"harmonicas" poems
unsuccessful potatoes & you found a tree in the ocean
i spent the afternoon digging, digging
my fingernails into my own fear of commitment
the fear of my own reputation
now the cat's in heat & richard nixon (the dog)
is teasing her with his trump card
she takes it
& squeezes it
very gently
then rips it open madly & snarls
& it oozes and drips out of her mouth
we all pick up a thousand pieces of a minute
i cremated my sister this morning & new spirits
arrived at my doorstep before noon
they sang to me of instinct,
whinnying about the antique zenith
up in cheyenne
"gimmie some secrets" she said
so i carved them
into my arm
into a minotaur's chest
into a giant looking glass
into a wooden boat
& i set sail for the sundial,
"there is no truth"
my eyes are wax & the ocean
means nasty filth
but everything is useless now
frogs carry high powered harmonicas
& walk into the spells of Poe
& into the hexagrams of Hamlet
i do not want to carry a pitchfork across
some godforsaken desert
i do not want to feel my own evaporation
while the real artists brood in the meantime
i want to waste away on a slushy evening
i will live in my armpit
& hate you
& never wear deodorant
"your mind is small--it is limited--why must you understand?"
Jan 10, 2012
Jan 10, 2012 at 9:11 PM UTC
Roses and Gold chains
Living ones life stained, and there’s no time to moan-a-lisa
But try this, listen: allow this blues of love to touch your ear
Let the past be just a memory and not a future gate locker that will shut you out from happiness
Drink in the soul soothing, smooth blend of guitars and harp harmonicas intertwine with the inner drums of your heartbeat
Feel the ocean your closed ears bring to life and let that tranquil calm state coexist with the depth of the soft minor chords brought to life by the;
Gentle hands as that of potter massaging the clay till it takes shape, and submit to the tender dominants, stroking the clay from top to the lower parts
The movement starts on a slow, and the movement increases as the two blend, and the hand is by now smooth sailing on the smooth creation
Allow the blues to be the potter of your humpy, and rough countenance that’s been disfigured
And made mushy by incessant rains that haunt this once floral mind,
Turned to a graveyard, having rusty gates, making it appear even more grisly
Invite the sound to transfigure your inner self to a cherubim that is snow white; this might seem like Childs play and what if it is?
You watched them when you were young and all you need to do now is to believe in them
Hope to be bluesed than bruised
And i know that staying in tune is not as easy as being off tune, but;
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back, everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.
2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.
3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.
4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
ENCORE ENCORE
to these songs in my head
a symphony of harmonicas
dissipating throughout each hemisphere of my brain
i am now dancing around my success
and no longer my addictions or my demons
the melody that crescendos from my frontal lobe sticks with me and resonates
with every note that i hum
i am happy now
and no
my cerebrum is not malfunctioning
even living with mistakes is more simple
i am having less trouble admitting that i was never right back then
but today i am right here
right now
wildly fortunate with this glistening euphoric sense of entitlement
singing along with the songs pulsing through my veins
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 10:04 AM UTC
I want to say this poem with –
dripping harmonicas
and dying birds.
Please. Don’t think me rude.
I’m just the girl
who never felt friction
until your sweaty hand
touched my blue jay skin.
Most marvelous piece of luck,
I died.
We ran through fields of mirrors.
Reflecting
Reflecting.
My feathers burst into flame
and I bloomed.
Beads of light,
fractured dew.
I learned the secret feeling of music
inside your teeth bones:
just bite down.
You said.
All the knobs of
your warbling voice
sparkle and echo,
endlessly.
Jun 12, 2011
Jun 12, 2011 at 6:16 PM UTC
We spent three months of our lives
Together almost everyday
In some formation
We formed our own family
Dysfunctional in all the usual ways
We're all young
And still in love with the world
But terrified of our own lives
It was a perfect mix
We spent car rides together
Squealing and singing, dancing and shouting
Watching flamingoes sleep on lake shores
And llamas grazing by the roadside
We saw condors swooping overhead
As we climbed what felt like mountains
Compared to us
Sleeping underneath more stars
Than we had imagined were in the sky
We got lost and found our ways back
We got happy, waiting on lay-bys
We got up
At 4am, awoken by the sound of
Out of tune harmonicas
And your shouting
We fell asleep
To the sound of each other's heavy breathing
Exhausted but satisfied
Now we're apart
But from our own bonds
Woven like siblings,
Like friends,
Some of us like lovers
And all we have left
Are the photos we took together
And the memories
That I hope will last my lifetime
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 9:10 AM UTC
Do you think I've got wisdom?
I have been thinking, and talking to God, and I realized something. I am one of God's children, I am one of God's children!
