sexy & good-looking & a pleasure to talk to forever.

Jennifer, I said to her at her bat mitzvah, surrounded by Sapirstein cousins, all with prime-time haircuts, wearing thin-strapped slip dresses that fluttered prettily around their narrow thighs while Jennifer's clung damply to her full back and puckered around the waistband of her panty hose, Jennifer, your Hebrew was gorgeous, your speech was witty, and you are a really, really interesting young woman. She watched her second cousin toss long, shiny red hair and sighed. Jennifer, I said, and when I pressed my hand on her arm she shivered (and I thought, Does no one touch you?), Jennifer, I know I don't know you very well, but believe me, they will have peaked in three years and you will be sexy and good-looking and a pleasure to talk to forever. She blushed, that deep, mottled raspberry stain fair-skinned girls show, and I left her alone.


The Gates are Closing -by Amy Bloom in Zoetrope: All-Story: Back Issue
(collected in A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You)

a way with a file

freakwater/lyrics
Dog Gone Wrong

Slack up on the rope and she's bound to roam
Pulling up/out stakes/steaks and spitting out the bone
Give her an inch, she's looking for a mile
Give her a cake she's looking for a file
Give her a kiss, she's gonna suck the gold right out of your mouth
Give her a car and she'll be headed South


Guy Clark, She Aint Goin Nowhere Tabs, Chords, Lyrics

And the wind had its way with her hair.
And the blues had a way with her smile.
And she had a way of her own.
Like prisoners have a way with a file.

                       G          D(5) G/d(3) D
Well the wind had its way with her h---ai---r
    Em            A            D
And the blues have a way with her smile
            G        D(5) G/d(3) D
And she had a way of her o----w-----n
  A                          D
Like prisoners have a way with a file

what does that mean, what is a prisoner's way with a file ~ covert ~ secreted away, privately held, ~ nourished (worked at little every day)

..the water

You left the water running, when you left me alone.
Dan Penn

You don't miss your water, 'til your well run dry.
William Bell

The Jeannie C.

Composed by Stan Rogers | © Fogarty's Cove Music

Come all ye lads, draw near to me, that I be not forsaken
This day was lost the Jeannie C. and my living has been taken

I'll go to sea no more

We set out his day in the bright sunrise, the same as any other
My son and I and old John Price in the boat named for my mother

I'll go to sea no more

Now it's well you know what the fishing has been, it's been scarce and hard and cruel
But this day, by God, we sure caught cod, and we sang and we laughed like fools

I'll go to sea no more

I'll never know what it was we struck, but strike we did like thunder
John Price give a cry and pitched overside. Now it's forever he's gone under

I'll go to sea no more

Now a leak we've sprung, let there be no delay if the Jeannie C. we're saving John Price is drown'd and slip'd away.
So I'll patch the hole while you're bailing

I'll go to sea no more

But no leak I found from bow to hold. No rock it was that got her
But what I found made me heart stop cold, for every seam poured water

I'll go to sea no more.

My God, I cried as she went down. That boat was like no other
My father built her when I was nine, and named her for my mother

I'll go to sea no more

And sure I could have another made in the boat shop down in Dover
But I would not love the keel they laid like the one the waves roll over

I'll go to sea no more

So come all ye lads, draw near to me, that I be not forsaken
This day was lost the Jeannie C. and my whole life has been taken

I'll go to sea no more


to-me classic. like Annabelle Lee, like The Highway Man. all hit same note? what note? Red-Headed Stranger, too. a story, about the past: I once loved, now over.
and the sea. Wreck of the Deutschland. My God, My God.
and, "So my friend carry me down to the water's edge And then sail with me out to that ocean deep And let me go easy down over the side And remember me to her."
parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
very classic, very pretty: no more. to sea. I'll go.

girls porch trucks highway; sighed and went in

My mother and I should have both been girls who stayed out on the porch a little longer than the rest, girls who strained to hear the long-distance trucks on the highway and who listened to them, not the nearer crickets. We would have been girls who had names in their heads: Ann Arbor, Chicago, Cheyenne, San Francisco, Portland, Honolulu, Los Angeles; girls who looked at the sky and wanted to go away. We would have been the kind of girls who thought we, more than other people, saw the sadness of things, the poignance of lush darkness around stars, but who finally sighed and, calling the dog with a mixture of reluctance and relief, shut the door and went in home.

Page 61
Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
ggl bk search 'should have girls'

tryin to find America with you babe

-

something made me crazy, baby, something maybe made you crazy too.

yo ho ho.

