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Edna Sweetlove Oct 2014
A Poem About Erik Satie, the Eccentric Half-A-Scot
Have you heard about old Erik Satie?
He was quite slim and not un fatti;
Son père was a Frog, his Ma a wee ****
(which must have given quite a shock
to his musical chums at the Conservatoire
where he wrote "Trois morceaux en forme de poire").

While sitting 'au piano' one fine day
At his Honfleur home so bright and gay,
Our Erik felt himself come over queer,
(le résultat triste de beaucoup de bière).
He hadn't felt so odd since he didn't know when
(that's when he wrote his "Gnossiennes").

Now I don't want you to think Erik was bent
That certainly wasn't what I meant;
But there's no doubt he was a little odd
(indeed many called him an asexual sod);
For, although French, he loved not the ladies
(and he also wrote three nice "Gymnopédies").

Many piano pieces which Satie penned
Are rather silly and round the bend;
One was called "Prélude for a Dog"
(which he wrote whilst sur le bogue);
Perhaps his best known work is called "Parade"
Which some people think is quite avant-garde.

He was a bit ***** and collected umbrellas
Which set him apart from saner fellers;
He had lots of velvet suits to his name
(and for some reason, they all looked the same).
But he over-did it on the *****, was often ******,
Thus he died prematurely, and is sorely missed.
#humour
Continue reading...
Pearls of White Feb 2014
Mixtapes I
"The best memories are like overplayed mixtapes: they lose clarity and detail over time, yet they seem to sound better the older they get."*

We listen to the fourth round of Trois Gymnopedies
on our break from the second round of *******

Our limbs entwined, in part because we like it
partly because we're stuck together by sweat and--

The air is thick with scents foul and fragrant
as furniture music fills the gaps in between

Every breath stalls to anticipate the notes
fingers twitch slightly on the downbeat

Ten minutes ago, we made our own music
Ten minutes ago, we were in perfect harmony

She stares at the ceiling as I stare on her lips
I watch her mumble the lyrics Satie never wrote:

A pack of cigarettes,
a pack of cigarettes
Could you please buy from the store?*

We're taken over by uncontrollable laughter
as uncontrollable as the trembling when we came

She shifts to her side, and my arms are freed
I stand and pick my jeans from the floor

I take my time buttoning up my shirt,
soaking in the view before I run the errand

She lies naked still, as I put a jacket on
I leave on the fifth round of the Gymnopedie
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James Bradley McCallum Feb 2016
Parisian Woman Blows Herself Up!
They were hot on the trail
of the Parisian terrorists
who killed 127 people

When the gendarme came for her
they asked… “where's your boyfriend?”

she answered “he’s not my boyfriend”
she pushed a button and blew herself up

painting the inside of her modest flat
with a single coat of macabre rouge

an unsympathetic Tweet reported
that her head flew out the window
coming to rest on the cobblestone street
in front of the neighborhood bakery
her nostrils drawing a final breath filled
with the aroma of freshly baked croissants

perhaps her dimming retina reflected  
the flickering laser strobe scanning
the Parisian skyline from atop
the Eiffel Tower

maybe it was for the best
that she's been released
from her earthly travails

gotta be a major downer
being a card carrying Jihadi
living  life, parsing locations
to find the best sites to
****** innocent people

living life inside the prison
of a black burka, is
living inside the dogma
of religious delusion
gotta be a living hell
living large in a
Dante’s Inferno
doin hard time in
solitary confinement
of an addled mind
chained to a
wretched heart
looking at life
through tiny slit
like horse blinders
designed to encumber
the distraction of any
peripheral perspective

in summer the dark fabric
traps heat inside the raiment
bringing simmering resentment
to a raging boil

railing against bourgeois decadence
stewing over the whoredom of halter tops,
mini skirts and teeny weeny bikinis

a coal fired pressure cooker
stoked with repressed libidinal energy
loathing the sin of intimacy
recoiling from any intimate touch
the simmering resent
unable to find release
slowly builds until it blows

pure torture for a young woman
how can you not fall in love in Paris?
groove to jazz, lounge an afternoon away
sipping coffee at a sidewalk bistro
French kiss a lover
on a Rive Gauche bench

In The City of Light
how can you prefer body counts
to loving embraces?

the construction of a suicide vest
to epiphanies concealed in
affable Impressionists brushstrokes
or the revelations of Cezanne's dancers


to never roll the warm blush
from a fine Bordeaux
in the cradle of your tongue
or the sophisticated pose
of a first cigarette

to be immersed
in the City of Lights
while shunning
its illumination
by hiding under
a black burka
is absurd

why does this form of Islam require
these sacrifices from the fairer ***?
why does their understanding
of faith forbid body contact
yet demands a righteous body count?
what type of religion sanctifies this?

