"baez" poems
I met Joan Baez in my sleep.
She whispered her poems and
sang her songs. I fell in love
with her instantly. DIAMONDS
AND RUST she sang in my
dreams. Linda Ronstadt sang
LONG, LONG TIME to me.
I cried in her hair, so fair was
she. We made love for eternity.
Ingrid Bergman came into my
life a long time ago. I was
mesmerized by her luminescent
beauty. She walked into my
life 20 minutes into CASA-
BLANCA. I was transfixed.
But it was Audrey Hepburn
who stole my heart. Tiny and
radiant, Audrey saw and
held and fed starving
children around the globe.
She entered my heart and
kissed my soul and never
left my life. Bless you, Audrey.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jun 4, 2025
Jun 4, 2025 at 3:57 PM UTC
Joan Baez Martin Luther King Jr.
I believe I believe
That music
can mend
the soul
That everyone will
one day
treat each other
equally
and war and war
Will be but will end
a dream altogether
That one day
one day
There will
be change
and life and life
will be
brighter
will be
better
One day One Day
It will
We will
Make a difference Make a difference
Jan 25, 2011
Jan 25, 2011 at 12:30 PM UTC
Under silver wing
San Francisco's towers sprouting
thru thin gas clouds,
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
Berkeley hills pine-covered below--
Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence
Declaration
typewriter at window
silver panorama in natural eyeball--
Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese
dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's
blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands'
brown wasteland scratched by tires
Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
coccyx broken--
Leary out of action--"a public menace...
persons of tender years...immature
judgement...pyschiatric examination..."
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam
Leroi on *** gun rap, $7,000
lawyer fees, years' negotiations--
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez'
paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol
Dylan silent on politics, & safe--
having a baby, a man--
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked,
Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher,
blood splashing down the mountains of bodies
on to Cholon's sidewalks--
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor
Murderers advance w/ Death-chords
Earplugs in, steak on plastic
served--Eyes up to the Image--
What do I have to lose if America falls?
my body? my neck? my personality?
June 19, 1968
4.5k
In a strange mood - see/write art
in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^
in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.
knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.
a ***** well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.
^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell
Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
Where it all started...
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2018179/only-a-dumbass-man-could-love-a-smartass-poodle/
<•>
The Obvious Fact: Dogs Have Souls
******** poodle, of prior fame, suggests*
"surely this ditty will trend before one reads to the very end"
1. as everyone loves dogs
2. especially smart poodles
3. who writes soulful poems
really, here we are talking and you are gazing into my brown eyes adoringly,
and
you humans
still debate if there is a
god?"*
and then dog yawned,
a gigundo doggy yawn,
which is a supernatural,
miraculous biblical thing to behold
<•>
for no reason other than gravity
man says,
sometimes my earbuds fall out of my ears,
without provocation, of their own accord,
to remind that though they're in,
the music isn't in,
and neither
am I anywhere real, concrete,
existential,
to be found
which prompts a furious philosophical poodle to man discourse,
as to my exact whereabouts
badass poodle quotes Joan Baez (Diamonds and Rust):
"My poetry was lousy you said,"
and to verify my geo-physical locus,
and his opinion of the human's written hocus pocus
poetry,
gentle farts and adds, low growling,
"there your are!"
how I love that
centered, down to earth,
in my bed, in my heart
dog
<•>
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
Goldfinger
a favorite phrase from a movie of one's youth.
that rises to the surface, when smartass-u-know-who
reads my weak human mind and yes,
farts twice more, adding poetically:
*"the best things in life always
come in threes,
her, me, and you"*
"glad to be included," I replied,
to which he licked his
privates publicly,
adding lowly,
*"every smart poodle need a leashed human,
as if any self-respecting poodl could or would
type their own poems,
who's
the *** now!"*
and we got up, got the leash
(for human to carry)
put our earbuds in,
went for a sunrise
sniff-walk-and-compose
on the beach
the two **********
arguing
which Pandora station to turn on,
two only love poets, both thinking of their shared
her
finally, compromising, in tail wagging agreement on,
The Righteous Brothers
<•>
p.s. lol, only a ******* man could love a ******** poodle.