In the Mines, In the Mines

-My father and mother are both from Floyd County Ky and both of my grandfathers were coal miners and I remember going up in the hills when I was a kid and there was a old store there in Maytown and Momma would give us a dollar and all us kids would go to the store and there would be miners in there and they would be covered up with coal dust.

cmmt from TomLumpkins (1 year ago) on ytube - Jean Ritchie sings Blue Diamond Mines


oh- How Green Was My Valley. and the valley of them that have gone-

morning call

Every single morning at 8:30 for years Townes called me for our 'morning call.' Guy would usually bring me a cup of coffee, because he knew we'd be on the phone for at least an hour. He'd say hey babe. Townes was the only man I let call me babe. We talked about art and artists and history, especially Texas history, and Hank Williams and Lightnin' Hopkins and Vincent Van Gogh and Indians. We talked about the Bible and European ways and the sky that day and angels and ghosts and demons, and Dylan Thomas and the birds and his dog. We talked about all the different kinds of love, and he'd describe them in detail.
We talked about the language and words and poetry and songs. More often than not he'd read me his new poem of the day. Songs always had to work as a poem on paper first, Townes's rule.
We always agreed about what the first day of spring really was. He'd call and say, hey, this is it, and I would know exactly what he was talking about. I'd say, yep, was just thinking the same thing. We did that year after year. Sometimes he'd cry, sometimes I'd cry for him. When I told him he drank too much he'd say, hey, there are sober people in India.
We'd talk about the Andy Griffith Show. He couldn't watch violence on TV, only Nick at Night usually. Yet he'd say, if anyone touches you I'll slit their throat and drink their blood like wine. He'd make me laugh till it hurt regaling me with stories about his wildness. Or he'd let me cry till it didn't hurt. All he'd have to say was, aw babe, and that would work.
Sometimes I was spellbound. His words were always gentle and loving, but like in his songs, mighty words they were. Sometimes we'd fight about nothing, like the real meaning of the word innocence. Then we'd make jokes out of that word.
He let me in his soul and I let him in mine. I had the honor and privilege of having this noble wild soul in my life.
He called me his best friend and god-sister. I called him my best friend and god-brother. We always said I love you before we hung up.
This morning 8:30 came and the phone didn't ring.

-Susanna Clark
Taken from Song Builder: The Life & Music of Guy Clark
[reprinted on inside-cd-cover of POET: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt]

and her eyes are Wilson green.

Thirty some odd years ago, a young man came to Memphis.
Asking 'bout a rose that used to blossom in his world.
People never took the time to mind the young man's questions,
Until one day they heard him ask a little green-eyed girl:

What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?
Does she ever talk about a place called New Orleans.
Has she ever mentioned a man named Buford Wilson?
What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?

Twenty some odd years ago, a drunkard down in Memphis
Lost a month of life in labour to the county jail.
Just because he asked a little green-eyed girl a question,
And offered her a nickel's worth of candy if she'd tell.

A year and some odd days ago, an old man died in Memphis.
Just another wayward soul the county'd had to claim.
Inside the old man's ragged coat, they found a faded letter.
It said, You have a daughter and her eyes are Wilson green.

Tanya Tucker, What's Your Momma's Name - cowboylyrics

YouTube - Tanya Tucker -What's Your Mama's Name

you want the womb, and a mother, any mother, someone's mother, to sing you to sleep

Book of Dahlia:
She wanted the intactness back, and the family, and the womb, and the womb before the womb, and her mother, but not her actual mother. She would have been okay, truly. She would have! She really would have. After she was done being the opposite of okay, she would have been okay. Her life could be seen as a series of things she had failed to get over. And now it was over. where would it all go? All those memories, things she couldn't get over, and didn't, and wouldn't, now.
So this was it then. Okay. Where was her mother --or a mother, any mother, someone else's mother-- to sing her to bed?

you want the womb with all that is not there. the river, the rocks, the words, No. there are no words and none of the words are theirs. No tears, or all tears, fluid. but no grief. No train, no platform, no one being left, no one leaving. no Dog Monday, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, longer than you think. you are not thinking of the things of this world, the soldier finally come home, the old dog --old? not so old! seven years on, his Jem stepping off the train-- a flash across the platform. Chesterton's things of this world: mothers, fighting peoples. So: nations, navies, wars. but also: a cat purring, back to your face, feet against your palm, Not here. Snow, sleds, the wooded hills: "It's a wonderful world, Hobbes old buddy! Let's go exploring!" A boy and his tiger. A boy and his penguin. Goodnight Opus. Goodnight Moon. A boy and his bear in an enchanted forest, not here, playing.

dlww at 12/23/2008 11:48:00 AM

it is

Dionysus is the river we hear flowing by in the distance, an incessant booming from far away; then one day it rises and floods everything, as if the normal above-water state of things, the sober delimitation of our existence, were but a brief parenthesis overwhelmed in an instant.

all the way back to

Over the course of those two days Ramsey assembled a veritable retrospective of Irina's transgressions in the post-birthday world: arranging "appointment TV to ogle" Lawrence on the news, "declaring her love for Anorak Man" in front of her mother, "running him down" to other players in Preston--all the way back to You should have packed a bag.


p425- The Post-Birthday World: A Novel by L Shriver

Teach us to turn and not to turn.

two worlds

There is nothing wrong in this whole world.

