"songbook" poems
blueberries gasoline and prostate gland
breast cancer Wonderbread and pacifier
controlled experiment space travel and honey
peanuts inductive reasoning and electricity
tornadoes torture chamber and biscuits
copyright car radio cantaloupe
golden eagle lunch break tomato
Romanian songbook rhubarb and barbed wire
always hungry nevermind meat loaf
goosefoot mango juice Ipad
mosquito bite city street and broccoli
Chinese cabbage female *** drive water sport
pure contralto goat yogurt new year
black death white light and green tea
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:28 PM UTC
You still are my blue jay of yore,
the songbird on the low branch
of the evergreen tree under which
I pitched my tent till my thirst was quenched
by your arias in blissful altisima poured in to my soul.
Your songs steadfastly refuse
to go down with time like leaves that wither and fall
those immortal moments, you gifted
did flow in to the blue ocean of time
where i float, refusing to be beaten down by waves.
Those notes by sheer power of infused spirit
of your heart, make me still buoyant, I am indebted,
your song book, in gold is engraved, in my heart.
One journey continues, unmindful of every change,
through planes of timeless nature where we are one
defying rules man made, and imposed by mind.
We are two pure notes of music that fly, up and above
merge with the sonorous primordial hum of divine.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
You may feel about the planet what
you feel about a great baseball team or band:
that once there was a moment when, unknown
to us at the time, we convened
and lost and found ourselves in what we created.
Who should I thank for this day?
A fresh-mown lawn is a robin's repast.
A bear a black bear a rolling delicately dancing
graceful as silence sailing through the ferns and understory
unafraid and in no hurry.
My musician referral service, vacation rental business,
nonprofit management system, plant identification database,
great American songbook and anthology of poems. Coach says
in a thousand years back and forth games like lacrosse and soccer
will be played against genetically engineered primates
but baseball will be played solely by humans.
In a thousand years, amen.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 7:20 PM UTC
Attentive student of the songs of birds,
No beakèd beast hath e'er more sweetly trill'd
A pair of notes or call'd in major thirds
Or minor with musicality more skill'd.
Adaptive linguist, practic'd in the tongue
Of wingèd feather'd creatures, thou hast writ
Into "The Birdsong Songbook" songs unsung
By birds which yet harmoniously fit.
And though the book began in higher throats
Diversely tun'd by Nature's artful hand
Ere measur'd were the times and tones of notes,
(Which often rest them now upon a stand),
Its finest lines (o'er which I now do rave)
Witness thy penmanship on every stave.
^ ^
Mar 6, 2015
Mar 6, 2015 at 12:34 PM UTC
In my poverty songbook, I wrote
Fear nothing but to do some wrong
Yet I wrote nothing about being broke
All because poverty made me strong.
From birth, I've sung the poverty song
It's about a unilateral fight against poverty
I know the road to the summit is long
I'll rest at nothing until I dwell in prosperity.
There's a verse in the book about perseverance
It's the main reason for which I wrote the song
In there I thanked God for His grace and Providence
For it's within his grace where we all belong.
In my poverty songbook, I left out a lot of things.
There ain't a single verse about laziness and self-pity.
I instead included a request for a Timberland and wings
These two I'll need to get about and do my hustle duty.
IvanBrooksPoetry©️
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 2:24 AM UTC
If I'm wrong, I die.
I cease to exist.
But I know what it's like not to exist.
Or at least I can imagine.
I didn't exist before I did.
For billions of years.
And Mark Twain was right.
It didn't bother me in the slightest.
But I'll give it a chance.
I will read Awake!
And I'll visit the Hall.
And I'll use your name for God.
Jehovah.
But what if you're wrong?
You feel joy, love, peace.
Meaning, purpose, certainty.
Those things elude me.
But what else?
Fear? Guilt? Isolation?
A hatred that you call pity?
Those things are beyond my reach.
An education cut short?
A marriage too long?
"Don't talk to her.
It's for her own good."
What if it's not?
There will always be people trying to hurt you.
It's easier when they have God on their side.
"Two eyes saw this, but two others did not.
I'll take my reward now.
Did I mention I'm good with kids?"
What if you're wrong?
Sure, your Tower is tall.
It dwarfs my cathedral.
And it does.
I stand in awe.
Your Tower is tall.
It Watches all things.
And it does.
But is it tall enough to see Clearwater?
You know, Celebrity Centers and personality tests.
Cruise and Travolta.
Your names are different: Michael Jackson and Prince.
But the songbook is the same.
Leadership is accountable to no one.
Dissent is a **** that must be eliminated.
The world is out to get you.
And critical thinking is a trap.
Families are vital (until they aren't).
Our authority will not be questioned.
We make no mistakes.
But we do become more perfect over time.
"But it's not 'disconnection,' it's disfellowship.