where an unknowable Allah
promises a paradisaical afterlife
only through the condemnation
of a pedestrian Joie de Vivre

Sharia liberates the soul
with divine chains of submission
and stokes an abhorrence to
secular democracy that condemns
the spirit to the anarchy of choices

is it no surprise she pulled the trigger?
to bad the Quran consumed all her reading time
had she only lifted a slim volume of Camus
she may have read The Myth of Sisyphus
"suicide springs from a feeling of absurdity"
Allah condemned her to a dark subservience
whose only goal was a nihilist martyrdom of
mass ****** and self annihilation  

Said Camus

“those who lack courage will
always find a philosophy to justify it”

and finally she may have understood

Camus's posit of the most important question….…...

“should I **** myself or have a cup of coffee?

she should have had a cup of coffee….

Erik Satie - Trois Gymnopédies

jbm
Oakland
020316
This poem is a companion piece to Righteous Ruminations ....
It is not my intention to denigrate Islam or Muslim women of the veil...
tolerance for religion is the path to peace...
yet the tension between the secular west and Sharia practices remain at odds and nurture extremism on both sides
#terror #paris #democracy #secular #sharia
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Martin Narrod Oct 2014
For Kristine
Winter song. Fall passing.
And too with so many like this. When she is not there-

   Vibrations after the battle, footsteps breathing deeply into the cotton beds and privy the shrews of their slavery. Heavens' toll after me, brine and abalone shimmering.

Cast in a shadow of half-arched feet, slender narrowness shimmering crystals obfuscate the fury of the ringing;

Every evening when I wake she shakes her bell.

It ripples like food coloring droplets undulating in a dixie cup on the mantel of a kitchen sink. The elbows sprout out first, then the head stridently strikes upwards catapulting the arms and wrists to the sides, and then at last when all is deep ****** blue, the raw hairless legs unmask themselves and fold out into the edge of a postcard and the reddy, cerise snowflake stain brands the juicy signature of an incredible beautifully imprinted star. And still she is not there.

Into the white rooms the insects crawl, at last the cacophony of their bedeviled stridulations eeking as if from a broken and collapsed jaw. A necessary end to every inch of hoarfrost strung across their elliptical hoot-shaped jowls-

These are the marks that time encrusts upon disheveled and dilapidated Spline.

In dark matter there are Spline. In shifty daytime television sitcoms, Spline saw at our ears and cost us trillions of migraines each year. Three Splines sit on a log, another four on a fence. They race each other in elevators, make inappropriate gestures, make airplanes disappear into the Indian ocean, and steal the breath right out of our lungs. Spline cannot come any closer. Spline are the dreary minutia which separate friends, they are the sentence that never makes it off of our tongues, the anger we leave curled into our fists.

She is not here and the fevers are burning. The languages are deafening. It is almost impossible to believe words like these were ever spoken aloud. She is not here and the jeans don't fit, the dogs are shy, and the accidents keep happening. There is never a glimpse at perfect and hot happiness. There is nothing here but the spotty ash-pocked masked faces of the Moon Men, hurrying and scurrying.

She is not here and the sea is drying up. The war is in the street and in the streets the men are dying. Everywhere is dross and cataclysmic end-dust, desiccated hours and dandelion seeds.

Inside of the room the music plays softly. Glass's solo piano Metamorphosis Three and Satie's Gymnopedie. It has been only six hours since she left, but

When we see each other I am superman
To the woman I love fiercely.

love hard wordsmith poetry rigid anxiety antiromantic hopelessromantic tragic romance girls boys chicago sanfrancisco californa Spline sheisnothere death dying old end Fall ending autumn Winter hiver vibrations feet footsteps fetish *** love cast shadow peterpan slavery metallica narrowness fury obfuscate shakespeare WhereIsSylviaPlath Plath Hughes Longfellow oldpoets poets writing writingonthefall endoftheworld monde planet earth alone lonely inlove oysters kristine martinnarrod musedandamused
#love #poetry #anxiety #romance #hard #wordsmith #tragic #hopelessromantic #rigid #antiromantic
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claire Jan 2021
Erik Satie
subtle dancing to Erik Satie
dancing that isn't dancing at all
I exist much bigger for you
I squeeze your head
warm familiar liquid seeps out
your head scrunched, peaceful despair
I pour myself into you again
screaming death as you mold me like clay
a kiss goodnight
you hold me
running your fingers all over your creation
This is about being a muse, particularly for an older man.
#music #dancing #romance
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James Bradley McCallum Nov 2013
slippin into the breaks
for Ralph Ellison

slippin
me ed
into the
wholesome
nothingness
of the
breach....

