The poem is a story about awakening, and the longing to rest easy in a disconnect from the world and the events in it. It is a cry for peace, as well as an answering to the call that is life and responsibility. There are dragons and aliens – symbols of power and otherness indicating a universal connection to energies we don’t fully understand which support humanity’s growth (we hope!).
For a while now, I have been playing with this -trying to get the music just right, and testing this kind of vocals or that kind of vocals, and I just couldn’t get it the way it needed to be until recently.
Here’s the spoken word with soundscape version of At The Water Met which will be on the someday forthcoming collection of pieces called Mixtures Poetica which is the follow up to the EP Poetic Mixtures, available on streaming platforms globally.
Summer breeze is rustling in these trees Whispering of things that cannot be Too hot here to think about it My mind still turns it over
If only I had minded more If only I had been lovelier If only I had given you what you need I’m drowning in these memories Drowning in the summer lands
Oceans in the summer lands Drowning in the lost and lonely If only If only
The tears are sliding down my cheeks My heart grows heavy even in the light of the warmest sun The rains are falling in my spirit As I wonder If I had been more mindful If I had been more humble If I had been more everything you like Would you still be seeking A place beside me Would you still be needing A space next to me Would we still be we and not alone If only If only If only I knew just what to do now If only I could bring you back to you now If only I could mend all that went wrong I would do that
That’s what I’d do
I’d find a way to get somewhere you could love me
Again
I’d find a way to be someone you could love
Again And I wouldn’t be here sitting in this shade under these trees
Swamped by the ocean and drowning in the if only If only If only
They say guns are not the problem And it’s true another black man died 60 bullets in his back And it’s a lie mass shooting at the mall At the school Uvalde where they hide
They say guns are not to blame and it’s a truth Domestic violence and some 80 proof (whiskey) one could admit No protection from the paper that was writ Guns are not to blame and it’s just another lie When youth can walk into a store, no training and walk out again he’s armed
Guns are our constitutional right it’s not untrue that there’s a clause for the population to have an excuse to bear But it’s a lie that there should be no regulation or oversight
About the babies they say they they are pro-life up until they’re born or to save a mother’s life and so it’s the god forsaken motherfucking truth and it’s a lie
And the one side dithers righteously about how they’re better than the other and it’s a truth And it’s a lie They refuse to take a deeper look in their closets where they hide The reasons that the other side can and do entrench and build and gain
And they comb their cocktail hair and put on their cocktail gowns They all strut before us in a line of union and union-busting clowns Like the boyfriend or the girlfriend or the theyfriend who will do no more than be just slightly better than your ex And expect your full devotion knowing well the slim prospects
And the climates heating up and they say they really care But when it comes to changing point the finger over there And I finally understood That I finally know the truth That it’s a lie And it’s the truth They’ve buried and they’ve hidden all the truth under the lie And the lie upon the dung hill sipping wine and eating pie And sell us all the same old shit We’ve been hearing all along And shrug and say it’s true that it is wrong And it’s a lie that they’ve told us and they tell us And that why the feeling people The empaths and the impoverished have to cry and weep And gnash the teeth worn down from the gnashing and the bearing and the injustice of it all Because justice is a truth that in America’s a lie Another lie painted over the motherfucking truth But I don’t have proof No I don’t have proof no Nor an alibi So when they serve the shot of silence Force it down my throat Just know that I’ll be grateful when I die Justice gets us all alive in the end And that’s the truth But I don’t have proof
“‘It Don’t Matter To Me’ was originally written as a poem, yet the music behind it stayed lodged in my head for years. I believe the words in this song were the first song lyrics I put to music. However, composing the piano accompaniment didn’t happen until recently when we recorded for the album “Patchwork Blue”. Oddly, when I retrieved this poem from an old notebook, I found other poems that also spoke song and will use these poems to create new songs.
The theme, obviously love won/lost, is universal and would appeal to that mindset. It is a song tribute to how we lose love, then find it, then lose it again, and find it again…a love song, a blues song, a heart breaker, a plea breaker. We can deny it doesn’t matter one way or another, but it does.”
Patchwork Blue has been variously described as a smoldering fire (I am assured this is a good thing), Avant Garde, Soundtrack music, and as defying expectations (some people liked this, and some did not).
This collaborative album I did with my friend, Rosalie, was born out of free form improvisation with jazz and Blues influences. The album is out on major digital markets. There are 10 songs on the album, 2 are instrumentals.
We had a request for the lyrics, and so I’ve posted them, and thought you-all might like to read them. 🙂
Also, I posted this new work on SoundCloud. It’s a sad, gloomy, and makes you wonder why I’m still breathing kind of song, but it captures that moment when I quite seriously felt that my existence here is just plodding on to the end, because what else am I going to do? Some losses can feel like that…but that feeling lifts eventually, maybe showing up in waves, each time a little less severe, a little less sad, a little less lonely. And if you’ve lost someone, and grieve so deeply, I’m sorry.
Grief is a difficult companion, but no one walks without it unless they cannot love. So, you loved well, and will heal in time, building the strength to carry it.
I took this song off of SoundCloud to rework it. So this is a dead link: