy Mary Sat on the lazy suzanne,
Butch Malone was their next of kin kissing cousin,
Along with Mary this made up the famed dirty dozen !
That sand box experiment really made us laugh/
Shortly after gym class,
Butch Malone along with the famed Benjamin Bankhead/
Jimmy Foley the local guitar player knew,
The pathway in life that we should choose/
Often he would be found taking a tremendous dump in the boy's urenil !
The path of least resistance sought about from a chosen few,
Often he would appear in shepherds clothing similar to little boy blue !
Playing guitar like he's going out of style !
That sandbox experience was designed to distract all the teacher's ?
We set up stuffed dummies just to look like real people,
Right underneath the bleacher's !
Old man Winter's who worked for Mr. Kazoo knew the score/
Very often he was being seen outside the local liqour store,
Lest I emplore,
The sand box experiment was in full swing on that one particuler day/
Butch Malone thought he was the real king ?
That was until Mrs. Maloney saw him through the window !
Next the time was drawing near/
Then so was that dinner bell,
Mrs. Maloney started talking to all those dummies,
Next thing you know she had tripped over little Johnny !
He was stuffed that was/
Flying three feet high in the air she had fell right on her face !
What a social disgrace !
Yet what had happened to Butch Malone ?
Like a little dog without his bone/
He pee pee'd his pants then cried all the way home !
The next day when Mrs. Maloney got her second wind/
She didn't even know where to begin/
For that little stunt the whole class was suspended for the day,
Yet for the gang including Butch Malone what did they say ?
All in all the sandbox experiment really did make their day !
Another Tale Of Musical Madness...
It was in the early seventies...
My friend and rhythm guitar man,
Mark Trotiner, worked in a well
known musician store in NYC...
Another one of those so rare
"light up the room types"-
He played great rhythm guitar,
Couldn't play a lick of lead,
Sang proudly with an awful voice,
Was the arch-typical Hippie of the 70's,
Knew all about music and bands,
Was friend to Frank Zappa,
Blues Project men, had met Jimmy Page
and countless others, the first
of the Greenwich Village Super Hippies
All the bands knew him...
He could charm your socks off...
Swore till the day he dies,
He inspired Mark Knaufler"s
"Money For Nothing"..
And I'd long learned how
to catch a bullshooter in crap...
Listen to his story....
Wait a good amount of time,
Ask him again about it...
See what has changed...
Repeat this process about
Three times,
You're sure to expose the lie,
I did this to him repeatedly
Over the course of years,
And he passed every test...
(that story itself worthy of
a great work...someday soon...)
However, he was the core figure
In the Grateful Dead Cover Band
I was in...with his guitar player friend,
Mark "Bone" Diaz- 6 foot three,
80 pounds, curly red hair tied back...
Greatest musician I ever played with...
And another anxious singer
with no voice...
Well Mark was always meeting
musicians of various levels...
And so charming, so unassuming
he appeared to be...
He had that aura, like cousin Bill
In all my life, those two still..
Stand out with this gift...
Oh, give me a spoonful of that gift...
And what a boost in my life it would lift
Anyway, (and this happened twice...)
Hope I don't get mixed up...
It's like tossin' them ol' dice...
This band, named "Koala"
Early 70's recording band...
Invited us down, based on Mark's word,
To open a set for them..
At their Bond Street Loft...
We wound up there twice...
Were told to bring naught
but our guitars...
Their equiptment world class...
Now I'll compact these 2 stories
To make my point...
We didn't know what we had
stepped into...
Should'a never entered the joint...
First gig, just like the "Big Day Gig",
All other musicians crapped out
on us at the last minute...
And I wound up doing this job
With Billy, Mark T., a drummer,
and me..
On this brown, broken sofa
Here with my lonely guitar
Looking around in empty space
Orange is my only surroundings
Writing you songs about life
Or maybe about hopeful love
And even of my life's struggles
So many lyrics in my thoughts!
Out of these crowded alleys and corners
I'm nothing but a street guitar player
But I'm not of the penniless kind
For my melody will be the world's harmony
I could be pondering on a train station
Or alone in the dark, hidden roads
But my solace of my own success
Will be coming from a broken sofa
Don't be mistaken about this
For the sofa is not actually broken
What I really meant about this description
If the sofa was full of failures and loneliness
But all is not lost in my solitary life
Because my guitar is my true love
It's my endless passion of my feelings
And makes this street guitar player hopeful
This brown, broken sofa I'm lying on
The sorrows of struggles will be gone
You've kept my secrets and dreams
In which my success is great because of you
No matter where I travel in the world
Or the many people cheering around
From street guitarist to global music artist
I'll remember my true origins of my talent
Here, along with my lonely guitar
I go back to this small, orange space
Taking a long rest from my endless melodies
Brown, broken sofa... I now close my eyes
the music is sweating in the room
strings and reeds bump and grind
slow-dragging dancers entwine
oh the fruit is ripe upon the vine
and the wine of love and laughter
a mingled vintage- joy and tears
now are drunk down to the dregs
then another round is poured
urgency prowls the crowd's periphery
everybody waiting for... nobody knows
but we'll pitch a fit when it gets here
some might even shed some clothes
desire is straining in the room
lust sniffs around like an old hound
trying to catch the scent,
purposed to pick up the trail
hunting money, hunting magic
hunting comfort, hunting tail
sweaty music sound still coming down
where are soft arms that hold tight
warm lips to lie that it's all right?
