Tag Archives: individuality

The World is a Small Town

Don’t want much, but that’s all right
Nothing much happens here on Saturday night
Get laid, get drunk, get in a fight
Maybe all three
Maybe at the same time

Don’t need nothing, but that’s OK
Nothing much here to speak of, anyway,
Get up, get old, collect your pay
Maybe all three
Maybe if the sun shines

This little town can sure get you down
Hard to find a reason to keep hanging around
Sure ain’t no doubt the old rural route
is not the quickest way if you’re hellbent to get out
Little town dreams, and little town schemes
keep us separated, too much space in between
But don’t let the welcome sign turn you around
The world is a small town.

Don’t say much, but that’s just fine;
Nobody really listens to me, most of the time;
Get riled, get hot, get out of line
Maybe all three
Maybe if I’m tipsy

Don’t ask much – that’s just as well;
Nothing doing here – it’s either flood or a dry spell.
Get set, get wet, give yourself hell
Maybe all three
Maybe the way it should be

This little town can sure get you down
Hard to find a reason to keep hanging around
Sure ain’t no doubt the old rural route
is not the quickest way if you’re hellbent to get out
Little town dreams, and little town schemes
keep us separated, too much space in between
But don’t let the welcome sign turn you around
The world is a small town.

22 DEC 2006

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Play the Game

At some point, it doesn’t matter
if your bank account gets fatter
or you end up with the most expensive toys,
always playing at high roller
with illusions of control or
desperate attempts at mirrors, smoke and noise.

Despite all your wealth and power,
you won’t get another hour more
because you bought your way into the park.
Once the lights go down, it’s finished;
both the stage and crowd diminish,
and we each go home alone and in the dark.

And still we play the game,
thinking that we know the score,
thinking we can beat the odds,
thinking we deserve much more.
Doesn’t matter, win or lose:
they’re really pretty much the same.
What’s important is the way
We each decide to play the game.

Yes, the spotlight’s glare is fleeting;
in the center ring, competing
for a prize that fades before you make it home,
fighting for a piece of nothing
’cause it’s better sometimes bluffing
than to face it and remain a great unknown

but the time doesn’t go quicker,
despite some expensive liquor
or the company of fast and fancy friends;
the same minutes turn to hours,
like seeds slowly sprout to flowers
and then die and just the same begin again.

And still we play the game,
thinking that we know the score,
thinking we can beat the odds,
thinking we deserve much more.
Doesn’t matter, win or lose:
they’re really pretty much the same.
What’s important is the way
We each decide to play the game.

06 NOV 2006

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Careful With That Rhinestone Axe, Eugene (Radio Free Nashville)

Johnny Cash said that Nashville’s had a hard time figuring how to sell country to New Yorkers with boots. It’s a national advertising demographic thing now.

Well, country ought to be personal and interactive. Nobody in new country makes you think of Marty, Hank or Lefty – not because they weren’t influential, but because real country singing requires life outside a studio, not video appeal. But Nashville, Inc. doesn’t want that – it’s too risky. Why? Well, new country radio is designed to offend no one. Sure, it’s caricature, apology or hip idiom, but nobody laughs at themselves anymore. Politically correct? Maybe, but there’s a lot of cutesy girls and dimpled boys, and nobody’s hands are getting dirty working. It doesn’t reflect reality. God didn’t make these honkytonk angels, unless he’s writing the graffiti in the mens’ room.

Old country doesn’t get on radio because “there’s no money in nostalgia”, but there is quite a bundle in fantasy. Nobody’s ever mad or disgusted in New Country, where a smile and great hair prove your heart is broken. It’s a product for a disposable society, leaving no impressions, taking no stand and requiring no listener commitment.

Real Country is like whiskey – it improves with age. A new country song doesn’t need born-on dating. You know when it goes bad. Praise of mediocrity devalues genius, which is a long-term thing. Singers who survive their twenties, who resist being groomed and shrink-wrapped, and who prefer giving unique memories to each two-bit roadhouse rather than an intimate global satellite experience from Central Park.

Buddy Holly told Nashville, Inc. “My way, or I’m leaving. I’d rather shovel shit in Lubbock.”

Well, until there’s a Buddy in New Country, you’ll just have to pretend that Hank Sr. would have been “discovered” on Star Search.

