The saddest man you ever saw
Sang through his nose, his notes were raw,
His teeth were bad, his voice was flat;
Hank Williams wore a cowboy hat.
A hundred songs upon the shelf,
He loved us more than loved himself:
He sang of you, he sang of me,
To set our shackled spirits free.
His tritest titles bragged of pain,
“Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “You Win Again,”
And “Weary Blues,” “I Saw The Light,”
And “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight.”
He loved to drink, but he loved more
Composing melodies meant for
The words he couldn’t always spell,
But sang so well that they still sell.
A limousine, gold in the bank,
Were not enough to ease old Hank:
He cursed his loves, and feared his Lord
Would pay him back the debts he stored.
The debts were cleared on New Year’s Day,
The coroner could only say
That chloral hydrate took its toll
From Hank’s poor self-tormented soul.
You hear that yodeled freight-train whine?
It’s just a ghost, aged twenty-nine,
That left his flesh in ‘Fifty-Three,
But still he haunts Montgomery.
Hank Williams repeated the above form in nearly all his songs some of which are included
in the above verse.
Categories:
tritest, dedication
Form: Ballad
Ernest Dowson was a singer of the saddest, tritest tune,
Of the fawning, futile love that poets blame upon the moon,
And his lyrics all were painted on the margin of the page,
So his water-colored lines were barely noticed by his Age.
Wine-and-roses, and Cynara, floating lonesome in the air
Of the foggy yellow Nineties, in a Soho restaurant where
An Italian fickle waitress cracked a poet’s dream, yet made
His exquisite, fragile verses, faintly flower, not to fade.
Categories:
tritest, art
Form: Verse
Ernest Dowson was a singer of the saddest, tritest tune,
Of the fawning, futile love that poets blame upon the moon,
And his lyrics all were painted on the margin of the page,
So his water-colored lines were barely noticed by his Age.
Wine-and-roses, and Cynara, floating lonesome in the air
Of the foggy yellow Nineties, in a Soho restaurant where
An Italian fickle waitress cracked a poet’s dream, yet made
His exquisite, fragile verses, faintly flower, not to fade.
07-01-72
Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Regno Cynarae & Vitae Summa Brevis
Categories:
tritest, introspection, life, nostalgia, passion
Form: Verse
“Renewal…Easter,,,April love…rebirth”
Are easy, archetypal terms for when
Fresh shoots begin to green the thawing Earth
And fill with sweet clichés this poet’s pen.
At least I know what Spring is not—
The “cruelest” month’s not April, no,
In spite of Mister T. S. Elliot
Whose Spring and soul were both of snow.
But he was young. Age brings surcease,
And Spring, forsythia and daffodils,
As flowered sonnets sprout, increase,
And decorate the rain-swelled rills.
Thus, in the landscape of my autumn brain
The hues of yellow and of green remain.
03-23-83
Categories:
tritest, inspirational, introspection, philosophy, spring,
Form: Sonnet