"telecaster" poems
Cool kid euphoria with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on is what we all are in the basement of the 50’s house.
Our phones blowing up while we sip whiskey and wine.
Trying to get the attention of the cars on the main road
By handstanding and flashing and cheersing our beers
And we receive our victorious honks.
Guitar clock radio with numbers around the fretboard and Sir Paul smiling and crooked, acid-trippin’ guitarist/violinist/celloist looking product of orange and gold look down upon as our patron saints.
Swingin’ low, Sweet Chariot words stares up at me from the 70’s floral carpet.
Ralph Stanley and Eric Clapton singing solos and duets in my head keep me company as the boys play and figure out key changes.
Painted screen hiding the Etta James microphone stands forgotten in the corner—
As I take in the teals and roses and golds.
Give me a heart shaped box where I can store my love
I fly so high in the world above
I’ll come back down eventually.
Lava lamped water stain engulfs the ceiling. As fingers go up frets
And they go down frets
And they go up frets
And they go down frets.
As you don’t enunciate when you sing.
We all mourn our fallen brethren, the base of the telecaster with no strings and no head and it weeps silently from its place on the water pipes, hearing his cousins WAAAIIIIILLLLLL.
As Cool kid euphoria is created with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on in the basement of the 50’s house.
We work all day so we can drink all night
Getting high off the drug that is each other
Chain-smoking Pall Malls like it’s our job
Listening to oldies as we shoot the eight ball in the corner pocket.
Garden tools and Lawn Mower parts as a sweet, creepy décor in the dank basement
As we breathe in mold and dust and cigarette smoke.
We are gloriously young.
So **** off.
We still think we can change the world.
Not through politics or through fear or by means of war
But by doing just enough to get by and loving everybody for who they are, even the parts or religions or particular ways of life we don’t like,
Because people aren’t what they do or what they believe
They’re who they are.
We still think we can change the world
And Maybe one day, we will
But for now
We’ll just be here,
In the basement of the 50’s house with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on.
Jun 13, 2012
Jun 13, 2012 at 11:38 AM UTC
plug-in your head music
remember being young
on a pogo stick
a unicycle
with training wheels
under
sunshine of your
love
o’ shine on
you crazy
diamond
run in the
jungle
feel the rain
on sunny day
and let it be
misunderstood
stop your moon tears?
run in Reeboks?
come on
you painter of
words
chew
good & plenty
plant
lime lima beans
kaleidoscope kale
juicy fruit gum
harvest
magenta mangos
paisley peaches
or go to an auction
bid on
T-bone
bubble gum
sprout beans
Tahitian telecaster
pre-rolled wagon wheel
sweet sixteen candles
Hound Dog Taylor’s
Brownie McGhee loafers
no?
yes?
don’t change
your lunatic fringe
in twilight’s open season
read
The Hidden Singer
dance
boogie woogie
cha-cha-cha
outside the house of the rising sun
so turn it up, Mr. James
your big wheel
keeps on turnin’
groove
to the little bird
who sings and sings
© 2011 chuck a stetson
Jul 6, 2011
Jul 6, 2011 at 7:07 PM UTC
My whiskey habit is complimented then insulted by the ever temperamental voice of Jim Morrison,
I listen to Alabama Song by The Doors
I throw my pen and page
In an anger induced rage
As my mind recites the wrong words
To his poems and songs
His voice plays on repeat
All i can do is blame myself as the primitive synth dances it's oscillating tunes through one of my depleted senses.
My hearing
Mojo Rising's face crudely made into pop art painting by a fan, an idoliser's image
Suddenly the fender telecaster takes over the smokey airways
Hypnotising, mesmerising
as it fills the space between the barely conscious being and the walls that surround
The tempo of the snare, tom and high hat slows
I now have time to gather my ever harsh and bitter thoughts
Harsh like the whiskey, bitter like me
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 9:33 AM UTC
I saw you two nights ago with your new guitar from a far
I know we ended things a month before yesterday
I'm okay incase you are wondering
I saw you looking at her and it was starting again
I managed to contain by thinking you're not mine anymore
A year ago we went swimming
Just because I was sulking
You thought I needed some sun
It was a lot of fun
Now I haven't went anywhere but gigs
trying to forget things
Two years ago, we were together
Celebrating Hallow's Eve
In a sketchy place on a rainy weather
Me, you and your telecaster
walking along the stretch of that street
where we saw a fire exit
on a sunny morning
after having some breakfast
Two nights ago, I saw you walk away
with your guitar and everything we had
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 3:42 PM UTC
i believe in beauty.
i see it in the small blossoms clinging to trees as the sky gets bluer and the air warmer
and in the dry leaves scattered around the base of their trunks months later
i believe in beauty,
i see it in the human who desires what is pleasant,
the human who independently brings a touch more kindness into this world,
and in the human whose unanswered questions release a bitter child from within,
the human who hurts because they hurt.
how natural is it to be afraid existing in an unreasonable universe,
how natural to be tossed around the rolling and crashing waters of life
like a panicked cat.
i believe in beauty,
i see it etched into the surface of every hand written letter i’ve received
and leaking out of my grandmother’s eyes when she remembers what she loved about
her son Thomas.
and he was beautiful too--
his eyes told the weather, they shone like the sun or darkened with a silent storm
and when he made music, the world stopped to listen to this foreign and wordless language
he used to articulate what existed in his private corner of the universe.
he crumbled with the grace of a star:
bright and alone,
his very existence still shining through the thick darkness of death, so natural and abstract a
state
he is alive again when is Telecaster, so worn down from his constantly callused fingers,
makes music again.
he is alive when his brother and daughter stand together afront his grave,
arms around each other with teary eyes because it hurts to love someone
whose eyes you don’t get to see anymore
he is alive in my eyes when i can feel the years he spent in my grandmother’s basement
making an old piano sound young again--
i know this because i see him there
i believe in beauty,
i see it in death because i remember my father's life, i remember the blossoms
that preceded the dry leaves scattering the base of tree trunks
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 5:46 PM UTC