invisible
revelations
of
patient
affirmations
revealed

(nothing
remains
settled)

somewhere between
Exile on Main Street
Rolling Stones
Rip This Joint
&
Erik Satie
Gnossienne

Suffern
11/8/13
jbm
inspired by Albert Camus
informed by Mr. Ellison's
description of Louis Armstrong's solos
or to quote Billy Joel
its still rock and roll to me
and no its not a
delicate indelible
existential
Monet trying to
make an
impression

I know
some may ask
whats eatin
jimmymac
this morning????

good question
and if you've read
this far
if i were you
i would read
no further
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Sonja Benskin Mesher Mar 2014
monday
satie plays.

today the thoughts are changed,
each time, to see, what else to be.

to think without the culture, the nurture,
reborn to hear the news, to look anew.

we are not to blame,
it is the way of things.

seven thirteen monday morning.

sbm.
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gravelbar Jun 2012
Gramineae
Bones in the rye field they sang, brittle stems of iron spreading leaves of
rust
A hidden look in watery eyes, secret sickness, ripping my guts
asunder
That space between midnight and morning when the world has been reduced
to monotone
In the blue-gray lucidity we sit, absorbed in cigarettes and gusting
wind
A few notes of Satie and I’m sitting in that blue room again, bamboo out the
window
Your voice like a finger running up my spine, singing to me, drowned out by
spring showers
Clay pots on the shelves, wilted sunflowers on the floor, grass pushing its way
through the floorboards
I step into falling rain, dream of sleep, dream of nothing, the blankness between
wakefulness
Hands carrying the scars of a thousand days, much like the day before, unconscious of
its passing
In tired two syllable words we exchange our hearts
In smiling kisses we pass each other breath, fresh like fertile ground split by
rugged plow
Black and white photographs in odd fitting drawers with cheap brass
handles
A pocket watch carried by many men before me, strewn upon stained counters
and newspaper clippings
I will these tired eyes to come to their senses, absorbed in a single word in a single
line
Losing their focus for minutes at a time, the sensation of drifting, the feeling of
fading
Like watercolor or lines in well-trod earth, shuffled into meaningless
harmonics
I still miss the sound of your violin, though you thought no one listened through
that ***** window
Scraps of Scriabin and Brahms, your symphonies saved me many a night
Such frail hands and white scalp, but you did not shake when bow met
fingers
Those nights of cheap Merlot, secretly stealing a moment of calm from your
skilled hands
The records never quite rivaled those nights, my unknown
friend
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Frank Corbett Dec 2012
Tragedies
Come fellows,
come friends,
to the circus of gnossienes,
where strikes of midnight signal our rebirth,
and from the womb of a pen,
we are ****** upon the parchment that sustains our selves,
as our hair sheds in tufts,
and our teeth dull,
we harlequin worms,
who suffer in smiles,
through geographical refuse.

We harlequin worms,
can love only ants,
who only bite and sting,
which we feel to our cores,
as we watch for the giants,
whom we are convinced,
will crush us on sight.

We harlequin worms,
essential but weak,
embarrassments to our forefathers,
refuters of shovel hypothesis,
wit is best to ignore our five hearts,
before we think ourselves human.

Harlequin worms,
proletariat of the earth,
lords of the soil, listeners of Satie,
Slaves to the insignificance of our own progress.
We shall go without want,
we will smile for thee,
the flies whom pay us no mind.
Continue reading...
Anthony Pierre Nov 2019
Erik Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1: A Poetic Exposé
My home, your home
Come home, our home

Come home my sweet love
Come home tonight

Home
Come home

Home
Our home

Come home my sweet wife
Come home tonight

Loves
Life
Your
Right

You know I needed you here
And its right
You know I want you close
Holding you tight
All night

Come home
Love...
Music is poetry. Erik Satie a poet. The piano is his pen. So listen carefully and interpret this poem in your own way.
#music #poetry #erik #satie #gymnopedie #interpretation
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Lyra Brown Nov 2012
memories crumble with clarity at night
I’m older now so I try to forget

But I get flashbacks

Of the every weekend endless parties

The music the drinking the smoke the laughter

The audible hell that was

The garage

The pretend family that was

Us

Me walking in to play you a song before bed

Which would turn into

You drunkenly doing your best at showing me how

To play Satie’s Première Gymnopédie


Which would end in me wondering how to say goodnight

While you would cry silently about nothing

On my shoulder.

