“How to write a song: A poem”
A poem about how to write a song
Hello. You’ve reached Time & Temperature.
I wrote the first draft of this on an ancient typewriter in an office space I rented during the winter of 2020. The lockdown had driven me to a basement office in an abandoned dental building in the hope I could use the forced downtime to finally finish a piece of long form fiction (don’t say novel, don’t say novel), but I only finished a few songs and this poem. Hey, at least I didn’t go crazy.
Or did I?
This is slightly revised from that first draft, and I can only hope Maggie Smith or Maya Popa would approve of the changes I made. But it’s mine. It’s art. It’s life. As we say in my house, “it’s what it’s.”
How to write a song:
A poem
First
Tell yourself that it’s okay
That you’ll never know
Your dad
really know him
Not just that he was born in June
Maybe the 11th? 15th?
And played football in college
And talked in circles
And smoked cigars
and when looking at you
fixated forever
on a point just over your right shoulder
you’ll never know him as a man
Or a person
Then get drunk
so drunk
Then see what pops into your
foggy
Head and write it
down
Then
Change the pronouns and pretend
it’s about a lover who
Left you
Was always leaving you
whose birthday was in June
Maybe the 11th?
I hope you all have a glorious June. And that all the songs and poems you write are uncomplicated and lovely. Unless they aren’t, and that’s okay too.
yrs,
Rhett
"It isn't ME in this song", he says, but the way he sings it, it breaks your heart, and you think maybe it IS him, at least on some level, and you want to tell him you've felt that way, too, but the line is long, and he's probably tired, so you just say, "I love that song!" and hand him your vinyl to sign, and say, "Thanks so much; see you next time."
Tried putting that in a haiku, for brevity and elegance, but it wouldn't cooperate 🤪
forgiving our fathers
by dick lourie
maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free
or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken
maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all
for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them
for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent
in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left