Lyrics in Progress, My American Album

Lyrics in Progress, My American Album

L. Edgar Otto   August 26, 2013....

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Submitted for Open Link Monday  song writers use many methods from vague associations of sounds and words to fourmulas... which comes first the words or the music? How can some of the best poetry in our day be found in our shared songs and music?  I tried all such forms, well, not setting out to try them... but there is a transition to what can work in the simplification of a long poem turning into what is required for a song... these are such a transitional set to which as pre-lyrical I keep for the ideas and poetry's sake.

Lyrae

L. Edgar Otto   06 September, 2013 composed, Posting September 09, 2013

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Easy Bake Oven

Come Christmas morning, at our last supper
without a warning the second coming
computers crashing, new millennium
moment to capture before your rapture

The plots so woven, your witches coven
pepper spay and whistles without warning
set fires and sirens, surprise as burning
love left your easy bake oven

My doppelganger so filled with anger
became so silent, rehearsed the violence
listening to those losers tramping violets
the old coat hanger, their cause gang banger

Maybe if I stopped or let you drink
you would have stayed around or if
I slapped you silly like lovers past you found
who didn't call you stupid but didn't let you think

You picked the pockets of the Christians then
shared their gifts of grace, turned up their tables
at the fair, now say I rejected faith as fables
you searching God-filled singles in chat rooms without sin

Like Daddy's pockets for change and cigarettes
you said control leaving my forty years a wilderness
my brain did not wish on you chains to leave us all a mess
his punch bag rag doll. he too rests in free fall from regrets

The old coat hanger, the kids don't believe it
seek their own manger not what we've woven
this time to try again lightly light their easy bake oven
that their children's world is real, we once conceived it

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Crystal Tokyo

Fishes all aglow the ice wall melts
mantles fall waves break over sea walls
Damn, hell, Godzilla strewn on all I am
world shrugs, another childhood bones strontium

Oh the top hats tell us stories not as bad
the dark rain's eerie glory not seen sad
Glass bobbins break off the fishing nets
to ride the streams another millennium

The waning moon dream of Crystal Tokyo
still out of sight of school girls magic turns them
Into planet big eyed long legged goddesses
the rise and fall of empires made of meatballs

Koi fish live long while its rising sun, death white
red spot on its middle eye, chrysanthemum round
Short lived the hope of youth, Western ruby lips
sold to tourists as in dreams one falls in love

Don't we all long to go to Crystal Tokyo
climb the staircase of the planets safe to home?
Love's watched waters do not boil nor
up from the core and perfect cones, lava larval flow

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Neal, a Note

And for all the poets who lost their pets after a long time... old Neal really did drink beer (we kids stole from our parents when they had company) and loved to eat pancakes, so big a dog we rode him... he was a protector and childhood companion who went with us exploring the mudflats of Tidewater Va...  nothing more can be said, comments save.... I understand having been there.  Such things make most of the magic of  earlier and gentle, simpler times... of the poetic sort that does not fade.

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*Digital clip art from Jennifer White in the Oklahoma heartland, Victorian Boy, Girl, and Dog... she asked to let here know how we used it...