“Why can’t these so-called poets just stick to writing poetry
and leave politics alone?”
– Michael Savage, radio talk show host (with reference to Al Young)

In the throes of criminal conspiracy,
in this dire hour, plum blossoms
push me back into pink chambers:

women, interrogators. Some strip
in front of Muslim men, then stand above
them to let their menstrual blood drip

onto captives’ drained faces. True or false?
No waltz of flowers, no gum-tree flower
trumps this sick misuse of flora and genus.

Torture of the landscape remains as American
as Billie Holiday’s strange fruit of lynch mob
justice. Dispensed with a callused hand,

with pride, such justice melts the polar ice
and caps the land with life-canceling poisons.
What on earth goes on here, Marvin Gaye?

Al Young

JJWebb/Cruzio Blues Café

Click to animate avatar of Al Young with the Dartanyan Brown Trio
Dartanyan Brown, bass | Jorge Molina, piano | Sly Randolph, drums

after Yip Harburg & Vernon Duke

It was here in that one-time, one-step, lighted blue
of Paris at ease, close to the Cluny, in splendid,
straight-up noontime shadow that your slow and
measuring eyes met more than their burning match.

The smooth warmth of your whisper along my neck,
the nappy back of it, where you’d peeled back
its soft, excited collar to tell me everything you’d learned
or discerned in a city where love and prices flirt.

A product of standstill winters, sudden summers, sultry
prejudice, and heartland steak-and whiskey afternoons,
you’d blown in from the States, an orphan of the arts –
Mary Cassatt, Josephine Baker, Mary Lou Williams,

Jean Seberg. What breathlessness overtakes me here?
Brushing and combing out memories of your touch,
in a season as uncertain as coastal fog moving inland
from the loveless edges of that country we’d both fled,

I shiver. Whom could we run to if not one another?
Back home we knew what it was like to be the other –
displaced, despised, imprisonable. We watched and fought.
The colors of loss deepened. Yearning to break free,

unconsciously American, we counted our chickens, certain
that the ships we’d always banked on would sail in.
In Paris, our adopted country of each other’s arms,
whose borders blurred all time, all common market sense,

we saved the slow but steady squeeze of night, of time,
the way it smothered darkness, the way it mothered light.
The April of your frightened French was like that, too;
you had no words for holiday tables, for chestnuts in bloom.

Parisian light, like light at home — Detroit, Des Moines –
lit up your waifish eyes. I said, “Think twice before you speak.”
Over here you mostly knew the blues; rue rhymed with blue.
There couldn’t be too much light, too much touch.

Al Young
Copyright © 2001, 2006, 2008 by Al Young

Collected in The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000 (Loveletter Editions), and in Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry (Sourcebooks/MediaFusion)

Beau Blue’s lively animation of Al Young reading “April in Paris” to music by Dartanyan Brown’s Trio will be posted the third week of April at his remarkable web site: Blue’s Cruzio Café (Poetry for the 21st Century)

“Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA.”
– Jack Valenti

The unclocked cruelty of time,
saudades: a yearning for yearning.
That everything you ever wished
or cared for sinks or disappears
tells time where it can go.

What you’ll get isn’t what you see
at all. If Southern California goes
the way of Santa Ana, over 700 homes
burnt to the ground from San Diego
to the Mexican border, the winds fueling
wild fires in the form of global climate
change: fires burn faster than ever before.

New flooding in New Orleans leaves water
waist-high in certain streets. The rich
will lose their homes in California, the poor
go down in Louisiana. What do we do?
Where do we go from here? What works,
what loves? Who, in nighttime operations,
can win when nooses make the news?

You know the lucid look of it: the sheen,
the products pitched and tossed like
lakefront huts in moody, wind-washed nights,
a storm antithesis to why you live offshore.

The cruelty of time melts down to this:
You lose all track of you and you and you.
You do forget how still time stands still
the very minute you’re no longer in it.
Time knows it’s just a big old funky fake.

Al Young
Copyright © 2008 by Al Young

It’s Culver City and I’m registered here at the Culver City Hotel. The story goes that John Wayne won this joint in a poker game. Facilities and rooms are named after famous film performers. There’s the Munchkins Restaurant downstairs, Clark Gable Room, Duke’s Bar, the John Wayne Room of course, and here I sit in the Marilyn Monroe Room. And what should turn up on TV tonight – it’s late, it’s almost 1 a.m. – but The Misfits, Marilyn Monroe’s last movie, Clark Gable’s last movie, Montgomery Clift’s last movie. The vulnerability of thick- and thin-skinned people. How old was Monroe when she died? Thirty-five, 36? Two framed pictures of her iconize the walls of this retro-restored room I occupy.

