Originally published 9/27/2011.

Fiddling on the radio at 4 AM.
A singer with an Icelandic accent.
Maybe.  

You’re lying in bed fully clothed.  
Tonight was a banquet you chose not to attend.
Everyone said community demands it.
You weren’t buying.
You weren’t convinced there was a community there.
All these people coming through town say they love you.
No one comes knocking for you.
You wanna see them you gotta get your butt up and see them.
Get to the banquet.
The banquet you hate.

Icelandic fiddlers on a 5 AM radio show.
Kids these days.
Whatever happened to rock and roll?

Naked or clothed lying in bed or at banquets.
Everyone’s a liar.

You don’t want to tell anyone you’re dying.
You want them to figure it out for themselves.
You want to hear the words from their contrite mouths.

We missed you at the banquet and came to see you.
We didn’t know.
We’ll undress you now.
We’ll sit or lie with you all night.
We adore that old-time Icelandic fiddling and singing.
We adore you too.

You don’t go to banquets anymore.
Your teeth are disgusting.
Your teeth are falling out.
You are exactly as old as you feel.
You are as old as Iceland.
As old as a fiddle.
As old as a gaptoothed singer.
As old as the weird music of just before 6 AM.
Twice as old as some of these meddling kids.

You are better off fully clothed and alone.
Listening to this crap.
Waiting for sleep.

Originally posted on 10/28/12.

How to explain
a new color?
How to define it
beyond calling it
a crisp, refractive purple
only visible
behind my eyes?

I sit in my car
in my driveway
thinking of the two women
panhandling in the rain
at the end of our street
at the start
of a hurricane.

How to explain this color
I know I have never seen before?

When I asked them
if they had a place to go,
one smiled and the other said,
“Thank you, bless you sir.”

I’m sitting in the driveway
looking at a color
with closed eyes,

with my head on the steering wheel.

A color I’ve never seen,
a clear and crisp refractive purple
in the crazed, urgent, irregular form
of a paper flower
or a crumbling gem.

This is the color
of a blessing or a mercy,

the color of
driving back down the hill
to take them to a shelter,
the color of shame
when they refuse
to get in my car,
the color of understanding
why
they refuse,
the color
of praying
for them,
the color
of feeling
that I have not given
enough,
ever, to them,
maybe to anyone.

Originally posted 10/28/09.

Last night’s drive home
was grand moment
after grand moment

of four of us
laughing and chatting
as well as we could
over Parliament blaring,
cigarette after cigarette flaring,
New York City
in the rear view,
home still
some hours ahead.

The towns between
New Haven and New London
are strung along 95
like green pearls on a black string.
I have forgotten their names,
for there was no room in the car
to hold them.

Forgive me, towns
between New Haven
and New London.
You deserve more
than a mention here.
You ought to be
destinations
and someday I hope
I’ll make that right

but last night, you
were just distance
to be covered,
just white letters
on green signs
breaking my trance,

neither
the good time
we were leaving behind
nor the home
we were longing to see.

Revised, and set to music for The Duende Project.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It seems to happen often
that I receive
a phone call to request music
for a friend’s funeral.

This is my role in my circle,
my holy manacle,
this ability to know the voice
of personal grief intimately well;

the understanding
of which songs will speak for us
the way we would
if we could stop our voices from cracking.

When it happens I run through a list
in my head
at once, choosing
only after some thought.

Sometimes I reach for the guitar,
thinking that maybe this time
I will compose a song that will
make all future requests moot.

It never happens,
but I still think of it from time to time,
imagining that all at once
I will know

the song I have always
wanted to find: the one
that, if played well enough,
will bring them back.

When I go, don’t make anyone
choose songs for my funeral.
When I go, burn me like sheet music,
burn me like hell money,

burn me the way children
burn their parents’ love letters.
Lift any uncrumbled pieces from my ashes
with drumsticks held like chopsticks.

Set them in a tambourine,
take turns pounding it,
set me rattling against that skin.
Ring me out until we all grow hoarse

and our voices become
as soft and ragged as old clothes.
Make me into the song
I never could write by myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Listen to the track here:  https://soundcloud.com/radioactiveart/music-for-funerals