~
8:33am
8/11/17
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 6:32 PM UTC
today we visit graveyards
turning over the wormy soil
to uncover the exquisite corpse
though we were told to
let the dead bury the dead
on this day we unbury
the dearly departed
relishing transcendent
embraces and cool
cervezas with jolly
amigos and la
familia who have
gone on before
we wrap ourselves
in graveblankets
to complete warm
circles of love
embracing our
beloved companeros;
gleaning netherworld
heavenly rest wisdom,
sharing the laughter
of trite earthly concerns
we’ll roll speckled tortillas
on smooth tombstone mesas
to feast on Mariachi tacos
brimming with spicy queso,
chased with another cool sip
waltzing with the holy bones
to the candle lit reveries
of this evenings
flowing melodies
Mercedes Sosa & Joan Baez
Gracias a la Vida
Dia De Muertos
Diego Rivera
Oakland
11/1/13
jbm
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
dat betch iz out of mi liek 4 gud & out of mi baez lief bc she a sloot & nu 1 lek hur & she st00pid & sh3 tri 2 taek me bae but she didmt taek him & ily bae
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
La Llorona
(ce poéme écrit après avoir écouté la chanson est
dédié à Frida Kahlo et à Joan Baez)
Sur les remparts de Tenochtitlan
tu ne sors qu'à la nuit couchante
les nuits ou la lune est orange tourne
rouge de sang et d'amertume.
Tu fais briller ta chevelure
de geai, tel un diamant noir,
ton nom est "Llorona la belle"
qui nous appelle de ses pleurs.
Et tente de nous attirer
Avec sa voix rauque et ses pleurs.
Tu annonces la venue de ceux
par qui la mort doit advenir.
Car telle est ta prophétie
magicienne, du Monde Indien.
Surtout passant, ferme les yeux
et retiens ton amour naissant
car la Llorona ne vient pas
pour te serrer dans ses bras
et te donner sa douce peau,
Ni te couvrir de baisers.
Elle se fait messagère de malheur.
Et annonce les temps nouveaux
D’où surgiront les hommes barbus, bardés de fer
avec ces animaux fabuleux
Et leur bâton de foudre et de tonnerre
qui tuent mieux que la guerre fleurie.
Son chant est hymne funèbre
ou la prophétie s'accomplit
dans les cliquetis d’acier,
la maudite soif de l’or
et le feu des bûchers.
Garde toi de suivre « la pleureuse »
qui t'annonce les jours maudits,
ou le sang indien va couler
et le Peuple être mis en servage.
Loran ta beauté est venin
cartes présages sont les flèches
que nous lancent les "temps nouveaux".
Pleurons, tous, notre liberté
et les jours de cendre venus,
et la chute des Dieux serpents.
Paul Arrighi, Toulouse
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 4:12 PM UTC
The Saturday night crowd, all here to see Dave Van Ronk,
sit huddled in the fashion of Antwerp diamond cutters,
sipping cinnamon/marshmallow coffee at the tables.
Caffe Lena is Saratoga's happening place in the 60's and
we're here to forget the war and civil strife in the ghettos.
Sister Mary Katherine, sans frock, is the warmup act,
but no one really gives her any mind,
as she struggles to seat herself upon the stool
intended for the six-foot plus Van Ronk.
Joan Baez prepare to eat your heart out!
Without so much as introduction, she
breaks into a high soprano Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.
Heads pivot like synchronized swimmers toward the stage.
Her silken voice emits notes blinking
into reality from quantum fluctuations in space/time.
Every quivering high-C grafts the audience together.
She's spinning veils of sound,
the like of which our ears are unfamiliar.
The quavers in her throat match the tremors in my coffee.
In the back of the cafe a drunken Van Ronk passes out.
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 8:49 PM UTC
I listen to male artists,
Men who remind me of my father,
And his pain,
And my pain.
I imagine they sing to me,
Protect me,
Love me,
Give me all I've never been given before,
Everything I was supposed to feel,
Everything that was supposed to show me how people work.
I listen to deep, strained voices and reflect,
Connect to things I’ll never experience.
Men are angry,
Worthy of their feelings,
Allowed to unleash their rage in screams and electric guitars and unnecessarily loud drum solos.
I listen to music sung by men,
But I also listen to Stevie Nicks,
Joni Mitchell,
Janis Joplin,
Joan Baez,
Even Dolly Parton.
Hell, even Olivia Rodrigo.
I listen to women who are angry,
Angry and still women,
Surviving through agony and still women,
“Leather and lace,”
Black clothes and black makeup,
Singing about beauty and moonlight and darkness,
Female rage.
I don't have to be at peace to be a woman,
I don't have to be happy to be a woman,
I don't have to be pretty to be a woman,
You don’t have to like me for me to still be a woman.
