Poetry Friday: Justin Townes Earle's Harlem River Blues (plus a cry from Kabir)

Was there ever a more infectious song about drowning? (Ya-huh, that's an original song, even though you'd swear it's a classic as old as a muddy river.)

I'm puzzled over why a call to suicide is cheering me up today. Justin Townes Earle seems to be saying, "Go out on top. Don't wait for life to screw you over, or for you to screw up in life. Drown while you're in a state of grace."

As one who deeply loves quite a few people who are bursting with grace, or who are just figuring out how filled with grace they are, or who are reaching for grace at a moment much later than they planned, or who are simply tired and yearning for grace after being beat, time and time again, I don't want ANY of them to be covered up "without a sound."

If Earle meant that, then why is the music---the emotional current of the song as opposed to the intellectual argument of the lyrics----so joyous?  Because walking that walk---"up the FDR" (a NYC parkway that runs along the Harlem River)---"a-clapping and a-singing"---is exactly how to survive. I can't imagine the FDR is attractive. I can't imagine it's easy to walk. And I can't imagine the river at your side ever gives up and goes away instead of lapping "dirty water" against your ears. So what to do, then, but set its siren call to a transparent and luminous counter-rhythm? Brilliant, Mr. JTE.

In other words,


Do you have a body? Don't sit on the porch!
Go out and walk in the rain!
If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?
Wake up, wake up!
You have slept millions and millions of years
Why not wake up this morning?

----poem by Indian poet Kabir, as translated by Robert Bly, found in the pages of Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World

More about Justin Townes Earl's album, Harlem River Blues

Poetry Friday is hosted today by poet Laura Purdie Salas.

Poetry Friday: Song

I envision heaven in a selfish manner. I don't care which cloud you stick me on as long as I'm in possession of an honest-to-God, otherworldly singing voice. I've always felt broken because I can't keep a tune. What's in my head and my heart never matches up (not even a little) with what croaks out of my mouth. So being able to hang in there with the archangels is this tone-deaf girl's idea of being healed and whole.

In this season of using light to defend against darkness, music is one of our strongest weapons. I give you two examples: this poem, Song, which illuminates a lone singer, and the following video, which captures a flash mob of singers in a food court as they help the weary world rejoice.


Song
by Eamon Grennan

At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us--

her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,

the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and

read the rest here

Poetry Friday is hosted today at The Poem Farm.

Poetry Friday: Hyper

I don't know how much time you have today. Enough for both a math doodle video and an exquisite poem about ADHD?

The video captures the quicksilver leaps of the human mind when it's chased by boredom into a world of knots and snakes and other satisfyingly twisty and mysterious doodle patterns. The poem, in a similar vein, ponders stillness and speed and perception. Each asks us: what's the rush? And I don't mean that in the standard "stop and smell the roses" way. I mean it as: what's the joy? What's the reason? Why do we bother to look?


Doodling in Math Class: Snakes and Graphs (with thanks to James Gurney, for posting this.) A commenter on his site says "The creator of this amazing clip is Vi Hart. Her website has many more such treats. She is the daughter of a creative math teacher and sculptor, George Hart, who also has good things to see at his website."

an excerpt from the middle of

Hyper-
by David Baker

[...]
Let me put it another way. After
twenty-four math problems, the twenty-fifth
still baffles her, pencil gnawed, eraser-
scuff-shadows like black veins on her homework.

It's not just the theory of division
she no longer gets, it's her hot clothes, her
itchy ear, the ruby-throated hummingbird's
picture on the fridge, what's in the fridge, whose

socks these are, why, until I'm exhausted
and yell again. Until she's gone away
to her room, lights off, to sulk, read, cry, draw.
No longer trusting to memory, she

writes everything in her journal now, then
ties it with a broken strand of necklace.
Of her friends: I am the funny one. Mom:
She has red hair and freckles to. Under Dad:

I have his bad temper. I know. I looked.

In one sketch she finished, just before we
learned what was wrong—I mean, before we knew
what to call what was wrong, how to treat it,

how to treat her—she captured her favorite
cat with a skill that skips across my chest.

read the entire poem here

Poetry Friday is hosted today by the fabulous Jama at alphabet soup.