I’m older now so you think I’d forget

But I remember

The first birthday you had after your brother died when

You downed a bottle or three in the span of an hour or two

I went upstairs to make sure you were okay

Only to find your friends had carried you from

The garage to your bed

Which made for the most perfect

Stumbling distance

Any drunk could ever imagine.

I’m older now so I pretend to forget

But the memories crumble with clarity at night

You, opening the bottle at five and passing out at one or two in the morning

Only coming in the house to **** and eat and banter

Oh, the endless banter

I had fun with messing with your mind and playing with your words

When you were gone

As you so often were, every night of my

Entire span of pretending to blossom. I never knew who you were going to be -

“Your dad is a drug addict you know. He’s not perfect either. What are you staring at?”

“Oh baby, you’re so brilliant. You know that?! You’re brilliant!”

“I miss him so much. I’m so so sad and lonely…”

“It’s not all about you, you know. Don’t let it go to your head.”

I learned how to be a numb construction worker,

Constantly working on the foundation of the walls

I was building to protect myself from you.

I’m older now so you’d think I’d forget,

You’d think the memories would fade with each passing year

You’d think the wounds would have healed by now,

You’d think I could call myself a strong young woman.

But I can’t, I’m tormented by remembering, I’m haunted still

I am a ghost

The voices yell at me, tell me to throw in the towel already,

Get rid of everything what a waste of space. They sound like you.

Sometimes I miss it, I miss the hell that was living with you.

I miss the consistency, the predictable time-frame in which I could depend

On you to be emotionally unavailable. When I close my eyes, I can still see

Your silhouette swaying in the hallway, your hand fumbling for the light switch

The demon that would come out of your mouth every time I said

I love you.

But I’m older now, I try to forget.

I half succeed in daylight

But the memories crumble with clarity at night

The memories crumble with clarity at night.
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David Clifford Turner Feb 2010
You ******* about your class on Chaucer,
And as smoke snaked from between your lips
Like the angry ash of inactive volcano,
You said “They’re all a bunch of crackers, no good, no fun, no nothing.”
I smirked as I tasted Parliament in your gums.
“That’s enough now, let’s party” and we certainly did. You (featuring
me) hit up every street and every open door; we heard
the Music bleeding in the road, shaking the feets of the young dead.
As their ears crinkled,
their mouths dried,
And their halos melted,
I thought I heard you humming Satie.
But you were only coughing up nicotine
In rhythm to the dying song of an overdosing art student.
© David Clifford Turner, 2010

For more scrawls, head to: www.ramblingbastard.blogspot.com
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Nigel Morgan Jan 2013
Sense of Place: Summer
​1​
 
In the year Victoria
came to the throne,​
on 9 acres by a river’s bend,
(bought for £490)
Joseph Dover built his mill.
 
yarn
to weave,
wool to knit,
the raw fleece
washed, carded,
scribbled, tentered, dyed,
spun and woven
(back parlour or
mill shed)
finished,
sold.
 
Today the fleeces are
burnt at the farm,
and the sheds and lofts
display colourful crafts.
The past is collected in
sepia photographs,
strange heritaged tools.
The present hides in
figures on the footfall,  
those costings for the café.
 
In an August
of grey cloud
and persistent rain,
the sun on occasion
shakes the building into life;
it filters through the tall riverside trees,
makes swathes of coloured light
swim across the wooden floors.
 
2
​
The studio, cool
on the hottest day,
is graced with garden flowers,
and the business of making everywhere.
Days fold work into the pleasure
of small gestures of care,
Satie’s tenderest song
a litany under the breath.
 
When toes meet
beneath a table shared,
this touch registers
the slow wonder of it all;
that ‘being here’
in this expansive place
of stone and wood,
textured always
with the white noised
rush of water.
 
At night we steal back in
to sit together by a single lamp:
to decipher Henry’s mimetic prose
of estuary, moor and river;
ponder Robert’s quartets in A,
every phrase singing Clara, Clara . . .
 
Later, lights extinguished
we move in the pitch of darkness
through the long galleries,
carefully down the invisible stairs.
 