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Against The Grain

If knots formed in the wood
have turned the grain in a maze
that wanders no continued line
nor runs a cogent phrase,
then those who go against it
are not veering from a norm,
but rather seeking patterns
in the absence of pure form,
like turning in the skid
or tacking sails into the gale.

The true adventure starts
when more conventioned methods fail.

The salmon fights its way upstream
against the current’s flow;
a planet’s arc seems retrograde
to us, from down below;
our martyrs, saints and mystics
tap a source we do not know;
and we obsess on only what
the surface cares to show.

26 JUL 2005

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From The Trial of Nesorna

CHORUS:

If far too often fate seems to be fixed
and all for nought, pray you remember this:
of our own choosing are these states of life,
both law and ruler from among us rise.

‘Tis in our hands, that much of being free
oft comes to nil, and so our apathy
determines how our democratic state
enslaves us with its silent, civil chains.

So, those who would be wise kings, please take note:
the clever word defeats the sharpest sword;
for those who rule the soul confine the mind,
and conquer silently the heart and hand.

Democracy holds promise great, if freed,
where liberty and justice count for all;
and though expressive right may tax the taste,
the alternate means none may choose their fate:

To choose the gods that suit one’s path and place,
may in the so-called pious cause alarm,
but free will gives this choice to each alone;
to interfere is to deny a right.

So tenuous is our hold on the truth,
that some may seek to have their will imposed,
and quench the fire in those who disagree,
while wand’ring lost themselves in faithless doubts.

Let not this trembling thought of fate unknown
breed trust in leaders boasting “sacred right”,
or you may silence longing in the heart
for principle, and thus destroy the state.

So stories go, and mine presents a time,
not past, not present, but of both constructs;
A fictioned tale, perhaps, but warning, too,
that our existence faces likewise tests.

For words divine, when jumbled, may distort,
and so confuse the heart and harm the mind;
converting honest fears and hopeful dreams
to damning, pure and simple ignorance.

Maybe a lesson is here to be taught –
that facts can quickly be repressed and scorned,
and that which passes for blessed and devout
may be manipulated and ill-used.

Without a warning, liberties we love
that thrive on the most tenuous of threads
may be no longer granted us from birth,
but lost to mem’ry in chasms of time.

A time when reason, logic and defense,
along with independence and free will,
may lose their place in definition books,
and be unknown to us who live in chains.

from The Trial of Nesorna, Act I, Prologue: Chorus Monologue

1990, 2004

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Let Words Escape

Rescind your tortured sentences; let words
escape like AWOL soldiers past the fence,
like sullen rocks that would grow wings like birds
and fly out into fresh experience.

Rethink your injured poems; let each line
cascade in a cacophony of sound
where all the images you dare define
in simple rhythm’s ancient tongues resound.

Don’t cast your works in broken, fragile stone;
they will not last beyond the dusting brush.
Instead, seek for the essence that alone
reduces recent shouts and cheers in hush.

The modern lasts no more than single days;
its history a palimpsest of mist.
If you would build a temple worth more praise,
you must do more than exercise the wrists.

What vision can withstand the critic’s bile
unless the artist draws it from within?
What good to end up in some dusty file
where fickle fancy’s fads end and begin?

Let no one else restrict the words you choose,
nor help you seek the spirit of the age;
If you would seek to please others, refuse
to put another letter on the page.

24 APR 2005

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Society’s Man

Society, your dream would have me beg
for pittance from a cruel employer’s hand,
and from my knees downward, not use my legs,
preferring that I genuflect, not stand,

to act as servant, bound to divine whim
that your appointed middlemen report.
What’s more, I must be weak, and bow to Him
who you insist directs my fate for sport.

No wonder I am just a half-grown lout
who spends my life in seeking childish joys,
when you have counseled me to forgo doubt
and are ashamed when men emerge from boys.

You take my destiny and claim my fate
should stay within the limits you proscribe,
denouncing me when I will not conform
or meekly take your bright and shiny bribe.

Who would choose the adulthood you profer,
all duty with no right, nor chance to rise?
No wonder most avoid it, or defer
a servitude unending ’til you die.

Yet when I pout and act a child of ten,
which seems how you and God define a man,
you feign surprise, and claim it’s always been
my choice to make; and either way, be damned.

13 APR 2005

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