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Amanda Kay Burke Nov 2020
Until the day I die swear I will never stop loving you
Until you prove you mean it what am I supposed to do?
You did things to display to everyone
Proud you were of me
Those days are done
Apart from Instagram posts teeming with corny lines
Rarely make the effort I need to see you remain mine
Start following through plans you make
Try to be extra nice when I first wake
Do not throw away the cards I construct
For birthday or Christmas no matter how ******
They may be unpleasantly messy
They are created with love
It hurts when to the side you crudely shove
Distressing seeing how little I mean
All that we hoped you no longer dream
Of lost joy and the friends who used to care
No longer expecting me to be there
I am sorry for being part of the reason why
No longer carry the spark in your eye
It was not my intention to cause you pain
Now your suffering is my greatest shame
All I wanted was for us to both become something more
Now I'm wistfully wondering what I did that for
This was so long I decided to split it into two parts
Amanda Kay Burke Nov 2020
Do not wanna scream at you every day
I don't want to fight or make you hurt
More and more I say words that cause you pain
Is it so hard to make this work?
Would need you if you didn't need me
To face that realization is hard
Sleep off doubts hoping you won't see
Return cause they never go far
Why are you what I fear the most?
Dreaming open eyes
Fantasies we hope to come true that we used to host
Never will if you keep giving lies
There will come a day everything changes
Nothing will stay the same
Left picking up pieces while reality rearranges
Both will end up with cuts of shame
Love with an intensity so great
When saying your name it rattles doors
Mind might belong to me
My heart is all yours
For my best friend and lover Paul
Amanda Kay Burke Nov 2020
I should have never answered the phone when you called
The fact that you did had me feeling appalled
I never have the resolve to stand by my word
Worked to stay strong but my emotions were stirred
You never got the rejection you should have faced
Instead met with forgiveness you barely chased
I gave in too easily as I always do
Lose all control when it comes to you
Wanted you to experience similar suffering
I should have made you try harder
Should have let the phone ring
Why after two phone calls do I agree to just let you waltz back into my life after YOU abandoned ME for some other *****? It's like you know exactly how to get back under my skin even when you don't deserve it.
poemsbyothers Oct 2020
https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-you-can-call-me-al/


The songwriter explains the new methods used to write this and the others songs on “Graceland.”

If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me,
You can call me Al
Call me Al

From Paul Simon’s landmark Graceland, “You Can Call Me Al” is quintessential Simon. It’s whimsical, rhythmically infectious, poetic and conversational, all before it expands into a whole other realm.

The famously funny yet enigmatic chorus, Simon said, came from a funny memory of going to a party at the New York apartment of Pierre Boulez, the conductor-composer. Simon and his first wife Peggy arrived, meeting their host at the door, who evidently had no clue who they were. Boulez introduced them to his guests as “Al and Betty.”

It was the first single from Graceland, and became a hit, launched by the famous music video with Chevy Chase.


“I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption, don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard”
All the songs for Graceland, unlike his previous work written with voice and guitar, were written to tracks he and his friend, the producer-engineer Roy Halee, recorded in Africa. Simon brought those recordings back to his New York City home, where he allowed the energy of the music to inspire the lyrics and melodies.

It was completed at the Hit Factory in New York with Roy Halee in April of 1986. Rob Mounsey, who played synth, also arranged and conducted the nine-piece horn section (five trumpets, two trombones, baritone and bass saxophones).


There’s a delightful bass break by Bakithi Kumalo, which was not part of the original arrangement, but suggested by Paul when learning that it was the bassist’s birthday. Bakithi improvised the fast fretless break, which Roy sonically doctored in New York; he used the first half of the phrase, then reversed it for the second half, creating a musical palindrome.

Jazz musician Morris Goldberg played the other solo on the song on a penny whistle.

Simon wrote the song using a new approach to lyrics, which combined colloquial speech with abstract, “enriched” language.

The lyrics shift from the ordinary language of the first verse to a third verse imbued with enriched imagery, the “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity…” That progression is not random. Nothing Simon does is random. Which is not to say he calculates his lyrics; he doesn’t. As he said during our first of many conversations back in 1988, “I’m more interested in what I discover than what I invent.”


“He looks around, around, he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity, he says, 'Amen and Hallelujah!’”
Asked what the distinction was between discovery and invention, he said, “You just have no idea that that’s a thought that you had;  it surprises you; it can make me laugh or make me emotional. When it happens and I’m the audience and I react, I have faith in that because I’m already reacting. I don’t have to question it. I’ve already been the audience.”