At Ford’s Filling Station, a restaurant so named because Harrison Ford’s son started and runs it, I ordered fish & chips, and so did Susan Obrow, my affectionate dark-haired host. She loves Culver City and how the arts are faring here. She told me that Brian Wilson’s son has opened a restaurant, too. And there are others. “The sons of famous men are opening restuarants,”she said.

The Kirk Douglas Theater stands on one corner. Debbie Allen features a dance studio here in Culver City. Susan Obrow and I ducked out to dinner after seeing we weren’t going to make the reservation, given the time it was going to take the dance troupe from India to register as they bunched in line ahead of us at the check-in desk. Beautiful kids. Elegant and graceful. From such observations, I’d concluded they must be dancers.

Meanwhile, the chasing of horses in The Misfits – by airplane, by Jeep, by truck, by lasso, by cowboy hat, by cowboy shirt, by blonde-sick-love – loses me. It always did. Here these white men buck and jeck, trying to lasso and finally roping one sweating wild horse. The metaphor rolls on. Cowboys. Gangsters. Vixens and ho’s. But in The Misfits, everybody is sensitive.

I suppose they’re still out there and going to be out there roping, trapping, capturing, typing up and taming Iraqis and Afghanistani these days? Conquerors of their known world. Despair mongers. Cowboy hat. Baseball cap. Taming a horse, to anglophone, meant taming a wild woman, too. Shrew. In English the man will forever congratulate the man.

It’s when they try to turn their belief and behavior into controlling policy and philosophy that everything falls apart.

Kiss me, Culver City, and bid Prohibition booze and jazz and Louis Armstrong’s house your fondest cheese fondue adieu.

Al Young
Copyright © 2008 by Al Young

All fall, all winter long, you lie leftover
from summer, your flaxen hair
daring the glare of sun, the flare up

of wind, and now the wet blue tattoo
of rain gone down dawn drains, gone
yawning into history like the Barbie

a boy gift-lists for Christmas because
his GI Joe is lonely. Only you know what
true competition is like, how slowly

the sleazy ho look has crept in to pop
your pink bubble, to cripple your sales,
to push you into clothes nobody knows

except the Weather Woman, the Boogie
Man’s faithful shoulder to cry on.
All fall, all winter long, you lie leftover.

Al Young
Copyright © 2008

Charles Simic & Robert Pinsky at The Jazz Standard, Manhattan:
A Found Poem

Photo: Michelle V. Agins

Story: Nate Chinen

Mike Manieri, vibraphone
Lonnie Plaxico, bass
Andrew Cyrille, drums

Charles Simic is Poet Laureate of the United States

Robert Pinsky served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000

© 2008 The New York Times | January 10, 2008

• Lyrics & Music by David Nichtern

Midnight at the oasis
Send your camel to bed
Shadows painting our faces
Traces of romance in our head

Heaven’s holding a half moon
Shining just for us
Let’s slip off to a sand dune Real soon
To kick up a little dust

Oh, Cactus is our friend
He’ll point out the way
Come on ’til the evening ends
‘Til the evening ends

You don’t have to answer
There’s no need to speak
I’ll be your belly dancer
Romancer
And you can be my sheik

I know your daddy’s a sultan
A nomad known to all
With fifty girls to attend him
They all send him
Jump at his beck and call

But you won’t need no harem, honey
When I am by your side
And you won’t need no camel
Oh no
When I take you for a ride

Oh, Cactus is our friend
He’ll point out the way
Come on ’til the evening ends
‘Til the evening ends

Midnight at the oasis
Send your camel to bed
Shadows painting our faces
Traces of romance in our heads

Copyright © by David Nichtern

Experience Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur’s Web Site

• Music by Jerome Kern
• Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
  

Time and again I’ve longed for adventure,
Something to make my heart beat the faster.
What did I long for? I never really knew.
Finding your love I’ve found my adventure,
Touching your hand, my heart beats the faster,
All that I want in all of this world is you.

(Chorus)

You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long.

You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.

You are the angel glow that lights a star,
The dearest things I know are what you are.

Some day my happy arms will hold you,
And some day I’ll know that moment divine,
When all the things you are, are mine.