Outside, in the
coloured silence
of the river’s run,
the hills carry the sky
cloud-haunted, star-strewn.
moon-lit.
Continue reading...
Sam Jan 2017
There's always space for empty
Debussy's in the air
Satie's in the sea
Gershwin's growing in the ground
how much more beauty can there be

Einstein's up in orbit
Newton's sitting 'neath a tree
Schrodinger's both here and there
so where should I be

Naruda conquered love
Bukowski; Reality
Ginsberg Howled all the rest
what thought is left for me

I'd like to say something never said before
something of wonder, profundity
here it comes
here it comes

I'm coming up empty
Is this name dropping? How well does 'Gershwin's growing in the ground' roll off the tongue!? (even if it doesn't make any sense)
#poem #poetry #thoughts
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TOD HOWARD HAWKS Apr 2021
SENSIBILITIES OF AN ADAGIO
I am one with sensibilities of an adagio. There are few things
I cannot describe with words. A beautiful adagio, I think, is one
of them. Its beauty is ineffable. All are musical poems, but one
is tinged with sorrow. I am thinking of Barber's ADAGIO FOR
STRINGS. PACHELBEL'S CANON, on the other hand,
is gentle and evocative, as is Albioni's adagio. You're sitting on
the sofa holding your sweetheart in your arms listening to
Bach's AIR ON THE G STRING as you give her a sweet kiss
on her neck. You dim the lights. Vivaldi's GUITAR CONCERTO
begins to play followed by Marcello's ADAGIO IN D MINOR
and then you give her another kiss, this one on her lips. It's
getting late, but there's still time to absorb the exquisite PAS DE
DEUX by Tchaikovsky from the NUTCRACKER. Now she
kisses you, not once, but many times. You slip in Beethoven's
MOONLIGHT SONATA, Debussy's CLAIR DE LUNE, Satie's
elegant TROIS GYMNOPEDIES, and Chopin's PRELUDE,
OP. 28, even though they are not adagios, but because they are
etheral. And before you and she go to bed to make love, you listen
to Rodrigo's CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ FOR GUITAR AND ORCHESTRA. No better foreplay exists.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
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dominic rocky Mar 2014
Red
I found myself wandering around
the truck stops and trailer parks of
West Sacramento
hung over and thirsty, I found
the first place
I could get a drink —THE ***** BIRD
I sat down at the bar and ordered a Budweiser.
it was basically empty
usual for a Tuesday.

halfway through my beer the bartender slid me another,
“what’s this for?” I said. “the fella over there
bought it for you,” he said pointing to a blind man
and a German Shepherd sitting at a booth in the back.
“you allow dogs in here?”
“nah, but Red’s cool.”

I finished up my first Bud
and walked over to the booth, “hey
thanks for the beer.”
“you should be thanking me, not him
he can’t hear you anyway.”  I looked around.
A paw extended out. “the name’s Red,
nice to meet you.”
I shook the paw, “yeah, uh, Louis.
same.”
“have a seat, Lou.
so what brings you to this dump?” the dog asked.
“excuse me, Red you said? I don’t mean to be rude,
but you’re a talking dog.”
“you don’t say huh?”
“sorry, but this is— incredible .”
the German Shepherd grabbed a bottle of beer in his jaws, kicked back his head
and took a pull,
“yeah? so?
you humans do it all the time
and half of that time the only thing that comes out of your mouths is *******.”
“but why haven’t
I heard of you before? shouldn’t you be famous or
in some record book or —“
“ah, **** that noise” he said,
“I’m too old for that ****.
why do you think I’m hanging out at this **** hole anyway?
no one ever comes in here —“

“HEY ******* RED!” the bartender yelled.
“NO OFFENSE JOE, BUT YOU GOTTA ADMIT,
YOUR BAR IS PRETTY ******! HA HA.”

“so how do you know—“
“oh Frank? how rude of me, I didn’t
introduce you.” Red turned to the blind man in between us
and pawed his right hand, the man smiled and stuck out his hand.
“nice to meet you, Frank. you have one incredible —“
“I told you he can’t hear. he’s deaf.”
“oh, right. sorry.”
Red took another pull of his beer, “Frank and I are ex-West Sacramento PD.
we were partners. narcotics unit.
a few years back
we got a tip on a **** lab at one of the
trailer parks near here. Frank went inside to see if we had the right place. then
BOOOOM. the whole ******* thing blew. Frank went flying. it was
definitely the place. now he can’t see or hear ****.”
“jesus.”
he wagged his tail and laughed,
“yeah, poor *******, if he wasn’t ugly enough before burn marks.
nah I’m kidding. Frank’s like
a brother to me, that’s why I take care of him.” Red grabbed a cigarette out of the pack in Frank’s jacket pocket. Frank lit it for him.
he took a long drag, “you smoke?”


Red and I drank until the bar closed.
we smoked, *******,
played dice (1-4-24). it turned out
we had the same taste for classical music,
Chopin over Satie
and we both agreed
Willie Mays was the greatest
to ever swing a baseball bat.
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— The End —