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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
 Posted - 01/16/2010 : 01:04:32
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MIDNIGHT RADIO
The howling sky is frozen, the lonely moon is shaking
Not a soul in the street and snow is falling down
The radio at midnight, some song out of the Sixties
A cup of hot black coffee steadies my right hand
If one heart is broken, a single soul forsaken...
I’m ten thousand miles from that devastated town
Turn off the television, driven crazy by the pictures
“Go down, Miss Moses,” I am singing with The Band
If anything is growing under all this snow here
Spring will bring the answer and the ground will freeze no more
Tonight I'm at the mercy of the helplessness I know here
Got Carmen and the Devil and a wolf outside the door
The cottonwoods are naked and the wind is in the cedars
Snow is drifting higher halfway up the sides of cars
The deejay must be sleeping, the songs keep on coming
Singing, “People get ready,” that old Curtis Mayfield tune
How did the hopeless sinners all end up being leaders
How did our dreams and visions end up distant as the stars
Light a candle now, a hundred mercy ghosts to summon
“There is no hiding place,” I am singing to the moon
And if anything is growing under all this snow here
Spring will bring the answer and the sun be our reward
And if that train is coming, Curtis, let its whistle blow here
‘Cause I, for one, am ready now to get on board
The quieter the night outside, the louder grows your thinking
I’m coughing up convictions rendered after crooked trials
I’m ten thousand miles from the broken hearts of Haiti
Where souls have been forsaken, you can see it in their eyes
I pour another coffee, more for comfort than for drinking
“We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files”
Paul and Artie singing from that Dustin Hoffman movie
Anne Bancroft showing him the Promised Land of thighs
And if anything is growing under all this snow here
Spring will bring the answer and the sentence fit the crime
I say to hell with heaven, let goodness start to grow here
Rise up from its hiding place, we’re running out of time
The howling sky is frozen, the lonely moon is shaking
Not a soul out in the street, snow comes softly down
The radio at midnight, a song out of the Sixties
A cup of hot black coffee steaming in my hand
Here is to compassion, lead us to the road not taken
I’m ten thousand miles from that devastated town
Sing to bring the feeling, driven crazy by the pictures
“Go down, Miss Moses,” I am singing with The Band...
DL |
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San Diego
Swinger
508 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2010 : 17:42:38
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| Today we celebrated Ralph and Catherine's 5th anniversary. They're in their 80's now, and visiting from Apple Valley. Ralph is blind and uses his DayGlo-tipped cane like a royal scepter. Catherine wore her "First Christmas" shawl and made it down in record time in Ralph's Jeep Cherokee. "A real Jimmie Johnson!" he calls her. They like their food hot and spicy, "...serve with a fire extinguisher." We lit the lanterns and cranked up the patio heaters. Mirella's jalapeno-mango mystery sauce on everything that hit the grill. Butane torches for the caramel flan. They'll stay with their son in Escondido tonight, then off to meet some snow-bird friends on the desert. Safe trip, Happy Anniversary, and God bless Mr. & Mrs. Ralph Gardner. ...and to another couple celebrating their 5th later this month, Happy Anniversary to the great Northwest! |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2010 : 17:49:34
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| Many nights smoking Marlboros in the limo with the AD waiting for the wind to come up or calm down. The second-unit camera crew asleep in the van. The day's Changes across her chest in a belt bandolier-style, a long way from the cobbled coast of Durrow. It's slow-going on Laurel through the canyons, and no numbered address looking west to the house where he's waiting. Directions written on leaves. A script that's constantly changing. Turn here. Turn there. The switch-back trail. The freeze-frame profile in the doorway slowly fading. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 01/17/2010 : 07:57:42
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Scent of Emaraude mixing with the lilacs.
Beach on Martha's Vineyard at sunset,
surrounded by flat-headed Beetlebung and Menemsha trees.
Tanned skin making her white dress glow
as the tide comes in.
Last dance with Leah in the wet sand before
running away to California.
What's she doing now, forty years on?
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 01/26/2010 : 21:24:26
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| The mute fortune teller talks to the sailor in sign. The sun clouds over and the rain does rain. Timpani over the water. Lightning forking out of the serpents tongue. A color she remembers. "Dream!" he commands when tarnished skies come to Durrow. Common miracles. Calamitous love. His well-worn wings. His mouth near her ruby-stung ear, breathing. In the dream-makers tent the sun stalls in melancholy splendor. Tops of old clotheslines. White sheets. Blue sky. A hedge edged with Mardi Gras flowers. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 01/27/2010 : 17:27:23
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"A hedge edged with Mardi Gras flowers..."
All of it a treasure. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2010 : 20:47:55
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| He carried his hands away from his body like a man who knew how to use guns. His horse knew how to out-run a posse. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2010 : 19:21:55
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It comes to me that the people I know who most
restore my soul are mad, fierce, even frightening,
those spirits most likely to break out
in a keening-anchored laughter at any given moment,
their eyes pulled aside toward their ears,
foreheads glowing, death ever-present, underscoring
the life abundant in them, the life steaming
up from below, coloring them... |
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rodeo
Swinger
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 02/05/2010 : 15:32:38
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“Is a good man who does a terrible thing still good? You’re a preacher’s son, what ever happened to turn the other cheek?” she asked him.