Copyright © 1939 and 2005 by the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein Estates

• Words and Music by Don McLean

A long, long time ago I can still remember
how that music used to make me smile,
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they’d be happy for a while.

But February made me shiver
With every paper I delivered.
Bad news on the door step;
I couldn’t take one more step.

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride.
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the music died.
So …

Refrain

Bye, bye Miss American Pie.
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.
Them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whiskey ‘n’ rye,
Singin’ this will be the day that I die.
This will be the day that I die.

Did you write the book of love?
And do you have faith in God above –
If the bible tells you so?
And do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Well I know that you’re in love with him
Cuz I saw you dancin’ in the gym.
You both kicked off your shoes
And I dig those rhythm and blues.

I was a lonely teenage bronkin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pick-up truck,
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died.
I started singin’ …

Refrain

Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin stone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean –
And a voice that came from you and me.

Oh and while the king was looking down,
The jester stole his thorny crown.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict was returned.
And while Lennon read a book on Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark,
The day, the music, died.
We were singin’…

Refrain

Helter Skelter in a summer swelter;
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter,
Eight miles high and fallin’ fast.
It landed foul on the grass.
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast.
Now the half-time air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune.
We all got up to dance,
Oh but we never got the chance.

As the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
the day the music died?
We started singin’…

Refrain

Oh and there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again.
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack Flash sat on a candle stick
Because fire is the devil’s only friend.

Oh and as I watched him on the stage,
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in hell
Could break that Satan’s spell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite,
I saw Satan laughing with delight The day, the music, died.
He was singin’…

Refrain

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store,
Where I’d heard the music years before.
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.
And in the streets the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken,
The church bells all were broken.

And the three men I admire most –
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost –
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
And they were singin’…

Refrain

Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.
Them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whiskey ‘n’ rye,
Singin’ this will be the day that I die.

Copyright © 1971 by Don McLean

Listen to Don McLean

Wikipedia entry on McLean, his song and the meaning of his lyrics

• Words and Music by Cole Porter

At words poetic, I’m so pathetic
That I always have found it best,
Instead of getting ‘em off my chest,
To let ‘em rest unexpressed.
I hate parading my serenading
As I’ll probably miss a bar,
But if this ditty is not so pretty
At least it’ll tell you
How great you are.

You’re the top!
You’re the Coliseum.
You’re the top!
You’re the Louvre Museum.
You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss.
You’re a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse.

You’re the Nile,
You’re the Tower of Pisa.
You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa.
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop.
But if, baby, I’m the bottom you’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re Mahatma Gandhi.
You’re the top!
You’re Napoleon Brandy.
You’re the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain.
You’re the National Gallery,
You’re Garbo’s salary,
You’re cellophane.

You’re sublime,
You’re a turkey dinner.
You’re the time of a Derby winner.
I’m a toy balloon that’s fated soon to pop.
But if, baby, I’m the bottom,
You’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re an arrow collar.
You’re the top!
You’re a Coolidge dollar.
You’re the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire.
You’re an O’Neill drama,
You’re Whistler’s mama!
You’re camembert.

You’re repose.
You’re Inferno’s Dante.
You’re the nose
On the great Durante.
I’m just in a way,
As the French would say, “de trop” –
But if, baby, I’m the bottom,
You’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re a dance in Bali.
You’re the top!
You’re a hot tamale.
You’re an angel, you,
Simply too, too, too diveen,
You’re a Botticcelli,
You’re Keats, you’re Shelley!
You’re Ovaltine!

You’re a boom.
You’re the dam at Boulder,
You’re the moon
Over Mae West’s shoulder.
I’m the nominee of the G.O.P. –
Or GOP!
But if, baby, I’m the bottom,
You’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re a Waldorf salad.
You’re the top!
You’re a Berlin ballad.
You’re the baby grand
of a lady and a gent.
You’re an old Dutch master,
You’re Mrs. Astor,
You’re Pepsodent!

You’re romance.
You’re the steppes of Russia.
You’re the pants, on a Roxy usher.
I’m a lazy lout that’s just about to stop.
But if, baby, I’m the bottom,
You’re the top!

Copyright ©1934 by Cole Porter;
Copyright © 2005 by the Cole Porter Trusts

Listen to Cole Porter perform his great song
(with added stills from Blackbird of silent film star Louise Brooks )

Click here for Timothy Noah’s caring annotation