Category Archives: Lyric

BOOKS: “Fine Clothes to the Jew” by Langston Hughes

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Fine Clothes to the JewFine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Available online – Lehigh University

This, Hughes’s second poetry collection, is different from the first in that it leans more heavily into blues music structure and into dialectal language use. It’s not that these didn’t feature in Weary Blues, but in this collection one can read most of the poems with a blues shuffle riff playing in one’s head (and, if you do, you will hear how Muddy Waters might have belted them out in a Blues club.)

While it’s fun to read, this collection is not nearly so deep or evocative as the collection that preceded. Still, if you like poetry and / or the Blues, you’ll definitely find this to be a worthwhile read.

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PROMPT: Song Lyric

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
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Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
Keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Might be later to win
For the times they are a changin'

From “The Times They Are a-Changin'” Bob Dylan (1963 – from the eponymously named album.)

Poison Ivy [Lyric Poem]

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Poison Ivy, I think you know
 that you will always be my foe.

I can slice your vine, pal-o-mine,
 and still end slathered in calamine.

Because I must haul your corpse away,
 and on my gloves your oils will stay —
 waiting that unexpecting day
 when I scratch some tender bit.

BOOK: “Lonesome Cities” by Rod McKuen

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LONESOME CITIES LTD EDITLONESOME CITIES LTD EDIT by Rod McKuen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Google Books Page

Rod McKuen is the posterchild for poets who were loathed and brutalized by critics, yet who had massive popular followings. He is the Minecraft Movie of poets. McKuen was also a songwriter and recording artist. Poet and lyricist seem almost identical career fields (one makes money for being a simplified version of the other [the poor] one,) but I suspect in their differences one finds a big chunk of the resolution to the aforementioned disparity. At the end of this collection is a chapter entitled “13 Songs” that contains a baker’s dozen of poems that are pop lyric-esque. Until I got to these, I thought McKuen may have been getting an unfair wrap for being schmaltzy and pedestrian, but when I got to them, I could see the truth in the criticism.

This is not to say McKuen would have been as harshly judged today as he was in 1968 when this book came out. He was a bisexual man who is most famous for writing “Seasons in the Sun” (an unambiguously schmaltzy song made popular by Terry Jacks in a much more up-tempo version,) and in an era in which academics were “total squares.”

At any rate, this collection, which is largely organized by city, is a fun read.

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Perspective [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph of a monkey looking sideways through the bars at a temple in Lopburi, Thailand.
Perhaps, you cannot change your jail,
   And you can't choose the lumps and scars --
 No matter how you scream or wail --
   But you pick your view through the bars.

Dragonfly Eye [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph taken at Don Mueang Temple in the north Bangkok suburbs, features waterlilies in the fore and guardian statues in the background. 
The dragonfly strafing lilies 
 doesn't know how very silly
 a bantam taller than a ram
 seems to a ram tall as a filly.

24/7 Wakeup Call [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph taken from Wat Pa Phon Phoa at Luang Prabang, Laos. 
In a mountain village,
   the roosters crow all day.
 Hopes of mid-day napping
   are dashed along the way.

Mountain Azalea [Lyric Poem]

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Photograph of a cluster of pink Mountain Azalea with barren woods in the background. Taken on the Sawnee Mountain Trail in North Georgia.
One cluster of Mountain Azalea
   Stands out like royal regalia,
 Adorning a near naked vagrant --
    But much more pleasingly fragrant.

White [Lyric Poem]

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Against the bright white palace domes
   fluffy clouds seem a tad too much,
 and so they start to limp on home
   like a gimp beggar on his crutch.

PROMPT: Tattoo

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Daily writing prompt
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
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I would not like a tattoo. 
 I would not like one - old or new. 
 I wouldn't like one in a Zoo. 
 I wouldn't like one in a canoe. 
 I would not like one, 
   Ham though I am, 
 I would not like any body-spam.