Are you one of God's children?
They are so angry, so angry all of the time, so angry at the world. At everybody else. Something that they don't realize, that I realize, is that they are angry at themselves. They are angry because they are confused, and their minds don't work like they used to. They are angry because they are afraid, because they can't take care of things like they used to.
I see that.
Sometimes I get angry because this is called assisted living, but I can't get any assistance around here. I've got nothing. I can't get no assistance.
I know this, this is Perry Como.
Merry Christmas.
- Bob
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 4:16 PM UTC
You could carry all your pain inside the nerves
in your tongue like such lines are suitcases
with just the right proportions.
Vertical lines always did create the illusion of symmetry.
If your pain found its home in the part of your body
that longs to be used in the verbal explanation of what it holds,
maybe your tongue would learn to create more than it deconstructs.
You wore streaks of grey sky like a costume
that did very little to conceal what lay beneath.
Maybe you thought if you wore it long enough it would
act as an extra layer of skin,
another stratification to separate you from your deepest self.
When they taught us how to laugh we never questioned
if we would grow up to be happy.
It was always something we were sure of when our minds were clouded
in a shroud of naive hope.
Now years have passed and we have learned
how to whistle wishes into the harmonicas of our necks
and wish for a better melody.
- m. b. 2014
Jun 4, 2014
Jun 4, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
Harmonica Player
Dad was a harmonica player.
He always played those same several songs,
but he played them well.
Everyone recognized and sang along with
Camptown Racetrack, Oh Susannah
and Red River Valley.
On his visit to Germany
while I was in the Army
Dad played, Ach Du Lieber Augustin
and Beer Barrel Polka much
to everyone’s enjoyment over there.
He could also do a good imitation
of that train chugging along the tracks
down by the plywood factory
in Ridgeway Virginia,
steam whistle and all.
Dad was a harmonica player.
He always had a harmonica
in one of the kitchen drawers
or on our mantle above the fireplace,
sticky from a child’s fingers
and clogged with ******* crumbs.
With six children he went through
quite a few harmonicas.
Out of us kids, I was the only one
to learn to play anything,
just 3 or 4 songs, but that,
none the less, means
I am a harmonica player.
That one Christmas Dad gave
each of his four grandsons
a Hohner “Old Standby” harmonica
with beginner instruction and method book.
I guess none of the other grandsons
had done much with their instrument,
because when Dad asked my son, Jason
if he could play the harmonica he’d sent,
it was something like,
“Well, I guess you never learned to play yours either.”
Jason came out of his room a little later,
handed Dad the songbook and asked,
“Which would you like to hear?”
He picked You Are My Sunshine
and Jason played it note for note
from the music written on the page.
Dad was both surprised and thrilled,
but most of all amazed.
Jason not only could play his harmonica,
but also read music,
something neither he nor I could ever do.
He talked about this for many years to come.
That, of course, means
Jason is a harmonica player, too.
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 11:20 PM UTC
I like sitting on roof tops,
In flip flops or converse,
Knee pulled to my chest,
The sound of violins & harmonicas
Echoing in the distance,
I'm still a kid,
Jesus loves me,
Tank tops are awkward,
Tattoos are comfy,
Cream soda and whiskey taste good together,
I don't know a lot,
But jesus loves me
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 5:06 PM UTC
Missing that morning music with subtle beats,
but I can only hear mourning music with heavy harmonicas
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 9:48 PM UTC
There are days I find myself riding on comets
I climb ladders higher than your god
I don't need a stack of bibles to understand who you are
I want to peel back your bones,
find comfort in the marrow and see what’s within.
there are tears that run down hollow cheekbones
and you asked me one day,
if we could get drunk and let our stories be told
but I want o re-write the life i'm living and find happiness
in leaves because no matter what,
great mother nature lets them fall in all the colours of secrets
she holds them close.
We sit.
banging on imaginary drums
it is not a rule of thumb,
but a heartache.
A whisper.
A home.
a place that was destroyed in the years of your own heart being broken
like bombs drapped over the sky I see you crying behind sheltered eyes
but when your bones break you give them soil, and pray for a miracle.
the seeds of enlightenment
the sounds of sorrow.
I'll play it like an instrument,
drunken on the piano.
each key with leave track marks down my spine,
and there are brothers and sisters waiting until they can let of go of time
but the man in the sky never intended for them to be late.
To laugh at the expense of obtuse angles and
the irony of golden hair left in tangles
For the day I discovered I could break my skin with ice
I found myself bathing in memories
and my legs sliced into a sketchbook.
