Recently I've been reading a book about American Bandstand from   Philadelphia 1957-1963
and it's given me what I call the Bandstand Blues
where I recall a bygone era
when things were much simpler
and wish I was coping now
like I did back then
rather than being swarmed under by the undercurrent of
the jet age and the age of the computer,
where I had teen crushes
on the like of Arlene Sullivan, Carole Sealdeferri, and Trini Giordano
such that I daydreamed about being famous like they were someday
and going off and meeting them and dancing with them
Unfortunately that dream never
came true
Being a loner back then, I was envious
of the teen parties all the regulars had that I read about in the teen magazines
I would have like a
social life like that
wanting to go with what were considered the truly neat girls in school,
and vicariously imagining
myself up there as one of the
regulars in what seemed like
their bump and grind dances
and discovering my puberty that way
rather than through several girlfriends I had in school
a little bit
admiring the nice story of
**** Clark and wanting to
emulate him someday
which I fell far short of
as I grew old
although like I say, I managed to acquire some
wealth later on in life
Wanting to have trendy clothes
and trendy hairstyles
like the boys did
rather than being
rather dowdy in my opinion then,
and imagining what it would be like
growing up in probably what was a little more
sophisticated atmosphere back east
as I could tell from family vacations there
But I do cherish the fascination
The good side of bandstand in the book

How Now Brown Cow?
I said Starting the Day

I'm not budging
Said My Soul

I signed Once
Again
It had Already Made Its Decission
Refusing Manipulation
Bribe
Cajoling
And Tears

Trust
Something More Than Faith
As Each Wave Came Thru
Immoveable

To the Bottom of the Ocean
It Once Fell
Past All Loves And Hopes
Life And Death
To The Secrets
Hungry
For
True Creation
Where Life Splits The Immoveable Place
And It Becomes the Seed
Grown
Never changing Essence
Pure Reason
Made Into Life
Black Mahic Made Real Blackwr than Black
Life
Stillness of The Suns Lightfe
Born certainty
Of Unknowing
She Knew Not Man
They Said
The chills reverberated Throughout Her Bide as She Became Him
Just For a Moment
He Was Born Within
Her Flash
Already
Light
Fully Grown
Light
Calm
It Was True About Herthey Said
And It Was True

Cielo  drive up from the bottom they go back to the top of the slide

Reflecting back in time to the night that these five died

Charlie said Leave something witchy and they rode away into the night

Tex was perplexed as he cut that phone wire

Parent was transparent  blood on his attire

Sharon and Jay sat on her bed

In just a few moments they both would be dead

Days before Charlie  duplicated the crucifixion out on the ranch

All the boys and girls caught up in his trance

They took hundreds of trips together and laid in his bed

A Master of word he got in their heads

Hundreds of people Manson wanted DEAD

Krenwinkle  was told to get up out of bed

Go with Tex now and do what he says

**** Sadie was high as hell on  her  life

She got in the car in her pocket a knife

Who are you Jay said  And what IS this?

Tex said "Im the Devil and Im here to do the Devils Business"

( To Be  Continued while i listen to the White Album)

Miss Haversham has shaken
off the cobwebs and the deadly dust.
tore down the tattered curtains
moth-eaten and frayed
She’s flung open the windows
thrown away the detritus of decay
into the path of passing winds
napery tossed down to the garden.
Even the mice have run for cover
as she tears off the raggedy sheds
of stained satin and be-ribboned lace.

She stands naked in the barren room
Estella has prepared a soothing bath
perfumed rich with oils and fragrant attars
to steal the acris stench of unwashed years
coaxing the arid brittle crust away
saving the soft delicate skin beneath
viciousness, sloughed smooth
and vengeful purpose passes.

She is reborn a Botticelli Venus
standing in an open shell
long hair shining and wrapping around
her creamy skin, voluptuous
curvaceous, slippery with life
newborn yet wiser for the years
of reflection, ready to deflect
romantic nonsense and live
free and breathe again.

© M.L.Emmett

don't create distance between us,
like painting oceans between the skies & lands
unreachable,
like,
branches caging you from beneath your deepest
secrets.
and no amount of rain is enough to make the
drought in my eyes leave, like all the people
we said goodbye to
at train stations & graveyards
that soon became as empty & cold as
the bottles she'd drowned her sorrows into;
setting skins on fire & smoking death into the lungs
like snow-kissed bodies whispering love songs to ghosts
oh dear Bukowski, girls like her don’t learn to
walk through fires
they are fire-lungs & burnt skies,
haunted nursery rhymes bleeding out of souls
like volcanoes & violin screams.

I can't see in this smoke filled room
Only shadows
Lifeless forms, standing like wallflowers
It's quite
I stare and they stare back
I'm in a portrait painted in smoke and dust.
Surrounded by lifeless people
It's in my head.
Formed by my imagination
I sit and wait
Until the smoke clears
The dust is gone

She was young and slim and beautiful,
my first love,
with skin like licked caramel, and
always smelling, always tasting
like peach candy.  But still,
I sort of envy Bukowski his
300lb *****, the painted leviathan that
swallowed whole his virginity and
broke his bed, before falling snoring asleep
on her wide, sea-creature back, because he
probably learned more from that ugliness
than I ever learned from
beauty.

That said, I envy him more the night
the old dog buried his bone
in six separate gardens,
the dark-haired woman who
sent him a photo of  her
self
reading his book
in the  bath, and the two perfect
blonde Dutch girls his editor found on the great man's lawn
when he called by one evening,
the both of them waiting for Hank to
come home from the track
so they could **** him.