And they're not 'suppressives,' they're apostates.
And we live in no bubble.
But we'd rather not debate you."
"Besides, they're new.
They're small and they're few.
They have strange beliefs.
That's what matters, right?"
But it's not.
It's not what matters.
And it's not in my nature to hurt people.
I can **** when it's justified.
But I don't know that this is justified.
And consider the life of a poor, worldly soul.
Fear is no friend.
Guilt is a memory.
(Guilt for things that warrant no guilt.)
We see the world as it is.
Science is no threat.
Solitude is a choice, not a lesson.
Education is full.
Abuse is reported.
Families talk.
We are slaves to no Slave.
Of course these things are foreign to you.
Your book precludes them.
And your book is infallible.
But so are all the others.
So thank you for visiting, but I'm hedging my bets.
I wish you the best, but I'd rather take death.
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 4:44 PM UTC
Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions -- probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.
The form of the poem, the rhyme.
*Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
betrayal of reality*.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.
Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men
side by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer
lay down their bones
and, like them, die alone.
When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
nothing can be done or faked.
The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the
flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic
prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great
American Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator,
we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
Later came organic computers using polymerase and qubits.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:05 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
so nervous and usually wrong
full of answers, draining words,
a songbook full of songs he
doesn't like, has never heard.
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 9:37 PM UTC
This room is empty now. No words in here to complete the sentiment for the feelings that sweep over you when a person you care for walks away from your life leaving you in the room you have furnished for yourself.
They walk away into the empty zone mixed with new faces, red haired ladies in tight see through black bras, excellent jobs like stock analyst, lobbyist, journalist, emergency room nurse, or worse. They don't let anyting stick to their walls, not yet, not now. They get to rewrite their songbook while yours becomes yellowed, dogeared, coffee stained.
Your room, blanketed in dust, dirt in the corners, dog hair covering your bedquilts. ***** laundry piles up, you never become wealthier or smarter. Your circle of friends degenerates into locals and deadenders like yourself. Days pass, you become old.
You latch on to anything that is moving. Hopefully it is moving upward and outward. You dream about driving away, far away from where you live, driving for miles into the desert. You want to live in a town where nobody knows who you are, you don't know anyone either; your home an isolated, small, cheap apartment like the one you had when you were a freshly freed adult.
Dreaming and dreaming about a life where you can be left alone so you will have the freedom to maybe, this time, find a life that resembles your fantasy of what it is supposed to be like. All the promises of what education and college would bear. Intelligent friends, moving and shaking the conciousness and politics, life, and town were supposed to surround you, invite you to dinner parties where you would drink smart wine and discuss shaping the tone of the future.
Turning over in your sleep, you wish everything around you would walk out and leave you. Everything except your child. He would stay, weather the change, ride the storm into your own empty room where you could paint the walls of life newly.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 11:55 PM UTC
My easy-chair shifts closer to the hearth
with each passing winter
My ingle-nook...
forestalling isolation and despair
A wisp of smoke and the gentle song of embers
as flames engulf stale reality
with their golden glow
Stirring
merry voices
from so many years ago
Recalling...
the chime of Church-bells
faintly mingling
with the sound of carollers
weaving through streets
door to door
through the fresh trackless snow
Smiling eyes
singing
with hand in hand
Their warm wishes reaching out
and then hugs
before moving on
to the next Manor-house
Yet
One stayed on to linger ...
Songbook clutched across a breast
throbbing
to the feathered touch of fairy feet
One face...
framed by a wreath of flaxen hair
The shyest stare from downcast eyes
Cheeks... flushed to rose
and a voice that still whispers to my deepest parts
If only you knew that from that very moment
to this
you've brought to me
and always will
kindle my fondest memories
each fireside
~
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 10:48 AM UTC
filled with the voices of a thousand chirrups
how I love brother Starling
he has the songs of eternity
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 8:52 AM UTC
The great American Songbook
whose words march off the page
Its music now a footnote
—to a century of rage
(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 2:07 PM UTC
The cast is ever changing, be it at Old Eli its ownself
Or various other institutions, most sans ivy,
Their distinguished here-and-gones
A touch short of presidents and laureates,
And certainly the songbook has changed
(Out with the Crosby and Waring,
In with the Cobain and the Stryper)
But certain verities, gnawing and implacable,
Remain unchanged, the inevitable realization
That, for all one's promise, all of our ilk
Have preceded us in our arrival, flush with pride and promise,
And made the odd ripple or two, perhaps,
Before shambling onward to other things
(Very rarely bigger and better, sadly enough)
And all those songs we sang and steins we hoisted
Have now been consigned to less fashionable quarters
In the anterooms of memory,
The melodies and laughter filtered, transformed, muted
The sound not unlike the slightly discomfiting bleatings
Of some distant barnyard animal.
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 8:47 PM UTC