“You’re not serious are you? Can you forget what he did to you...to the whole town?”
“If you kill him, won’t that make you just as bad as he is? You know I’m right don’t you?” she says.
“Are you really that naïve? If I don’t do it, who will?
Who else is fast enough to beat him in a fair fight?”
“Is killing a man fair? Do you think I could stay with you if you do this?”
“Do you think I could I could live with myself if I don’t?”
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 07:36:07
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Ah.
Yes |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 16:19:21
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for Rodeo~
Leading the horses to water
With their great anvil profiles
Nodding close to our faces
His unmistakable silhouette
Rises against the night
He is a man who can slip a cold knife
Between his white teeth in a hurry
He knows what is necessary
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2010 : 06:54:46
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There was never such a moment
Til you
There was never such a sunrise
Til you
There was never such a time
That it was so hard to say goodbye
And I never missed a touch so much
And the look in someone's eyes...
Til you
Not Til you...
I never knew I was handsome
Or funny, or smart
Never knew I wasn't alone
Or that I had a heart
Now that you're gone
There's so much I didn't say
So much to remember
So much I have to pay
You made me feel like a movie star
So clever was your way
You made me feel beautiful
And that I began your day
I never did get thru to you
Just what you meant to me
I never made it clear, like you
Just how you made me see
That
I never had a song to sing
Til you
I never had a girl to miss
Til you
There's been so many days
In my life and times
But in the days before and after you
It seems that nothing rhymes
There was never such a moment
Til you
There was never such a sunrise
Til you
There was never such a time
That it was so hard to say goodbye
And I never missed a touch so much
And the look in someone's eyes...
Til you
Not Til you...
Hank Beukema - revbuckman music 2004 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2010 : 17:30:46
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...not where she wanted to be. But there she was, hollow with longing. Trying to prepare for the next life. The one he believed in.
*
Antonio tended their garden. Alive where those around them were not. When lush velvet petals broke into bloom... When ferny, green vines curled around them. Antonio said it was a garden in the Spirit World. Antonio, too, though, is superstitious. |
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rodeo
Swinger
USA
733 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2010 : 06:56:05
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Aftermath
As time passed she longed to see him… as he did her. She stuck by her decision. He respected it. So there they were, mired in their isolation…mere miles from each other. He never went into town.She often regretted the pious choice she had made. She had gained an understanding of why he had to do what he had done. She never told him so.
So many lives were changed for the better. The town was a different place. Lives could be lived as they were meant to be lived.
Except for theirs.
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2010 : 13:09:45
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He knelt in the August road and
told his son he loved him
for the last time
then slithered into a green bottle to drown.
When it overflowed and he fell out
much too late in the dance,
he sometimes thought it snowed too much
and that baseball was coming soon
but he mostly couldn't remember
why he cared;
about much of anything.
But he knew he could,
he knew he did,
once and future.
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andrew p
Firefly
USA
3936 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2010 : 19:07:24
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bless you Hank...love ya man
andrew
"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet." ~Roger Miller~ |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1824 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2010 : 01:14:54
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There never was a place she could go to just sit and read and
relax, pictures forming in her brain from the words written
on two porches ..... the front and the back. Faces, images,
broken hearts, soul-searching, tributes to lost loved ones and
the ones just found, -- going through her mind at high speed at
times and slow at others. A gentle place to visit, with searchlights beckoning her to come
and to stay, in the blaring sunlight or in the purple haze that hangs so sweetly in the air
and makes it hard to leave when it's time to go. Like now.
BGee |
Edited by - BarbraG on 02/28/2010 01:19:34 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2010 : 20:55:21
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-from Red Pictures.
He came back. He looked the same on the outside. Handsome still. But every night he woke up screaming and he pinned her to their wet bed. No 911 number then. He told her how he set the Huey down. How they came in a wave running at him. 19 years old in Charlie country. His 3am sweat tasted like vinegar. In the morning what he wanted was two over-easy and toast. "Burn it!" he insisted. The plush cushion behind his wired spine. She brushed her long mahogany-colored hair. Permanent bruises on her delicate wrists. Blue shadows. He said he was getting comfortable with Death in the room while they tried to keep their lives from unraveling beside Interstate 5.
"...and in that time
when men decide to feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes you left behind."
Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
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Edited by - Ailinn on 05/16/2020 18:28:12 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2174 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2010 : 21:59:39
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| "...but!... Isn't the paisley sky beautiful!" she says. A spiral of honey hits his toast. Life before the Revolution. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2010 : 18:09:35
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The first time I left Martina,
she screamed, she wailed,
she threw things at me from the door,
she threw gravel at the car.
Years later when she left me
for the last time,
I did the same things,
Towards the sky.
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The Nightly Vigil