You don't know what's in my heart.


There is nothing wrong in this whole world.

You don't know what's in my heart.


There is nothing wrong in this whole world.

You don't know what's in my heart.


There is nothing wrong you don't know.

What's in my heart this whole world.


There is There is There is my heart.

You don't know nothing is wrong:

The effect of beauty ... is good to the degree that, through its analogies ... the possibility of regaining paradise through repentance and forgiveness is recognized. Its effect is evil to the degree that beauty is taken, not as analogous to, but identical with goodness ... and the conclusion drawn that, since all is well in the work of art, all is well in history. But all is not well there.
_ W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand (New York, 1962), 71.

As less is demanded of art, as it is burdened with less idealism, and therefore less likely to disappoint and disillusion, it has freer rein to do what it can do, which is to create a model of a saved world, in which, as Auden says, crowds are communities and sins forgiven. Lucy McDiarmid

(The Virgin and The Dynamo)

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Ernest Dowson

abandon

I've lost hope. It's easier to live without it. ... First you abandon someone and then someone abandons you. {Finnish novel Dalkey Archive}

Wait without hope, Eliot says, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

All day I tried to distinguish need from desire. Now, in the dark, I feel only bitter sadness for us, the builders, the planers of wood, because I have been looking steadily at these elms and seen the process that creates the writhing, stationary tree is torment, and have understood it will make no forms but twisted forms.

Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
{cannot say or think what your spirit knows}

All the new thinking is about loss, In this it resembles all the old thinking.
Up above the angels are weeping. angels, braiding, dear heart.

Then it happened as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD.

And you had been something of a cold front yourself lately.

You are my heart. a sentence and not a thing, two iambs.

stranger in a strange type face how shall I know you?

the woman I call maro does not, strictu sensu, exist. she is rather a composite...

thedayislikewidewater: Search results for abandon

pleasant angel

I can see why your friends get tired of you.

green squall jay hopler

in all my __ these two lines recur *

-

"I don't be-lieve you." said in sing-song by Veronica's father Keith Mars

-

"I've heard this story." said by Joey in A History of Violence, to his brother ('When they brought you home from the hospital, I tried to strangle you in your crib.")

-

to mom. to dad? this is how I feel?

_______________
*Wilcheck Adv Comp writing prompt ~ from Eudora Welty? ~'in all my writing these six words recur'

so this

I don't mind that you are holding my hand

you are the reason I get up every day

so this is how it ends



01.03.08 explodingdog 2008

Ft. Worth Blues

Ft. Worth Blues/Steve Earle TvZ tribute song

Steve said he wrote Fort Worth Blues in Galway, Ireland earlier this
year as his way of dealing with Townes Van Zandt's death.
I think it's a really lovely song

FORT WORTH BLUES

In Fort Worth all the neon's burnin' bright
Pretty lights green and blue
They'd shut down all the honky-tonks tonight
And say a prayer or two if they only knew

You always said the highway was your home
But we both know that ain't true
It's just the only place a man can go
When he don't know where he's travellin' to

And Colorado's always clean and healin'
And Tennessee in spring is green and cool
It never really was your kind of town
But you went around with the Fort Worth Blues

And somewhere up above the great divide
Where the sky is wide and the clouds are few
A man can see his way clear to the light
Ah just hold on tight that's all you gotta do

And they say Texas weather's always changin'
One thing change'll bring is somethin' new
And Houston really ain't that bad a town
So you hung around with the Fort Worth Blues

There's a full moon over Galway Bay tonight
Silver light over green and blue
And every place I travel through I find
Some kinda sign that you've been through

And Amsterdam's always good for grievin'
And London never fails to leave me blue
And Paris never was my kinda town
So I walked around with the Fort Worth Blues

by Steve Earle
 

YouTube - Steve Earle : Fort Worth Blues

YouTube - Steve Earle - Fort Worth Blues
-Ahhh... Steve Earle hit this one out of the park. Townes was his buddy, and I guess he was sending him along his journey with a song. Beautiful. Thanks for posting it.