"twangy" poems
the earth is curved - sure y’all knew that.
but to get to the Northwest,
Interstate 84
ain’t le route plus directe
nope curve north to Ontario,
wave to Bex as I cross over
London and Toronto, also can’t recall
which poet from Rochester hails,
or did they shuffle off to Buffalo?
Crossing Erie, Huron, and Michigan Great Lakes all,
brings to mind
my mother’s birthplace,
Last of the Mohicans,
and the three years I did in the Cleveland Penitentiary,
where sun was illegal and baseball was a pretend play
of cowboys and Indians
but by god, it made me
the penitent fella I am today
Look skyward to Montreal,
yes, there he is, the Leo Priest,
the baffled king,
blessing this poetic meet ‘n greet trip
with a smiling unsurprising
hallelujah
Apparently some US citizens still can traverse O Canada,
even if one forgot their passports,
and are not PNG’s (Persons Not so GREAT)
over Minneapolis shed a tear for Diane,
a poet- gone-missing, and wonder if you reader come from
St. Cloud, Fargo or Duluth, Bismarck or Aberdeen,
surely they still speak poetic English there
in a twangy metering methodology - well, message me asap
wow there really is a Saskatoon!
the pilot asks us to lean left in our seats
to help turn the plane
so we go to Portland and not to Vancouver...
me thinks he might be a touch Rockie Mountain High,
considering we are at 30 thousand something Imperial,
as he walks the main cabin with an oxygen mask and a
huuuuuge grin
see the distant Cascades
through a crack in the shuttered windows,
must be close to “the coast”
(as if, harrumph, there were but one)
ah, words in the clouds, ripe for the plucking
must be getting close to Oregon,
where poets grow on trees, woody words like ****
and log-float poems down the Columbia to the sea
gonna drink me some poets
under the table cause this
trip I ain’t no driving and I am already
“flying” ‘n scribing and arriving
on a high tide and a good wind
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 5:47 AM UTC
Well I don't know how it happened
You just forgot, I guess
The pain receded
I kept breathing
And now...
I wish I hadn't seen that
It hurts to see you function
I hate to watch you love
...
I really hate to watch you love.
I wish you hadn't kissed me
In the wind
Genuine surprise coursing through my veins
I thought those sort of kisses were myths, all
My heart might have stopped
I wish you hadn't let me in
Serenades and rusty blades
Dreams and phone calls
Roller coasters and secret beer
The similarities bring me down
Why can't my soul mate stay my friend?
I hate the way you make me love you.
Every word, I miss the drawl
I used to talk that way.
My twangy southern voice has left and so has my love of spontaneity
You've wrecked it all
All I have is
Anger for your smile
Exploration
You touched my bones
Leave me alone.
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:26 PM UTC
this will be an off the chest one,
a long one,
a crazy (and) derisive one for
we
who once were
i
are now foregone.
we sit here
writing -
startled by the addition of
LOUD
music(?) to my library;
not my taste -
pink floyd
leaks through my
head phones from
the coffee shop speakers.
tea scalded tongue,
she did
warn me,
did she...
- a break,
thats where we
find
ourselves and
wondering what will come
of the fu-
tu-
re
furthur out from
now?
we quiet now,
find ourselves
lulled through
into
another plane
of which -
break end.
this year -
bitter winds find
necessitation in
her
fixation -
as last year
as next year,
til time
cedes.
we write with open head
and fluid mental
projection,
a reality
created
from each of ours
and one into
the next;
'our universe is
vast'
some cry,
of course we
know
it is.
tea no longer
scalds
(
to burn
the flesh away
)
as twangy
guitar follows
snappy snare,
tap tap
tip
tap,
blues wail
away.
- - - to take a ****
to take a cigarette
to take a lover - - -
lover missed,
though
so did the
****
currents retain
fluidity.
we're done.
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 6:59 PM UTC
This takes place on a rooftop above the city
Almost twangy, almost
Stars are out, and boy, are they ever strong
The sweetest lullaby of a love song
Sung to me from your fingertips
Patetico
Strumming the notes as you would a lover
Best friends turned to endless memories
Perfect, soft whispers
Harmonies that make me listen so close
I don't want to miss a thing
Breathing in the calmest wind-- your air
Sospirando
Coming together with a melody that grows
Two bodies unified as one loud symbol--
Crescendo, dolcissimo, fortepiano, melting gelato
Rosy reds and the palest clouds
Awakening both hearts, not a dream
You tighten your grip and beg me not to go
Ostinato
As long as you keep singing from your fingertips
Appassionato
And if those hands are your outlets
Bravura
I’ll stay here
Al fine
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 3:12 AM UTC
Purple tips softly graze the tops of the golden fields.
Vines line the wire fences
Grapes as supple as your lips.
Motors and metal wind down the valley floors
Hills between Sonoma and napa shimmer with darkness.
The trees line the tips of each hill creating shadows following the ridges.
Twangy sounds of banjos strum in the background
Familiar laughter. Common conversation.
Passing the Fremont diner, Steinbecks route is traveled again
Sep 16, 2013
Sep 16, 2013 at 4:39 AM UTC
Submissions to the Annual Musical Torture Experiment for 2017 are officially open!
Submit your five songs by emailing them to
[email protected]
"BUT WHAT IS THE MUSICAL TORTURE EXPERIMENT NICK?"
Well me, I'm glad you asked.
The Musical Torture Experiment was started in 2013 by yours truely, Nicholas R Coulombe.
Where I asked everyone I knew, met, or saw on the street, to hand me 5 songs that I would add to one playlist,
listen to that playlist on a loop
AND NO OTHER MUSIC
for an entire month.
I have continued this tradition each year
recruiting Willing victims & voulenteers
to listen along with me.
These victims have many different lives, interests, and genre preferences,
but there is one thing they all have in common.
The blissfull escapism of living in their headphones.
This gaggle of Tune-heads who use their music as a fundamental life resource, a coping mechanism, an escapist fantasy or meditation.
These people offer their body and spirit to music.
Now, for a whole month, they are relinquishing control of their music.
Shotgun no longer shuts their piehole.
For an entire month.
Listeners will not be able to skip or select any music other than
YOUR SUBMISSIONS!
This is the perfect opportunity to force someone to really find whats so amazing about those artists we culturally hate.
Or maybe theirs an oldy that your grandkids Refuse to consider music because there is static or twangy voices instead of bass drops.
Maybe you talk about your love of skrillex and a hipster spits their kombucha in your face.
If you have songs that DESERVE the light of day.
This is your chance to indulge in their exhibition.
want to voulenteer yourself as tribute to listen along with these crazy ********
keep tabs on what is being added cause you think its kinda interesting?
Or contribute YOUR five songs?
Just
Send an email to [email protected]
by the end of August to participate!
Go check out the playlist itself here:
https://open.spotify.com/user/124409443/playlist/2TAdzDUKx7sfW1uJrqMS7K
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 10:41 PM UTC
************ mornings coughing up grey phlegm
Phloem and Iggy’s Stooges walk on the wild side to dirt
Playing in the background
Smell of rubber
Bands and angry men singing
***** words and healthy birds outside the window chime in
Getting skinnier
Having bizarre twangy renditions played out in the mind
And laid flat on keyboards in bat-swarmed attics
fantastic dreams of large cocked sailors
Muggy Mondays sold with a half bored flourish of enthusiasm
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 10:21 AM UTC
Making him argue with me about something silly, so we can make up.
Stealing his pencil so he has to put his arms around me to get it.
Walking to class a different way, because I know I’ll pass him.
Jogging together or racing him to the top of the climbing wall.
Having him walk me to class even though it’s out of his way.
Playing, “yeah, but have you ever seen one of THESE?”
Driving the countryside to see the changing fall leaves.
He’s weird, I’m weird, our weirdnesses mesh perfectly.
Hearing a love song and thinking, wow, it’s about him.
Watching him work out, study, or talk to his friends.
He’ll call me at 2am and tell me to stop studying.
Making up stories to tell him in silly voices.
When he brings me coffee between classes.
When he picks me up, like I’m weightless.
Stargazing together on chill fall evenings.
When he picks out my outfit for the day.
When we get ready, together, to go out.
Studying at a coffee shop together.
The way he makes me feel happy.
The way he makes me feel smart.
Buying him things, like clothes.
His twangy western accent.
The way he says my name.
Dancing without music.
His exciting otherness.
The way he smells.
The butterflies I feel knowing he’s coming to town - tomorrow.
Aug 4, 2023
Aug 4, 2023 at 4:00 PM UTC
Solitary puppeteers working
their angles , scripting heartfelt
psalms , revealing their dark past
with chilling vocals , accompanied
by simple , twangy , acoustic guitars
Touching the lives of ordinary -
folks struggling to get by
Riding into town with the morning Sun
Moving on by the light of the Moon
An open , honest , country balladeer
The 'Working Mans icon ' called home
on a plain old day in April ..
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 10:37 PM UTC
Fugazi - The Argument (2001),
an album i liked to mention that
they forgot with Kwik Save supermarkets
and the 7 elevens - tangy twangy Boy Dylan
like lyrics about the mid-western
fake on punk, with the refused's *the shape
of punk to come*, sonic youth,
and oddly enough cobra killer's l.a. shaker.
i knew tool were ****** when
their last album hit the supermarket shelves
along with cucumbers and lack
of kosher meat (10,000 days), even though
not punk; remain cool... remain cool?
remain alive you Hilly Billy.
the swedes never did no much suede
as Elvis with the shoes: chopstick tap dancing:
hey! a pair of drumsticks!
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 8:22 PM UTC
i wanna be a Vagabond
traveling around in a
decrepit Volkswagon van.
maybe there are some furry walls inside,
but i cannot make any promises...............
i want to live on nothing but
dry Frosted Flakes.
i'll wear the thrift store clothes
that dented my pocket 15
they're faded and torn
from stories and adventures,
which is chill.
it's better than this cookie-cutter suit.............
i will admire coastal beaches
and watch their scorching sunsets.
climb to high mountain peaks
and look down upon the anthills
that us busy-bodies have made.
i'll accompany fried-chicken dinners
with twangy country tunes,
and feel the breeze whipping through my hair in an everlasting cornfield..................