But in those scars I planted tulips and prayed for the rain
so they would grow and kiss my chapped brain with indigo
I want to write of love like I invented it,
I want to sing like I can claim it
and it takes time
but sometimes I forget that the atoms vibrating within me were once in the galaxy.
I am made up of the earth that I find so **** beautiful.
I am the vibrations that harmonicas send
I am the sweat on bare skin after a night you never wished would end
I am the wooden planks that many have walked with their hands
tied behind their back so they won't remember.
My hands tell a story no one else could see whenever I type on my keys
I listen for a pattern that reminds me of sea shells and water skis because
with only the chorus of a mundane song on my breath
ill stand on a mountain top,
and finally remember how to breathe
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 7:41 PM UTC
*sometimes i sink
to depths of despair
that leave me gasping
for air in claustrophobic spaces
then i hear a voice calling me
to rejoin the chorus of life
sometimes i think it's the end
and that i'm finally spiked and dried
no more clinging flesh or sightless eyeballs
just a mounful song swishing through my skeleton
then i hear a voice urging me on
telling me to rise up and soar
into the blue heavens
where anachronistic melodies play
on rusty harmonicas trapped in gravity
then sometimes i think i'm dreaming
when life bubbles and is exuberant
in my heart that's full of melodious chants*
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 3:33 AM UTC
What will be the death of me?
Will it be the paralyzing memories of my past,
Maybe it will be the time I gave my heart away,
Or could it be from my self desolating mind?
I fight to survive this thunderous cry,
Time and space harmonize,
My eyes are sealed together from the clouds,
Knives in the back of my mind pierce like glaring eyes…
The morning light used to illuminate my life,
I used to call this place home,
Questions about true beauty haunt me,
Is life truly this excellent, is it really so desirable?
If my body was put into a box,
And the night sky wrapped me into eternity,
Would the light of day try to creep in,
Would the light try to eradicate this thunderstorm of a life I live?
I have dreams,
I have visions of men and women,
Searching for their dying day,
Looking for the distant light..
Will their ashes blow into the wind like mine?
How will the respects be paid?
I’m still searching for the night,
They still search for a barricaded light.
Harmonicas playing softly in the dusk,
My dear friend sits alone,
He lives his life on a throne of dust,
Will he be there when I’m all alone?
This night,
It wraps around me like a shield,
Do I know what there is out there where I can go?
Will I remember your voice, or your silencing eyes?
These are the daunting questions I ask myself,
I call into the night sky,
Replies are few,
The ghost of you always knew.
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 6:33 AM UTC
I equate the sound of harmonicas to my father’s love.
Their melancholy melody,
Shrill and somber,
So hauntingly beautiful,
Full of life and agony,
Reminiscent of the strain in his voice.
That sound pulls me tears,
Lulls me to sleep,
Passes on his pain the way he passed on the green of his eyes,
The nuance of his mind,
His taste in music.
The more time that goes by the more I listen to music with harmonicas,
Finally understanding how much that sound can hold.
There are no lyrics that could ever say more,
Speak any louder.
I hope the immortality of the music will replace the mortal love of my father,
The love that withered long before I even existed.
I hope all that he never said,
All the promises he couldn’t keep,
Will float on the notes sung by a harmonica.
Keep the tears and the fights and the absences,
The inspiration for all the ways in which I hope to destroy myself,
At bay,
Locked away in some crevice in my mind that can’t be reached,
Alive only in painful memory,
Nightmares that dissolve to whispers of words I’ll never hear.
Jan 24, 2024
Jan 24, 2024 at 3:49 PM UTC
There's so much within me
so many years of memories that I don't have time to think about
I'm constantly on my phone or stressing about
the problems of the day, but the truth is that
my life has been long and will be long- there are
people who have changed me for the better and the worse
there are thrilling memories and terrifying memories
there are firsts and lasts and drunkenness and heart pitter-patters
fair lights and dubstep songs and harmonicas and the taste
of numbing on my tongue, warmth and palm trees
and jolts in my heart, sisters and dances and love and weddings
there are moments that should have been kisses but weren't
there are moments that were kisses and shouldn't have been
there are people I have loved and lost, people that
have slipped away, people that told me they'd never let go
and we woke up five feet from each other
there are so many tears shed for so many different reasons
so much love for me and so much love from me
and it's all been worth it. And there's so much more to go.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 10:57 PM UTC
I've had enough
of all these living
breathing distractions
fused to my synaptic reactions
reminding me that I am but one
the leash of realization weighs a ton
in harmonicas hormonal perfection
it's easy to lose an election
It's a beautiful day
I never want it to end
but I lose my balance
when the distractions set in
......................................
Mar 3, 2020
Mar 3, 2020 at 8:16 AM UTC