With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turn and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it’s time, too real to feel
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Another from Paul Simon, The Boxer, sung by Simon and Garfunkel and released in 1969:
Asking only workman’s wages I come looking for a job But I get no offers Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there
I often quote the second line here, bolded, to tell people to get back in the ring and take another swing back at life when it hits you hard. From Angus and Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson of AC/DC, the rock classic You Shook Me All Night Long:
Had to cool me down to take another round Now I’m back in the ring to take another swing That the walls were shaking, the Earth was quaking My mind was aching and we were making it
Oh the night came undone like a party dress
And fell at her feet in a beautiful mess
The smoke and the whiskey came home in her curls
And they crept through the dreams of the barroom girls
“All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die”
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It’s apropos of nothing, he says his name is William
I’m sure he’s Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy
And he’s plain ugly to me
And I wonder if he’s ever had a day of fun in his whole life
When I was in high school, an English teacher, in her quest to make the course more relevant, assigned the class to find song lyrics that were poetic. Try to imagine a 17-year old girl reading this in a totally emotionless voice
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na, ahh-do
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na
Ahh, yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip
Mum-mum-mum-mum-mum-mum, get a job
Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na
Brice Cockburn has so many little sketches, almost haikus:
.
After the rain in the streets light flows like blood I can just taste salt on the humid wind
Here comes that gasoline Spreading hungry rainbow over shiny black tar
“After The Rain”
.
Sun went down looking like the eye of God Behind icy mist and stark bare trees Inside the dim empty cinema two guys in leather jackets Glance at each other and shiver ‘They never built these places with winter in mind’
After a few more scenes, he ends with:
I wonder if I’ll end up like Bernie in his dream A displaced person in some foreign border town Waiting for a train part hope part myth While the station changes hands Or just sitting at home growing tenser with the times Or like that guy in ‘The Seventh Seal’ Watching the newly dead dance across the hills Or wearing this leather jacket shivering with a friend While the eye of God blazes at us like the sun…
“How I Spent My Fall Vacation”
.
He ends most (all?) of his concerts with a solo acoustic reflection:
All the diamonds in this world That mean anything to me Are conjured up by wind and sunlight Sparkling on the sea
It may not be high art poetry, but I’ve always had a soft spot for country music lyrics.
Sittin’ on the front porch on a summer afternoon
In a straightback chair on two legs, leans against the wall
Watch the kids a’ playin’ with June bugs on a string
And chase the glowin’ fireflies when evenin’ shadows fall - Dolly Parton
The man who preached the funeral
Said it really was a simple way to die
He laid down to rest one afternoon
And never opened up his eyes
They hired me and Fred and Joe
To dig the grave and carry up some chairs
It took us seven hours
And I guess we must have drunk a case of beer. - Tom T. Hall
The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome, I could cry - Hank Williams
She played tambourine with a silver jingle
And she must have known the word to at least a million tunes,
But the one most requested
By the man she knew as Cowboy
Was the late night benediction at the Y’all Come Back Saloon.
*- Sharon Vaughn
Every day’s an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines
But each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see reminds me that I long to be
This Jimmy Ruffin song just came on the radio on the way to work:
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? The roots of love grow all around But for me they come a-tumblin’ down Every day heartaches grow a little stronger I can’t stand this pain much longer I walk in shadows searching for light Cold and alone, no comfort in sight Hoping and praying for someone to care Always moving and goin’ nowhere What becomes of the broken-hearted Who had love that’s now departed? I know I’ve got to find Some kind of peace of mind Help me
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now.
. They are just more… explicit. Though I love me some juicy Bon Scott lyrics.