“But if I make it up,” he continued, “knowing where it’s going, it’s not as much fun. It may be just as good, but it’s more fun to discover it.”

To get to the right place to allow that discovery to occur, he’d listen to the music while tossing a baseball against the wall, and catching it. Asked what effect that had on this song, he gave the following answer, which leads into his explanation of discovering what became “You Can Call Me Al.”  


“You Can Call Me Al,” the video with Chevy Chase.
PAUL SIMON: The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming. It’s like a Zen exercise, really. It’s a very pleasant feeling if you like playing ball, and while you do it, your mind kind of wanders, and that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander and to pick up words and phrases, and fool around with them and drop them.

Because as soon as your mind knows that it’s on, and it’s supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn’t or it produces things that are very predictable.

And that’s why I say I’m not interested in writing something that I thought about; I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go or what object it wants to pick up.

[The mind] always picks up on something true. You’ll find out much more about what you’re thinking that way than you will if you’re determined to say something. What you’re determined to say is filled with all your rationalizations and your defenses, and all of that what you want to say to the world. As opposed to what you’re thinking.


And as a lyricist, my job is to find out what it is that I’m thinking. Even if it’s something that I don’t want to be thinking.

I was trying to learn how to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language, and then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly, then some image would come out that was interesting, then it would go back to this very smooth conversational thing. That was a technique that I was learning.

It didn’t have anything to do with logic or anything; I don’t know where it came from. But on Hearts and Bones,  there’s more of that. “[“Rene & Georgette] Magritte” has more of that. “Hearts and Bones” is more of that.


“A Train in the Distance” is in itself that kind of speech: “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance; everybody thinks it’s true.” That is imagery, and that’s the title.

So by the time I got to Graceland,  I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally in the course of it, so that you wouldn’t really notice it as much.

I think in Hearts and Bones, you could feel it was coming. Whereas in Graceland,  I tried to do it where you wouldn’t notice it, where you sort of passed the line and then it was over. To let the words tumble this way and that way, and sometimes I’d increase the rhythm of the words so that they would come by you and then when a phrase was sort of different and came by you so quickly that all you could get was the feeling.

So I started to try and work with more feelings around with words because the sound of the record was so good, you could move feelings.

“You Can Call Me Al” starts very ordinary, almost like a joke; like the structure of a joke cliche; “There’s a rabbi, a minister and a priest….” “Two Jews walk into a bar…” “A man walks down the street…”  That’s what I was doing there.

Because how you begin a song is one of the hardest things. The first line of a song is very hard. I always have this image in my mind of a road that goes like this: [motions with hands to signify a road that starts narrow and gets wider as it opens out], so that the implication is that the directions are pointing outward.]

It’s like a baseball diamond; there’s more and more space out here as opposed to like [motions an inverted road growing more narrow], because if it’s like this at this point in the song, you’re out of options.

So you want to have that first line that has a lot of options to get you going. And the other thing that I try to remember, especially if a song is long, is: You have plenty of time. You don’t have to **** them; you don’t have to grab them by the throat with the first line

In fact, you have to wait for the audience. They’re going to sit down, get settled in their seat. Their concentration is not even there. You have to be a good host to people’s attention span. You’re not going to come in there and work real hard right away. Too many things are coming; the music is coming, the rhythm is coming; all kinds of information that the brain is sorting out



“You Can Call Me Al,” Live in Central Park with Chevy Chase.
So give them easy words and easy thoughts and let it move along, and let the mind get into the groove of it. Especially if it’s a rhythm tune.

And at a certain point, when the brain is loping along easily, then you come up with the first kind of thought or image that’s different. Because it’s entertaining at that point. Otherwise people haven’t settled in yet.

So “You Can Call Me Al” is an example of that kind of writing. It starts off very easily with sort of a joke: “Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?” It’s a joke, with very easy words.

Then it has a chorus that you can’t understand what is he talking about –  “You can call me Betty, and Betty, you can call Me Al.”  You don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t think it’s bothersome. You don’t know what I’m talking about, but neither do I, at that point.

The second verse is really a recapitulation of the first: A man walks down the street he says… another thing. And by the time you get to the third verse, and people have been into the song long enough, now you can start to throw abstract images. Because there’s been a structure, and those abstract images, they will just come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song.

The guy in the third verse thinks, “Maybe it’s the third world, maybe it’s his first time around…” I thought it was interesting to combine what was on my mind with that music. I thought it would be interesting to an African audience, if they could get to the point of hearing it. And they did, once the album became a big hit.

