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[CLICK!]
Glory Days
I used to be able
To lean back
And just let it happen
Back in the day
When I was
A whiskey guzzling
Poetry machine
The words flowed
From my fingers
Like piss
Down the side
Of a dumpster
And the gloryholes
Would shudder
At the mere thought
Of my manhood
Oh well
Nothing lasts forever
David Burdett
4/20/2024
Keeping it Real
Seems that people will do just about anything to gain the spotlight these days, prying themselves into it; fake tits, ass and all.
Think about it. Who is it you are trying to impress, anyways?
Fame is a strange thing to seek, especially that kind. Is fickle too, fame is. Especially that kind. Hare today, goat tomorrow.
You want them to cheer when you walk into the room? You want to dazzle them?
Then seek your fame from the right people, and for the right reasons. Who stands taller, shines brighter, or is remembered longer than a dad walking in from work?
Be famous to the right people, and for the right reasons.
Don’t those people deserve a forever G.O.A.T.?
DSM-5
you ever open the DSM-5
and think,
I'm not the most interesting person
I thought myself to be?
I'm not someone who hears voices,
or is narcissistic,
or has an addiction to eating mattresses
or even likes to feel pain,
like some of these freaks*
seem to find appealing
but I do count to the same numbers
over and over
trying to find sanity
in where there is none to be found
in any capacity -
which is the definition,
even by these psychiatrists,
of insanity,
of someone
with issues and a diagnosis
a label, if you will,
to cure my malady
I am page number 43
or 52
or 89 -
the list goes on
I am somewhere sandwiched
between the many injustices
that were done to me
*of which I am wholly
willing to claim some responsibility
Postcard girl
Why be a poster girl when you can be a postcard girl,
A postage stamp— girl,
How small can you get before you’re nothing at all?
Don’t you want that?
Don’t you want to know what it feels like to be two-dimensional?
So why are you not shrinking.
God, girl, every wrinkle around your eyes has cradled an ocean of tears,
Deep in a world that demands that you are shallow.
You could write sonnets in the gap between your front teeth,
Loud in a world that begs you to be silent.
The folds of your stomach
Hold every battle cry and butterfly-
What’s it like, girl,
To take up
That
Much
Space?
Turn it Up
… turn it up!
Those quietly spoken words follow Ed King’s first, meticulous little guitar riff in the original recording of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I clearly remember riding with my father in his pickup truck back when I was in the fourth or fifth grade (which, by the way, was a long, long time ago). It was the first time I remember hearing the song. Ronnie Van Zant’s words, “turn it up,” rattled in to us from the WANV radio station where my mother worked through the truck’s static-y, AM speakers. I remember watching in awe as my father’s hand subconsciously reached for the volume button. The singer of the song had asked my dad to “turn it up,” and the old man was actually doing it? It was both a mystery, and a revelation at once. My father liked to make it known that he had no use for what he called “hippie music,” yet here he was, “turning it up“ on command. Furthermore, as he was “turning it up” with the one hand his other one was tapping out the beat atop the steering wheel. And even more uncharacteristically yet, Pop was singing along with the chorus!
”Sweet home Alabama
where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama,
Lord I’m coming’ home to you.”
My father wasn’t big on singing, though he liked music well enough, Hee-Haw mostly, yet he somehow recognized this song well enough that he could sing along in parts. I’d only ever heard my dad attempt to sing a few times, and then he was more likely to be singing along with The Statler Brothers, or maybe The Temptations, some of his favorites. What can I say? The old man was partial to harmonies. At least I come by that right.
Yea, Pop!… turn it up!
I would learn later in life that while recording the song, what Ronnie was actually doing was asking the song’s producer to give him more sound in his headset before he started singing. “I need more volume,” he was telling Al Kooper. Upon hearing the recorded playback Al wanted to edit the words out, but Ronnie stopped him. Ronnie knew he had a great song, and he knew that kids listening in their cars would do exactly what he’d just been telling Al Kooper to do, and conversely what my father had done. Those kids would “turn it up!” And, as usual, Ronnie Van Zant’s instincts were spot on.
Speaking of instincts, less than a week before that recording session Ronnie had called Al up in the middle of the night. “I need some studio time,” he’d told Al. “We’ve got this song, and it’s perfect right now. If we wait the song is gonna change. They always do. We need to record it right now.” So The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band took the long bus ride to Doraville, Georgia, where they laid out their soon-to-be rock and roll classic nearly a full year before the rest of the album was cut. Apparently it paid to follow along with Ronnie’s instincts.
… turn it up, Al!
