Long Songbook Poems
Long Songbook Poems. Below are the most popular long Songbook by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Songbook poems by poem length and keyword.
VI. THE RUNNING MAN’S
LIFE
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Tramps like us
Baby,
we were born to run
The highways jammed
with broken heroes
On a last chance drive
It’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by
just upon a smile, girl
He was born
in the summer
of his twenty-seventh year
We’re just two lost
souls
swimming
in a fish bowl
No one told you
when to run
You missed the starting gun
(Stefi, Becca, Jules—how did the years
outpace the engine?)
(a poetry man since '73, the same three
chords still finding
new ways to break)
Talk to me some more
You don't have to go
Fathers taught me
how to leave;
the years taught me how to wait
After changes
upon changes
we are more or less the same
And then one day you
find
ten years
have got behind you
And then one day you
find
ten years
have got behind you again
There never seems
to be enough time
It was long ago and far away
the world was younger than today
All we are
is dust in the wind
(corridor break)
All we are
is dust in the wind
(the descent deepens)
VII. THE COLLAPSE OF
TIME
I’ve been lately thinking
about my life’s time
Time can bring you
down
Time can bend your knees
So you speak to me
of sadness
Then winter’s
for wondering
what went wrong
I have stood upon
the mountain
and looked down
on all the people
I’m going to be a
happy idiot
and struggle
for the legal tender
(pause)
I’ve seen fire
and I’ve seen rain
Still, a man
hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest
Across the evening
sky
all the birds
are leaving
In the year
of the cat
(the descent reaches its floor, hell)
======
END OF PART 3 of 5
You may feel about the planet what
you feel about a great baseball team or band:
that once there was a moment when, unknown
to us at the time, we convened
and lost and found ourselves in what we created.
Who should I thank for this day?
A fresh-mown lawn is a robin's repast.
A bear a black bear a rolling delicately dancing
graceful as silence sailing through the ferns and understory
unafraid and in no hurry.
My musician referral service, vacation rental business,
nonprofit management system, plant identification database,
great American songbook and anthology of poems. Coach says
in a thousand years back and forth games like lacrosse and soccer
will be played against genetically engineered primates
but baseball will be played solely by humans.
In a thousand years, amen.
VIII. THE RUIN
The river reflects
the moonlight
on a gravel road
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened
to my old man
She’s living in L.A.
with my best old ex-friend
There’s a hole
in daddy’s arm
where all the money goes
I don’t know
where we went wrong
Does anyone know
where the love of God goes
You better let
somebody love you
before it’s too late
From give and take,
and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I remember standing
there
(Yogi’s heavy collar jingling in the
hall, Gurty asleep by the amp)
until I remember
I only remember
the songs
that disappear
the moment
the music died
(the soul darkens)
IX. THE DARK NIGHT
OF THE SOUL
I have become
comfortably numb
Everybody rolls
with their fingers crossed
Freedom's just
another word
for nothing left
to lose
When you're weary,
feeling small
I will dry
your tears
You can't always get
what you want
But if you try sometimes...
Is a dream a lie
if it don't come true
Or is it something worse?
It's life's
illusions
I recall
I really don't know
life at all
I never knew
what silence
could do
Somewhere between
the time you arrive
and the time you go
may lie
a reason
you were alive
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
(the turning begins)
======
He leads me through East London,
docks, pubs, among the stray dogs, the
River Thames lapping at low clouds.
We find the second-hand player in a street
where the shops are dusty holes under the arches
of viaducts and railway bridges,
Me carrying the portable Dancette record player
in its hard Bakelite box,
lifting it by its leatherette handle, and I,
small for my age
but wanting so much to lug it all the way home.
The plastic cuts my fingers,
sharp corners bark my shins.
Father talks of his life here, the blackouts
and bombs, rationing,
and the bloody Saturday night street fights.
He whistles tunes
from a songbook of dead crooners.
That evening sitting together, with Sinatra -
watching the dark blue Capitol label
spiral and blur,
hearing the unseen belt under the bobbing needle
as it chewed vinyl -
reliving the clunk-clunk of our boots
as we pushed back fog-muted miles.
Years later, finding that player again
in mother's attic, lifting the machine
feeling how light, it is,
willing to take another walk with him
yet not knowing how to catch up.
If you look at Stephen Foster,
who wrote songs for the minstrel shows,
you wouldn’t expect a genius
that all of the world would know.
He was another bookkeeper
for a steamship company,
until he started writing tunes
that to this day sound masterly.
Today those same minstrel shows
seem quite insulting to good minds,
they weren’t exactly ‘High Culture’
way back in Foster’s time,
but the man wrote Old Susanna,
and My Old Kentucky Home,
the Swanee River, Camptown Races,
and Hard Times Come Again No More.
Even Beautiful Dreamer,
and Genie With The Light Brown Hair,
the amount of hits this man wrote
can drive musicians to despair.
From throw-away entertainment
that never got a second look,
this man alone wrote the core of
The Great American Songbook.
That he still remains relevant,
even known at this late date,
show that we never can predict
who exactly will be great.
Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions - probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.
The form of the poem, the rhyme.
Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
betrayal of reality.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.
Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men side
by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer lay
down their bones
and, like them, die alone.
When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
nothing can be done or faked.
The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great American
Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator,
we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
Organic computers using polymerase and qubits came later.
“birds care not for whom they sing” - Silent One
You have your place in nature's choir,
Singing creation's songbook.
You're divine when you sing what you desire,
Like water in a brook,
Or leaves when a quaking aspen shook.
When you worry about the listening crowd,
You're no longer in tune.
If you feel sunshine, forget the cloud.
Forget about the moon.
The throng doesn't know, but it needs sun this June.
A bird sings not to lilt a melodious song,
But, because he's a bird.
To be who you are is never wrong -
When a wolf's mournful howl is heard,
He is what he is, and someone's soul is stirred.
Why please the milky orb on the sky's black roof
Unmoved by the wolf's plaintive song?
Her job is to be mysterious and aloof
To him, as he cries out so long,
But he feels content to bay his feelings, strong.
So, Painter, poet, singer, actor -
Whoever you may be,
Disregard every detractor.
Because they cannot see
Your beauty, and your place in God's tapestry.
Her song is the luring of a beloved beast
with a soft black, blond coat, and sunflower eyes.
Her song is the colors captured
within any sky,
every sky within the celestial sphere
that adorns the heavens.
Her song is the sky at night..
a queen's crown is the night sky.
The woman, girl, plays the piano.
She is enchanted, a stream flows
with reflections of light that are slivers of silver..
that are bursting stars over the yellowed keys.
The songbook is a swapped copy,
with corrupt printing of the notes,
to blind her reading of the songs,
to cripple her melodies.
The wild creature chases the sinking
sun, to return to her home...