night turns like a page in a book
the guitar player throws out a hook
and sweating music command us look
for when the morning shall come
During a thunderstorm at the midnight hour
I wrote you a letter that I'll never send
I wrote it when I was alone
so unless I give it to you
those words will always be mine
I might not keep them
but they are valuable
because I thought them
I wrote them and said them and read them
I said that I've see you around town
and I hope things are looking up for you
I said that I hope you're getting the help that you need
and I said nice things about your family
because they are such lovely people
and I said that you are too, really
I tried to keep it nice
but then I got brutal and blunt
and said that you can't heal on your own
because you keep your addiction so close
I said that you keep your addiction in first place
which keeps you from handling reality
because it throws off your perspective and light of life
and in my letter I told you how I waited on a guitar player at the cafe today
and he said that his favorite audience has become the young and the old
because of the way they take interest and inquire
and I didn't say this in my letter, but I wish that you would enjoy an audience like that
because that is a wholesome audience
I said that your thoughts, mistakes, and feelings are worth acknowledging
because they are honest and real
and they provide perspective and help you prosper
I was very frank when I said that you've been blessed
with talents and charm
and it was really harsh when I said that it's selfish
to keep them all to yourself
because you have a gift to connect with people and help them grow
and I said that you have so much potential
but you're trashing it
and good things aren't supposed to go to waste
I'm thinking that the thunder storm will fuel my poem
because the wind blows my curtains around
like I saw on Mickey Mouse once when I was little
while the rain hits my deck like a hundreds of marbles
dumped from an economy sized coffee can
and the lightning stabs and cracks flashes in the black humid breeze
several seconds before the thunder barrels at the silence I like for writing
but my lyrics are so raw that they don't need fuel
because I have the ruthless heart of an objective friend
who believes in you
because good things
aren't
supposed
to go
to waste
The Voyage
The big seagull sat on the bow of my rowing boat
on my way to Argentina and Rosita,
which I never met she had married guitar player-
had unfriendly eyes ready to peck my eyes out.
I regretted my heroism.
I wanted to go to Argentina because of its pampas
Beautiful horses and also to be famous for the voyage
I was picked up by a merchant ship
it was actually going the wrong way docked in Antwerp
Free beer for the, would be the hero.
I got a job on an old steamer bound for Argentina.
Buenos Aires,
A City with so many beautiful women it took a long
before I got my stead looking for the tree of wisdom.
I found it burning in the night
the Gauchos were feeling cold and set fire to the tree.
What matters is the journey
which is a fine sentence to cover for absolute failure.
I've got the lecture notes ready
I've got the examples
Just blow what I'm telling you to blow
I am responsible for the resurgence of the sales of saxophones
I unlock the doors of my car
By raising my right palm
You saw the crescent
I saw sod all
You need a guitar player
Bass and the whole caboodle
But don't stop there
Get yourself some
Man clarinets
And ear trumpets
In fact
Sack the band and
Just have a sax on stage
And horn away
Nostril reeds and
Ostentatious bellowing
I'll be your mouthpiece
I'll pretend to be from L.A.
Cringetown bottom burp
Caribbean Night
Tropical night, starlit, if I recall rightly; there was
sliver of a golden moon also. We drank beer too,
the sea is an enormous waste bin, plop, plop.
Someone brought guitar, nights like this ought to
have music, the gentle murmour of voices stilled.
The guitar player wasn’t any good, but for awhile
we sat politely listening to his pathetic attempts.
His friend got up, threw the instrument overboard.
We drank more beer, listened to our own dreams;
mine was about a guitar playing dolphin.
I can hear the crowd clapping as you strum,
transfixed you open another portal;
With each note becoming more overcome
easily you take a piece of their soul;
Every single person captivated;
Without uttering one melodic sound
all five senses are left elevated,
eliminating the rest king uncrowned;
Improvisation colors every chord
held them in the palm of a jam session;
Swallowing every long extended sword,
transferred them to a solid progression;
Taking in pain and exhaling grandeur,
the tortured soul of a guitar player.