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
And Lordy, Oh how I (we) too often choose, in relationships (or songs), those who resemble the holes in our hearts from our growing years.
Random thought while listening to "Sombody". Well.........man you hit a feeling i cant identify- so something to work on. Thanks!