The funny thing about the song though is what I learned from my dad that day in his pickup truck. Sweet Home Alabama appeals to nearly everyone. While the song is unmistakably rock-n-roll, it somehow manages to take a savvy listener on a four and a half minute southern musical odyssey. The airy, initial pluckings of Ed King’s guitar have a blue-grassy sound, being almost mandolin-ish, while Gary’s country, slide guitar accompanies it. The rhythm section which follows in behind those guitars only complements that bluegrass sound with a slow, very steady, stand-up bass feeling. When Ronnie’s voice joins in it is light and articulate, coming off as being almost untrue to his redneck persona. When the Honkettes (JoJo, Leslie and Cassie) join Ronnie in the chorus their harmonies bring in an almost hymnal quality, their “ooohs and aaah’s“ raining down from the holier, upper pews. The guitar solos are steeped heavily in the Memphis blues, and the sprinkling in of boogie-woogie piano finishes it all off. The music itself is very nearly the coming together of all the great, southern musical styles into one pop-rock perfection.
And then you have the lyrics. Home is what the song is about. It tells you right there in the title. The song is about home, about wanting to be home after a long stint on the road, and about loving one’s home, warts and all. Yes, the song was inspired by Neil Young’s song “Southern Man”, and yes Ronnie takes a pretty good dig at Neil Young in the second verse, but that is all in loving one’s home, and in refusing to see it disparaged by someone who isn’t even American, much less southern. “Fix your own house before you stick your nose into mine,” Ronnie fairly enough reminds Neil Young, “A southern man don’t need you around, anyhow!” It was the early 1970’s, a time when it was already rightfully difficult being southern, but no weed-smoking, sandal-wearing Canadian had any business piling on, did he? Young had tried it twice now, beating up on southerner’s, but not again he wouldn’t. And the funniest thing about it was, Ronnie wasn’t even from Alabama. But even though he never lived there Ronnie felt a kinship to her people, people who were sharing the same struggles that his folks over in north Florida were.
“Big wheels keep on turning.
Carry me home to see my kin.
Singing songs about the southland.
I miss Alabamy once again (and I think it’s a sin, yea).”
For fifty years now I’ve rocked out to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I’ve heard it hundreds of times, maybe thousands, and I still “turn it up” every time it comes on, my toes instinctively tapping along to the radio. I heard it at the end of Forrest Gump, when Jenny and Forrest had become “like peas and carrots once again.” Reese Witherspoon made a whole movie out of “Sweet Home Alabama.“ The song has been covered by just about everyone; to include Nirvana, Rihanna, Poison, and Justin Bieber. Kidd Rock wrote a tribute song about this song that was a response to another song. I’ve heard symphony's attempt it, and marching bands, and even a bagpipe ensemble. I live in Nashville, where you cannot to this day walk down Broad Street without hearing it blare from at least one live music bar, and more often then not from two or three at once.
Oh yea. I’ve heard Neil Young do the song he inspired too (and he did it with much respect, too. Thank you for that, Friend).
Hey Neil! ... turn it up!
After much careful consideration about this prompt I have decided that “Sweet Home Alabama” has what it takes to be the “Soundtrack of my life” (which is not a mantle easily bestowed). It is not my favorite song. It is not even my favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song, and may not even be my favorite song on its own album, Second Helping, which also boasts Curtis Loew and Swamp Music. But I am choosing it due to it’s popularity, and because the song is very nearly everything I believe I am while also managing to remain relevant for nearly as long as I have been around to hear it. The song is upbeat, straight shooting, contemplative, artistically diverse, it features a fantastic arrangement of driving guitar work, and it brings some attitude along to boot. Those are the very things I am about. That description happily meets me out there afloat somewhere on the big, slowly rolling river that is the Dixieland Twelve Bar Blues.
So take a tip from me, Ronnie, Al, Neil, and my old man. The next time you hear those light, plucky strings followed by Ronnie's suggestion that you, “turn it up,“ don’t just sit there...
Reach for the damned dial, already!
..…
Yet
I need you
like the world needs sunlight.
I need you to cover me
like a blanket in the cold, lonely night.
I need you to link minds,
connect with me,
recharge me and fill me
with passion and excitement
and energy and lust,
bring back meaning and purpose
to this broken eggshell life,
but I haven’t met you
yet.
I submit to you
all of my poems, songs, and stories,
my heartbreaks and victories,
loves and doubts,
verses like stars and rain,
infinite worlds of possibility,
times and places to fill stories,
poems and memoirs,
lyrics and music.
I need you to publish me and edit me,
give my stories out to the masses,
but I haven’t found you
yet.
I pray to you.
You are my god, my savior.
It is you who comes
when the weight is too much,
the chains are too many for me to break.
This world, this life has become gibberish
in the Tower of Babel,
but you can create a rock you are unable to lift
and then you can lift it.
You can make nonsense sensible
and make the sensible nonsense,
but you haven’t intervened
yet.
I wait for you,
any of you and all of you,
but the sands of this hourglass have fallen.
You might be my woman,
my once in a lifetime love,
my hero or my savior,
but you need to show up now
because I’m a skeleton,
bare bones shouldering the load alone,
hanging from the cliff side
by a pinkie,
but I haven’t fallen
yet.