Woke right up in love with you
Baby don’t it feel fine
Woke right up in love with you
You really blew my mind
Well I love you, Baby
It’s understood
Don’t know what ya do
But you sure do it good
Woke right up in love with you
Baby don’t it feel fine
One beautiful summer evening as I was driving home from work, the inside of my vehicle became the meat in a twisted three car sandwich. The resulting brain damage left me often unable to understand simple language or know the names of my children.
A few months later, a tumor in my neck needed to be removed. The surgeon spent four hours to complete an estimated ninety minute surgical prodecure removing a fibrous growth wrapped around my vocal chords. I was told that the only side affect I might suffer as a result would be the inability to sing.
Fearful that I might never sing again, I bought an accompaniment tape of a medley including this song. I was drawn to the beautiful instrumental arrangement. Daily I would sing with this tape; soon for hours. I had to read the words… I was unable to understand or memorize them. The neurologist could not reassure me that I would ever recover.
Now, years later, I can truly say that everything I am and can do is a result of my precious Lord’s tenderness and mercy. He healed me and gave me back my life and my voice.
He also gave me this song so that I would always remember.
Just as I am without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee
O Lamb of God, I come
I come
A double acrostic I wrote last year:
Tuesday this year brings your birthday. Each
hand claps another for the king. Adieu,
aerialist. Once the wire held your feet down;
now snapped ends lie touching air. We, awestruck,
karaoke your memory appassionato.
Your rhinestones at the last were off,
obbligato forgotten, your gyrations occluded by flab;
ubiquity buried you.
Vagabondage maybe was your curse. Your
entropic rushes between snapshots ran…
ran down. Your trips to the stage became ennui
yawning, a hunk of hunk of burnin’
mediocrity. This year your deathday will fall
unnoticed on a Saturday. Your outgo
crammed into “this day in 1977…” TV,
having electric memory, might run a tape.
Into the still air it curls
Nervous tendrils of chaos
Clasping itself like a snake
Entwining cursive logos
Now she knows the shape of death
She tastes sweet smoke with each breath
Entering the temple gates
Madrigal ecstasy
Under the stars
Somnolent symphony
Intro: four bars
Candle inside of me –
Our story begins here. Note the ghost to the left of the door
The house I lived in when I was very young was 3468 Wyman Street, Oakland California. One of the things I remember about it was that it was a house of circles. Inside the house you could run from the living room, past the fireplace into the dining room; take a hard left through the door into the kitchen and barrel straight ahead into the hall; then another hard left to take you back into the entryway and the living room. On rainy days, this well-worn track was our own personal Indy 500 of endless childhood energy.
Oh Patty. Red
hair and freckles, and that secret
smile. I remember, under the table
on the covered patio, stacks of old
linoleum turned it into a private cave.
Would a kiss be cool, like
an ice cube on the tongue? Your lips
were warm and yielding. I was falling
into butter and cream.
I thought we were forever, but
by the fifth grade we were done.
Do you remember?
You may have noticed The The Pontificators’ main page and search results page have ad banners along the right hand side now. W00t! We have sold out! At least we would, if anyone was buying. The chain of reasoning behind the ads goes something like this:
In other words:
Phase 1: Start thepontificators.com
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!!!
So I hooked up with Google’s Adsense program, along with Powell’s Books and Emusic.com. Go over there right now and click all those ads, willya? Thanks.
Adsense is kinda cool, because Google somehow monitors page content and serves ads related to what is on the same page. And (full disclosure) every time someone clicks on one of those ads The Pontificators get a little love, anywhere from 10 or 20 cents to over a buck. Heck, if you sign up for an Emusic.com free trial, we get *SIX* bucks. So do that now too please. Operators are standing by.
So the first day or so that the Google ads were up, there was an ad for MyJewishLearning.com. Sign up for free Jewish recipes in your email. So I clicked on it. I figured, hey, win-win-win. I like any kind of food; I like Jewish food, what I know of it; and I’m interested in all things Jewish from a cultural and historical perspective. PLUS I get some $love$ for my click.
Here is my report: MyJewishLearning.com is pretty cool. I get a couple emails a week; they’re not spam-bombing me. I have clicked through to the main site and it’s nicely put together. Of the skillion pages on the intarweb, I’m glad I learned about this one. They even have an all-things-Jewish-for-Dummies series of flash videos called Tod and God. In Episode 3, God, a redheaded female genie DJ, tells Tod how and why to hang a mezuzah. What could be more awesome?
In other news, I didn’t get my nickel. I don’t know why. Maybe Google somehow knew I was the owner of the page, and won’t pay me for my own clicks, the nefarious bastards.
You might have noticed that I have mentioned MyJewishLearning.com a half dozen times, but haven’t linked it. That’s because I’m hoping all these mentions of the site and other Jewish things will make the link come up OVER THERE >>>>> (pointing to Google AdSense).
Because if you click it there, we get some love. And everybody needs love, baby.
I came, a random derivative.
One sperm
threw an elbow and so, I am
my father’s son.
His hackneyed jabs
at the edges of things
always bounced awry, and so
do I.
Always with the half-formed plans
of drunken imagination, he loved
procrastination until he died.
The barman cried.
I trace his steps in cool
darkness. I stand thirsty,
my father’s son. His blood
is the sound of whiskey on ice.
There is a photograph. Two boys stand
in straw hats, their arms draped
over each other’s shoulders, freckled
faces grinning into the camera. Behind them,
I remember, is a leaning barn, and an ancient orchard
scattered through pines. I can still feel
the summer heat blowing across the creek,
picking up the fragrance of tadpoles and rattlesnakes.
The older boy is ten, and is me.
My brother John is eight. He has already lived
more years than he has left. Read the rest of this entry »