You should come with Me.
we can invite people to merge our journeys
sharing the inspiration of a nomadic dream.
let's create our own home,
build our own future!
society's norms were not meant
for us free spirits.
the world is our classroom.
why are we too scared to learn from it?................
Well, on second thought,
maybe I should bring those
brownies that Nana makes.
Perhaps I'll miss home.
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 10:48 PM UTC
man might suffocate under much less that expected of such concern; with such concern the least he can ascribe is worthy of an echo, or lost pedigree, or the forgotten remains.
if bygone twice
the angel-wing,
a pigeon-shit
and thrice the bowler-hat
of luck on the parade
of Trafalgar, then
my third Nelson hand
to shake a congratulation
to flick off Napoleon's
bi-corn to make a twangy
tango with four lions
rather than three
to make the shirt, and that too
was worth a kangaroo pouch
of son prior the father,
Jim prior to Timothy -
and the rest is, as they say is Lincoln
on Mt. Rushmore - thank
god i read the Marquis de Sade
too early,
to pervert myself with the French than
anticipate the English.
my first love was my father,
and the latter came, litany's oeuvre,
to which i sentenced my love
a caricature, and with each breath a loss...
what i might call a U-boat...
and that too was once a graffiti and tattoo
O days when a love for father coerces
the love for splendour - for he abandoned by both
mother and father and crucifix...
and kept idiotic chastised and chiselled...
to pigeon shape Gabriel
and crow croak Satan
and eagle aloof Raphael -
and with whatever tear to shed,
i shed.. with no eyes... blind - my tears
have wedded me to being blind.
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 9:28 PM UTC
one and one is
two
i think
and two by itself
is more than three
and so on
my wife to be
is not her yet
and our adventures
will become memories
and our math will
equal each other
and joy
prosperity
until then
we are one
and one
two and
whatever the next is
twangy tickling forever
equality
and then nothing
until tomorrow
and the next day
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 6:34 PM UTC
A smile so large, I think my heart leaps,
pulsing so fast to the loud hums and taps;
it can't take the rush.
My jaw locks, a warm, twangy bite;
with my eyes so wide, I'd gasp,
but my breath hides, trapped behind,
and no amount of gulps can free me.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 1:50 AM UTC
You are the smell before the rain,
The blood rushing through my veins.
You're the late night call with no kiss goodnight,
The wings upon which my mind takes flight.
You are the summer breeze dancing on my skin,
The pandemonium: manic uproar and din.
You're the hands slapping beats on a dark steering wheel,
The twangy whirring of an old fishing reel.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:22 AM UTC
I remember so much
But how much of it was true.
I remember being much bigger
And the house I lived in was too.
I remember how deep the voices
Of the adults living around me.
I recall them as basso profundo,
Not high, nasal and twangy.
I remember people said things
Like “God bless her” a whole lot
But these days, they still say it
But do they mean it, I think not.
I remember singing at church
“Jesus loves the little children.”
They never once had me sing
“But not if they are little heathens!”
I remember while in school
“All men are created equal”.
They should have told me instead,
“Only if they are white people
And then only if they are Christian
From the same church we go to
On Christmas and Easter, kid.”
Because that was our religion.
I remember being told repeatedly
“Do unto others, as they do unto you.”
Later I found out they didn’t mean it.
For gay people it wasn’t true.
Then it was do unto others whatever,
As long as they stay in their place.
They must not kiss or hold hands
Because being gay is a disgrace.
I remember being taught that God
Created everything on this earth
But somehow that teaching missed
Those born non-white or gay at birth.
I remember some nice sounding things
Being said with everyone watching,
But hatred and bigotry like a virus
Seemed to be much more catching.
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 12:18 AM UTC
i'm a southern boy
with a southern mind
southern lips
southern eyes
i'm a southern man
he who buys
southern hips
with southern lies
down south heat
baked bone lives
downtown crooks
with softer knives
the hippest kids
some Memphis folk
hot fried eggs
bowls and tokes
on down yonder
up o'er dere
cast-iron fingers
rusted hair
it rocks my pocket
and shakes my knee
t'see cat on the corner
and a dog in the street
but that's hard cash
and a filthy life
here in *****
here in strife
twangy me
twangy wimp
simple *******
you're a lil' limp
lame in the legs
fast in mind
lazy *******
you'll get left behind
you're no devil
but you're no saint
quit making silly songs
**** too late
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 27, 2019 at 9:15 AM UTC
That day was very overwhelming. So many people to meet and new things to learn. I was scared, but excited because literally anyone I met had the potential of being my friend and any boy could be my future husband, just walking around. Not knowing yet that I existed.
You groaned when you saw my twangy taste in music.
You said this radio station didn't play that.
Oct 7, 2020
Oct 7, 2020 at 12:58 AM UTC