Category Archives: music

Steam like Weiland

In honor of some still ringing ears from a wicked (wicked!) show last night at the 930 in DC with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, thought it was time for this one written loosely about one of my fav frontmans (written back aways, slightly revised here).

Steam like Weiland

Steam from my Lipton’s
hot tea
dances like Scott Weiland
and wails
like a hot electric guitar lick
and fogs up my eyes like cataracts.

Oh the nights
where smoke replaced steam
moonshine instead of tea
and I need not imagine him
close enough to smell
the sweat.

Remember hot heat,
grind and sway
so close,
that plush hot heat,
that same song request
and that hot hot heat.

When tea cools down
the steam leaves drops
cold slippery, falling asleep.

Ursula (in Fells Point)

In Fells,
her hair in short braids and
shaved sides
popular on boys in the 80s,
she stands
in the humidity that wraps
around her baggy shorts,
rolled socks, under a street lamp
that drenches her tie dye Dead shirt—

She is singing
“will it go round in circles”
guitars follow “will it fly high like
a bird up in the sky”
and the drums inside
remind me of the late hour.

She looks pleased on the cobblestones.
Her Robert Johnson voice
sings this valedictory song
to no one in particular.

HFStival 2004

[HFStivals were THE events in the DC/Baltimore area while I was in school, all thanks to the greatest alternative radio station that ever was, 99.1 WHFS (rip)]

Trade your aviator shades for
a Seattle radio station button during
Modest Mouse off-stage, grab a beer, and
settle down on a hill
next to greasy passed out bare legs,
and pick at French fries like sea gulls,
stumble off inside,
shoving through to the stadium floor
for a taste of mud mixed with beer mixed with weed
while you crowd surf and wipe-out.

We had such a buzz kickin cause it was 90 degrees and sunny.
We sweated body to body and our ears burned.

Collapse into a seat when night falls
and the sliver of a moon appears in the middle of the
open dome ceiling;
listen to the man with the black eyes and red lips
sing “i will always love you” with a gothic howl.

almost twice my age

This was written back around age 20. I was introduced to Zeppelin by my ultra cool friend Ashleigh, when she came to my house and played “Heartbreaker” as loud as it would go (until my parents yelled to turn it down) in 6th grade. Since that moment, that song, I’ve never quite been the same. I only wish I could have been there to see them live!

almost twice my age

So good and looking at me with shaded eyes
soulful,
under hot lights and sweating.

There, in the midst of Zeppelin blues and the crowd,
is the ageless anticipation, the complicated thought of:

Screams from bodies trembling, hear those
soft six string moans,
those microphone inhales and stifled words,
those fevered hands grasping air and
heated timbre,
harmonica cries in crescendo
until the volume is unbearable, until consumed.

I don’t remember who I was before.
He doesn’t speak but for songs,
kisses my cheek before I vanish
into the clamped mouth of another world
where my parents would disown
if these ephemeral moments ever came true.

We are so far; I know nothing of him.
We are so close; I see him there
leaning darkly beside the stairs.

Finding Robert Zimmerman

It is late afternoon time; you are at me again—

I swear I never really knew Robert at all; I never
knew what he was all about.
I was every bit the lone hitchhiker on the highway
that never went anywhere; the stubborn patient
convinced of my own sanity.
But it doesn’t matter now; late in the afternoon you don’t believe me.
You still interrogate me
with pointed questions—poking, prodding—did I remember
anything about Robert? What plaid shirt was he wearing this time?
What kind of mustache served as his disguise?

Outside dusk comes quickly, but inside—

I sit here under the heat lamp, saying
over again, I never really knew Robert at all. I hopped trains
in search of him. I hid out in the spread
legs of the backcountry—I sipped the high and mighty
in Manhattan. I imagine that he had strong tan forearms but
I never touched them.

Longing to leave, frustration at the questions, finally—

Leave me alone, Man. Go ahead and stick your own thumb out,
stretch your own legs, and see what you find.
I’ve got a folk singer to meet and whiskey to drink,
in a club that was never open,
in a scene as elusive as an early morning dream.

Burn-out

Burn-out

I am flowers dried in tangled hair
and tarnished stars in smudged eyes.

feel that gravity;
feel that pyre burning higher.

for years, we passed around the white and green
while the bottled brown took a turn.
the crowds looked delightfully soft like a
pillow of arms and encore lighters
and I spun dancing into my conflagration.

“Here, scattered to the wind, are the last remains of ____
May there be rest in peace.
May God save the soul from the flames.”

of my name, a gentle breeze.
of my black and white friends, only ash.
sleep on the lawn and rest in these arms.

Born at the Wrong Time

Born at the Wrong Time

One summer, I saw a Texas-style Paul McCartney
in a dark mahogany leather coat
slurring to Bob Dylan’s “rainy day woman”
outside the full moon at a wrangler bonfire in
Colorado.

Last night, I saw a gray haired woman, four feet tall,
in full length tattered gown
swirling in her mess of beads
and her hands in the air like she was
summoning back
the 60’s.

I saw myself tripping on the old Baltimore cobblestones.
I saw myself drunk with Janis and having a grand old time.