Let me be angry,
Let me feel pain,
Let me be lost,
Let me like the darkness,
Let me find comfort in the night,
Let me chase impossible dreams and impossible feelings,
Let me feel everything I feel.
Women are put in a box of emotions,
Too sensitive,
Too dramatic,
Too simple.
I am not sensitive or dramatic or simple,
Don't put me in that box,
Don’t tell me what I am,
Don’t tell me how to feel,
Don’t tell me what my feelings mean,
What they make me,
Don’t project your weakness onto me,
I am not weak,
I am not weak,
I am not weak.
Let me be raw and witchy and honest,
Let me be intelligent and intuitive,
Let me see more than you'll ever see in the world,
Let me be frustrated and misunderstood and just a little too loud,
Let me be a woman,
Let me be me the way I should be.
Feb 11, 2024
Feb 11, 2024 at 3:42 PM UTC
We met in the place Allan Watts had his lectures
And Henry Miller sat in the corner brooding,
Writing brilliance
Decades ago
I imagine Joan Baez washing rust off her skin
Overlooking the ocean
Diamonds in her eyes inspired by "sin"
In the same place we spoke about men
And I remember my male friend leaving
Because this conversation was not for him
Debating about ****** relations, you taught me
To ask my body if I wanted to go all in
Close your eyes
Checking in with the root, navel,
stomache, heart, throat and mind
Visualizing the act
Do you really want him to be inside?
And when I did this exercise
the answer was NO
Then I met another man
And did the same exercise again
This time, every time I thought about his
Entrance anywhere
My body throbbed, tingled, and rocked
Into the greatest guitar solo
I've ever felt
My body ever played by his fingers
My neck tuned to his mouth
YES, he may enter....
The greatest desire
Aug 16, 2016
Aug 16, 2016 at 8:17 PM UTC
A perfect entity:
Past life regression as a metaphysical act of war,
Held still in flashes of light from beyond mirrors, captured in essence for sake of eternal memory, martyred for sake of one or two moments of hallelujah before total collapse,
Divinity! Break the silence! Moan your lovers name! *** into oblivion! Leave pieces of your kaleidoscope skin on the shellshock floors of echo chamber bedrooms for someone to find and remember you by!
Listen! The voices of the great suicide angels crack and bleed through stereos! This is the last great art form! This is how you establish a dialogue between yourself and abyss! The black hole named God will take your calls but will not return your light once it has left your eyes!
How beautiful you look like this, defending your faith from the hawks of war, eyes lit by the turbines of jet engines burning fossil fuels on towards confrontation, hair falling in waves around a single demarcation point that reads: THE ****** AND THE SAVED,
Try hard not to think about where you fall on any kind of spectrum,
Be fluid and give only vague directions,
Paint self portraits out of what you can learn from static,
Static is the only way our gods know how to communicate,
You have to tread lightly around an ego so fragile,
Return home when the damage is done,
Home where you were a Joan Baez marquee moon in my memories of sunflowers!
Home where you were a Carl Sandburg eulogy read in tripping staccato!
Home where you leave your lights on all the time to ward off spirits!
Home where your shadow climbs higher and higher into the night and leaves your soul behind!
Home where you listened for the sounds of Pagan rituals through the walls and hoped to find salvation in a chanted chorus!
Home where you let the deep red shades of a thousand electro shock patients turn your machinery towards eternal rest!
Home where I love you as a perfect entity in radioactive decay!
Home where you love me, and my great way of forgetting
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 6:17 PM UTC
I'm buying some new old CDs
to remind me of my old young days.
The time of the trad jazz revival
and the stranger shores of Joan Baez.
Tom Lehrer made chemical magic
and poisoned pigeons in the park.
He promised to go with us when we go,
when we half expected nuclear snow.
Those were the days my friend
that came to an end, but like our parents,
we still feel warmth in summer suns
tht glow in memory's furlough.
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 2:10 PM UTC
I Saw The Psychedelic Lights ☮️
It was in our music
As well as in song
Come on people
Let's all get along
Love, Peace and Happiness
Was what we preached
It was our Trinity ☮️
Our core belief
There was Dylan, Baez
And MLK
Apostles of peace
With something to say
And...
