BACH IN IRAQ
I should have seen it coming
All the songs are machine guns now
It is not so far from rock, to rap
to rat-a-tat-tat
the beats getting harder and harder
and closer and closer together
Sitting at an Austin stop sign
cars filled with soldiers on each side
In a cross-fire of decibels, I think
“No one is playing Bach in Iraq”
as all three cars shudder and shake
I lift my hands in surrender
they keep firing
SALVADOR DALI AS ROCK STAR
Fails because of melting guitar
BILL
lives at the top of the hill
four bulging disks rack his back
music and love still flow through
IN HAARLAM
In Haarlam
ten streets converge
on the huge Grote Markt
A church with a 130 foot high tower
one of the finest organs in the world
pipes as long as thirty three feet
Played by Handel and by Mozart too
resting place of Hals and de Key
But its always been a market square
old guild houses and fine shops
carved stone in a dozen colours
centuries and centuries old
In the corner, red and white
and as plastic as tomorrow
the twin dikes of McDonalds
TONY CAMPISI AT THE ELEPHANT ROOM
Tony Campisi plays Jazz
on an old tenor sax
notes you can’t play on a new
Brass as rich as stone walls
in an old world church
soaked in a thousand years
of latin mass
Tony Campisi plays Jazz
and somebody’s cryin, somebody’s dyin
somebody’s fallin in love – right now
MOSSBANK II
Valve trombone and trumpet
Ernie and me
poisoning the air with practice
ERIK BLOMBERG
“That one might be translated into light and song”
– Erik Blomberg
And yet the fear, the fear
always the fear that we
may loose something
in the translation
EXCLUSED
Erato can be more than a bit erratic
and daily living lead to static
So sometimes when my lovely muse
seems my tender soul to abuse
and my simple mind confuse
I seek some gentler, kinder muse
And somewhere warm to sing the blues.
(and sometimes a little booze)
Whereupon my main muse, is not amused
and lets me know she feels abused
and certainly, not sufficiently exclused
and it’s choose! choose! choose!
and it’s choose! choose! choose!
As if, having been chosen
a poet could still choose