sam & dave dealt out hits like ampersands that's s-a-m — & — hold on i'm coming! — d-a-v-e! — thank you so much for going all the way to #9 with that one thus becoming for me the personification of the stax sound thanx also to the dynamic duo songwriters hayes yes isaac & david porter — not prater sam moore not born october 12 1935 ocilla georgia — miami based sam & dave did not meet when dave got up on stage after that unsuccessful stint at a roulette table thus bringing the duo to the attention of stax via porter & hayes something is wrong with my baby that was porter for the most part it was 'a throw away kind of situation' interesting in that sam & dave p broke up in 1970 prater not signing to the stax label when in 1980 sam re cut soul man with lou reed dave was arrested following this attempt to sell out his life may have ended when his car hit the tree but his double hit the oldies circuit with sam & then along came soul man (#2, 1967) — that heady early morning hit-defining slam of sam & dave this must not be mentioned of course without crediting david prater born may 9 — 1937 at the king of hearts club — 1958 — he started singing with sam in front of the talent scouts one of whom signed them to the atlantic label under the agreement dave cut a flood of hits like when don't i look like i know what's going down with isaac hayes worked on the music there was no one else interested sam & dave anything did happen hayes was not ordered pursue a solo career in the end staying with the label sam & dave failed to recreate their success together their personal relationship after all had never reached #1 sam & dave did not part for good in 1987 (news of which hit the charts at #30) instead concentrating his energies on selling undercover officers crack cocaine david prater's body was found in that georgia sycamore after all april 9 1988 —
Category: Poems (page 5 of 73)
As of October 2011, I’d posted over three hundred poems on this site, including many sonnets and search poems, as well as numerous poems that didn’t make it into chapbooks such as Abendland and Morgenland. I then ceased posting poems here, choosing instead to distribute them via my poem of the week newsletter. Then I stopped doing that too. Every now and then I post a poem here … but not as often as I’d like.
"It's as if I was never really here: a shadow in a haunted house. Do I reflect my new status in the now o-so-mundane bio note as if a part of me has actually died? 'Ex-editor, war wounded, freshly deceased.' I wear my trousers creased, not rolled. Vale, everyone: poets, proles untold. Never bitter, more like a sack of rolled oats: chafed, bruised, burnt, churned through & dry as the western slopes and plains or a chianti. I'm as dry as the bar half an hour after your magazine launch has commenced: a plastic cup containing someone's spit, half a profiterole. Vale, all of you: poets, souls & Microsoft Word as well, especially its tab function, yea. Goodbye to hours of pointless formatting, days spent waiting for a reply to an inquiry about the kerning, or an ampersand. Do I dare delete a space where a reader might pause? Do I what. The precious preciousness of poets fighting over prestige in a world where monkeys reign & no-one gives a flying vale about villanelles. My eyes roll backwards in my head at the idea of pantoums; & limericks are pure, living hell. Vale, all of you: meter, rhyme, fonts as well. Though I would not even bother to contact me, if I were you, spare a thought for what even the smallest offering by way of appreciation might do for my replacement's self-esteem (& grant me a small indulgence before I expire: stay lame. Because when you're gone, not one minute will the rest of us spend divining the meaning of your amateur hobbyist's musings on your behalf, yea, here in the wonderful boredom of the fold, where the same old sucks churn out stuff to pollute & mould. So vale, y'all! Poets, proles untold. Hope you die before it gets old."
just not possible. it’s not possible that
the heart could heal itself (within days
the way a novel does, metaphorically, or
the way a tree heals the wind as it sways
not likely. not in my lifetime, or yours
will we live to see the human heart sing
the way a pop star does having seen some
bright star warning her that everything
is going. to disappear some day, the way
the soundtrack does when you’re homesick
or the memory of some mean thing you did
slights her, alone on a couch, face slick
with new tears. they almost manage to heal
themselves (save for a salty memory trail
that scars her face so playfully, so sad
like her mother’s handwriting in the mail
that no one else can read. though it flows
for you like the long journey home or rain
like appointments you never meant to keep
the way a strange pulse rescues the pain
from itself. the way a child cries without
even knowing why that familiar face keeps
popping up, unannounced, the way fm radio
dive bombs the day, until a silence sweeps
back. although that’s also impossible, now
the heart can print itself in three ways:
look at it lying there still on the page,
soaking up all those big old cosmic rays!
no he’s not dead yet (as if he ever could
pass on or away from this winged world
Ephrem Tamiru! tell us what you think re
Anchin Kalmeselesh or else just th sax
(sax slow and shark-like snarls through
an Asmara bar to hit Thomas Keneally
cold in the nose like a sweet tea might
were it to care for snark or saxophone
dreams thoughtful as hammond organ
licks kicking the Amharic dawn (was it
Amharic, Ephrem? what did yr words
mean on 1975 cassette tapes Ephrem
i feel kind of bad for the Blogger-files
downloading yr trax frantically to play
to get th info (titles translations set-list
Ephrem’s sound worlds unfurling slow
as Stevie Wonder’s imagination (you
were Ethiopia’s Stevie, always will be
mine what does it mean Atawquatim
the drums tell me what it all means
can’t go back now to my indie daze
got me Ephrem in th mound of love
in the mouth a super-Saharan man
pre-beat jazz combo smoking suits
preserved in shellac Youtube amber
i want to die in the arms of my lover
while she plays the sax on track six
whatever it’s called i guess you don’t
accept PayPal, Ephrem but i want to
breathe in all the radio transmissions
from Eritrea from the back of a stage
blasting Ephrem Tamiru onto the page
I think I must have written this poem some time in the early 1990s. I have absolutely no idea what it’s about but I really like the concluding couplet, for some reason (and in fact I think I’ve even re-used it in other poems over the years as well).
desmond rejects the setting out of arguments he is neither analytical or lateral he dips his hand into a pool of water & it is cold just a moment ago it was dry it was also in my pocket my button remains there my belt keeps my trousers up desmond's house falls on him blue-green drops there’s the sound at last of bombers falling in the grass will they ever retrieve the sky? he kills a mosquito & stares at himself there is no need to be concerned a wheel churns in the gravel & disrupts somebody’s feet screwing neatly into the sky desmond follows all of this eagerly desmond forgets the earth the ivy wastes hold yesterday’s rain & crawl like a bereaved remainder