All We Are Saying
Is Give Peace A Chance
And
Let It Be
Our glorious chant
By: Bill MacEachern
02/27/21
Feb 27, 2021
Feb 27, 2021 at 7:47 AM UTC
on a stage, guitars strumming a tune that
can only be hummed, for it has no verses
the songwriters, their tongues entwined,
joined as one, they can speak no words
but the crowd roars its favor,, sheds its de light, stomping and whooping it up, making
all the necessary noises, of two tongues, yes’m, entwining
kinda like a kissing, a little of hissing too,,
got its own rhythm, even the noises rhyming,
a rock n roll ballad with country western
mixed in, some say it sounds like Joan Baez
singing **** Jagger, or an Avett Brothers
serenade
words need tongues for formaytion,
tongues needed to speak, but absent
a common language,tongues do what
tongues do best,
intertwining, combining, licking,
making love noises that requires
two to be
heard
fulfilling
taste of two
blending
and we
though
silent
pronounce
ourselves
as one,
the loveliest
unspoken
vocabulary
Jan 14, 2025
Jan 14, 2025 at 3:11 PM UTC
Sometimes, I’ll hear a song,
like diamonds and rust by Joan Baez,
and I’ll wonder about the different women I loved, so much.
I always believe that now, if they ever think of me,
It’s only strong hatred they feel.
The men, who were friends are all dead.
So they don’t think anything of me.
Like a fool, all I ever wanted was one very loyal,
Very loving and close friend.
I guess I messed it all up. Over and Over.
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 11:24 PM UTC
Staying with a friend:
Listening to Joan Baez,
feeling inspired.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 12:08 AM UTC
My grandfather never lived to see Bryant and Rizzo play.
The Cubs won last back in 0- eight which was before his day.
His lifelong love of baseball he passed on down to me
I took up his forlorn cause as mine each time I watched them play.
For sixty seven summers I have watched Cubs come and go;
seen good team fade in summer’s heat, adding to our goat- cursed woe.
I’ve seen them jinxed by black cats in the summer of sixty nine.
Watched Bartman wreck our changes;, what will it be this time?
Now they looked nearly down and out; shut out by the Tribes’ fine Corps
But they got up off the canvas and began to hit and score.
The Series now was tied at three, could my heroes count to four?
Our manager’s moves were questionable; I don’t care what you say.
He shouldn’t have taken Hendricks out (and let Baez swing away)
I sat through anxious innings and through the rain delay.
That’s when this old agnostic got down on his knees to pray.
They won it Eight to seven, Bryant made the final play.
My heart is filled with a nameless joy as Someday is today!
Nov 5, 2016
Nov 5, 2016 at 12:23 AM UTC
By the time I got to Woodstock, I was pushing Sixty-five.
I was qualified for Medicare when I finally arrived.
All the famous bands that played there, by and large, they are no more.
You can hear them still on vinyl; just not at the record store.
It was mud and drunken nakedness in the summer of sixty-nine.
There were psycho-active drugs too if you were so inclined.
All the gorgeous girls who made that scene back in Love’s own summer,
Now use Clairol to hide the gray and are somebody’s Grandmother.
And what about the tall lean dudes who lusted for them then?
They now rely on small blue pills to get it up again.
Imagine standing on that stage staring out at the tie-dyed throng
as Janice Joplin poured her heart and soul out in a song.
I hear Hendrix was electric even as the skies did pour.
And Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were up for an encore.
Lennon couldn’t make it and Jethro Tull declined.
Joan Baez was magical; Joni Mitchell would have cried.
They are but ghostly echoes now, playing to an empty field.
We were all once young and beautiful, and Love was true and real.
Still, Time is a heartless arrow, relentless now as then.
I only fooled myself to think I could go back again.
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 9:03 AM UTC
Joan Baez’s music is
the only thing that’s
been making me feel better.
I think it’s because
she isn’t connected to
anyone or any time
in my life.
Until now.
So every song feels
like a new beginning.
And yet
it feels familiar
like a hot summer evening
in June,
when it seems like
the sun will never set.
Jun 24, 2025
Jun 24, 2025 at 7:58 PM UTC
Shackled each one hand and foot
They’re loaded roughly onto
Transport planes like cattle
On their way to slaughter.
No luggage goes aboard with them -
Not a toothbrush in a pocket
Or a candy bar to hold them.
Were they even notified- of course not.
What country are they they going to
And what is it they’ll do there?
Who is going to meet their plane?
Who will remove their shackles?
Are there concentration camps
For lack of else to send them?
Will they be caged like chicken farms
Or stacked like hay in barn lofts?
Music for this grim tableau:
“The Plane wreck at Los Gatos”
Sung mournfully by Joan Baez
Who’s seen this debacle before.
Who ordered up this travesty -
This evil on TV Paraded?
Why was there no better way
To send unwelcome people home?
ljm
Jul 14, 2025
Jul 14, 2025 at 12:55 AM UTC