At the Counter: Tom Waits' 9th and Hennepin

Well it's Ninth and Hennepin
All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill
Like the whole goddamn town's ready to blow...
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs
And the horses are coming down Violin Road
And Dutch is dead on his feet
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat...
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
One for every year he's away, she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
til you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen...
And I've seen it all, I've seen it all
Through the yellow windows of the evening train...

Overread at Table 1: This Land is Your Land

Woody Guthrie "This Land is Your Land"

This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

---

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed), 1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Overread at the Counter: Walking my Dogs the Morning After Halloween

306.

from 366

Walking my Dogs the Morning After Hallowe'en


Walking my dogs the morning after Hallowe'en
and there are no more voices now, no
tips and tats of laughter from little
ghoulies and zombies and bumblebees and
soccer players, but merely the shades
of their laughter, left here in the morning mist

as my dogs sniff through the grass for traces
of their passed comrades, and the occasional
Kit-Kat wrapper, and the

pumpkin door decor are now
slightly askew, as though already tired of
the end of year holiday trinity, I wonder
how they'll manage Thanksgiving, Christmas, will

there be any laughter left at New Years?

The streetlamps backlight the black leaved trees,
stretching their beams through the mist
as though thick fingers of hazed light are grabbing
at the branches

peeling them back

to reveal all that is obscured.

Overheard at Table 2: Employee Internet Access

Why should I let my employees have internet access?  That’s what they’ve got their smartphones for – they can hide them under their desks while they pretend that they’re working.  A least it shows one last vestige of shame while they steal company time!

Overread at Table 5: Sonnetesque by Lynn Emmanuel

Sonnetesque by Lynn Emanuel   I love its smallness: as though our whole town were a picture postcard and our feelings were on vacation: ourselves in mini- ature, shopping at tiny sales, buying the newspapers--small and pale and square as sugar cubes--at the fragile, little curb. The way the streetlight is really a table lamp where now we sit and where real night, (which is very tall and black and at our backs), where for a moment the night is forced to bend down and look through these tiny windows, forced to come closer and put its hand on our shoulder and stoop over the book to read the fine print.

Credits:
-poem presented to Z&T Acoustic Café by Poem-A-Day, a service of Poets.org
-photo is called "Summer Memories" but Verble doesn't remember if that was the title or just what he named it.  Needless to say he doesn't remember where he found it, but wants to give credit to the fine photographer who took it - so if this is yours, please let the Z&T know.

Overheard in Booth 3: Church and Gaming

Man, I heard that Billy Graham came out and said that Mormonism is no longer a cult and all the Christians are just picking their frisky whiskers in a twist just trying to figure out what the hell they're gonna do now with this bombshell.  I mean, they're all thinking 'great, you've been teaching that Mormonism is a cult since the day Joseph Smith married his second wife and now you're telling me that suddenly it's all good, now that a Mormon's about to clinch the gold ring'?"

But I was thinking that these Christians gotta chill, just chill, because they seem to have forgotten that Christ and the Church is a lot like gaming and game conventions.   See, Church is like a gaming convention - you go there to talk with other people who really LOVE gaming, you commune, you break bread, you learn a few cheats, you meet new people, you reconnect with old people, you learn a little bit more about the history of gaming, where gaming's headed.

But any gamer knows that the real love of life, where it all is, what is more important than anything else, is just playing the game.  Interacting with gaming.   GAMING is CHRIST, man, and CHURCH, well, that's just a convention you go to, every Sunday for some people.

At least, that's just my take on it.

Overheard at the Counter: T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

OK, here's your poem of the day.  ... and as you well know, when we start off a week with T.S. Eliot, well, that's not a good sign.   But here it is, for what it's worth  . . .

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

Online text © 1998-2012 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Hollow Men | 1925

 

(from www.poetryx.com)