So now you have this guy who’s no longer thinking about the mundane thoughts, about whether he’s getting too fat, whether he needs a photo opportunity or whether he’s afraid of the dogs in the moonlight and the graveyard,  and he’s off in: “Listen to the sound, look what’s going on… there’s cattle and scatterlings…

And these sounds are very fantastic. And look at the buildings – there’s angels in the architecture.

And that’s the end of the song. It goes “phooomp,” and that’s the end.
Amanda Kay Burke Oct 2020
When I do not see you for awhile
Start going through withdrawals
Like when you’re addicted to drugs
Dependent on alcohol

When I eat food is tasteless
In fact hard to enjoy
Much anything consumed
Focused on the void

No matter what’s done or said
Nothing distracts from absence
If I keep hours busy
Not once your thought leaves my head

My brain obsessed with you
Turning memories around
Try focusing on anything else
But way your laughter sounds

Impossible to be at peace
I wake up alone
Emptiness follows me from our bed
Clinging to each bone

Inside stomach sits a knot
Tangled with concern
Ball that gets tighter every minute
Messages left unreturned

I hate how I need your kiss
To function throughout day
Did not realize contact was necessary
Til moment it was taken away

My heart beats unevenly when you are gone
Stays like that until you come back
Every ***** placed in my body
Is in some manner out of whack

I am more than just miserable
Sick without you here
Unable to be myself
Until presence is again near
When I miss my boyfriend Paul
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2020
Shine like it does

You set the sun against me

And here I fell

Only to find my feet

Along the blinding path

To dust, the persecuting heart returned

So too, the spirit flew

And like scales

The veil lifted

And I caught sight

Of something quite intangible

Yet, therein I found true freedom

In slaving for you

As a fisher of men
Unpolished Ink Sep 2020
Old friends two bookends
Catching fish and memories
On a river bank
Karijinbba Jul 2020
Well dear poet Diya
Your poem inspired my next one.

How lovely expressed your story poem reposted on the page of a great Poet I am so fond of
Master Poet Pagan Paul
my loyal reader writer
gracious poet on HP

Through the years
poet Pagan Paul is a
loyal amazing writer.
~~~~
So dear poet Diya
I see the glass half full not half empty nor overflowing,

So do not cast spells on yourself
Roses aren't death!
Be careful what you think and write it becomes law.

The rooms filled with roses for me inferred by my own ancient true love are ALIVE because I watched E.T The movie
and my beloved was there too with his face among the toys hiding in a love letter he sent to me anonymously.

So even though we are apart temporarily
we aren't divided in heart
nor soul by divine doing.

My E.T out worldly is!
And he has powers to bring dead roses to thrive alive again!
For, such is the power of love
the prayers of the heart are true.

Many times I buy Roses instead of food and then I fast steadfast
His roses aren't death they are alive in me in most mine art.
No one is able nor allowed to curse me nor his Roses or his memory in me.
Nobody can place any spells on this divine sacred fact.

Oh well Dija thanks for your "Midnight" poem inspiration.
~~~~~
By:Karijinbba
Copy Rights apply.
Inspired firstly by my first live and teacher my once upon a time epic beloved.
Amanda Kay Burke Jun 2020
I wanna let you know
You are the only guy for me
I leave
It hurts me so
With you wish I could always be
The hardest part
Letting go
I have to say goodbye
Though I try to force time to slow
Keeps on passing by
Thank you for EVERYTHING! I love you. Xoxo.
Left Foot Poet Jun 2020
_____


another mourning morning, usual signs of warning,
wanted to wash away the distress signs of no sleep,
turned on the tap, out came only troubled waters,
my only friend, the voice from the mirror, pretending
to be coming from me, speaking: Oh Lord, Oh Lord!

is there no surcease for me, somewhere, can I find,
little bites, small plates, pieces of peace, the kind
of kindness that eases, repairs the dividers of mind,
the country stone fences that been growing wilder,
when, troubled child of 10, window breaking, beyond
youthful mischievousness, evil streaked, so deemed


Give me a boat, give me a bridge, give me a road, a home,
one of those things poets, songwriters about, wax lyrical,
Oh Lord, give me time, 45 seconds, even two or three,
Being strong, being confident, am I not entitled to that,
a boat, sturdy mast, cause sailing from storm to storm,
just glimpsing dry land, is that too much, a pale beyond?

love, nah, a bridge too far, not even on the menu, not blinded,
I am off key, not well enough, between the peaks between,
I am out of sync, bubbling discombobulated, a **** besided, behind,
lend  me a finger, not even a hand, a kernel, not even a cob,
a string, forget a rope, a washcloth to bathe and dry,

lay me down, lay me down, to live, even just not dying.
When you’re weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all, all
I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Paul Simon
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