Waterloo Sunset

After hearing this song for the first time in years, not sure quite where to locate it, I'm moved to add a special post.  I suspect the memory is buried somewhere in late childhood, wandering around car shows in West Michigan with the family when summers seemed to have no end.  

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling, rolling into the night

People so busy, make me feel dizzy, taxi light shines so bright
But I don't, need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise
Every day I look at the world from my window
Chilly chilly is the evening time, Waterloo sunset's fine

Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station, every Friday night
But I am so lazy, don't want to wander, I stay at home at night
But I don't, feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise
Every day I look at the world from my window
Chilly chilly is the evening time, Waterloo sunset's fine.

Millions of people swarming like flies 'round Waterloo underground
Terry and Julie cross over the river where they feel safe and sound
And they don't, need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo Sunset, they are in paradise

Saturday Set

Blood and Rain - a fictional piece

The clouds opened up at the bullring
this afternoon in Madrid wind came too
blowing gusts like sheets across the streets and
sideways into the crowd.

If you think there is nothing like the smell
of late afternoon rain in the spring, like
lilacs mature in bloom
then there is just as equally
nothing like the smell
of fresh blood in wet sand.

      *            *            *            *            *

I’m Writing About You

We’ve shared a lot of sunsets
you and I, we’re contemporaries
in our time
this one no more special than the last
only documented and warmer
since I hold you closer.

We’re both happy the day is at its end -
people go home!
and you’re left glossed in a heavenly blue-gold
while I just kind of gasp at the mix
    ambient steel drum and sax
    a light foot tap with bells around your ankle
    lifting up to feathery clouds.

A stranger is curled up tight beside me
reading Ahora Yo
Now Me    some kind of self help
    she’s spanish and beautiful, and I think
    she’s been hurt before.
        I wish she’d smile.

She’s dark too.  I know those eyes
like black diamonds up close
but she maintains looking serious and sad
focused on Me
gets up and walks away.
        I just wish she’d smile.

We’re in our best hour
I, haggard and so under-slept I’m depressed
but you picking it up for both of us
with the warm hues and haze
        (paint sound like it’s light
        paint darkness like it’s cold)
my ear is exploding with the gush of a kiss
like all the beauty that is love
the rarest and most pristine thing in the world.
I imagine you all have a lot in common.

Summer Trip

Othello Dreaming Venice

Memory and Michigan

Memory and Michigan

Remembering where I’ve never been
the distance now makes memory so
dreaming like I dream these days
of that place in the summer
Empire, MI - our Empire
we built out of beach fires, friends, sand
empty beer cans
it’s all there etc, etc
clearer than our talks and laughs
all there in its best light.

Coming from the north
shooting across the night sky
whiter than the moon
hanging just above the dune
the night of the Solstice in June...
Remembering like this is blinding.
    songs by legendary fires,                  
    songs in the woods
    (you more whistling
    because you’re always bashful like that -
    even when it’s just me -
    and I howling to the sky
    up tree trunks to below the brush
    singing morels to me)
    “Like gold, fungi gold,”
    you glow
    “They taste as sweet as the forest!”
I can still see the look on your face
among the wreckage of memory
like trilliums scattered
fragments across a deep green forest floor
when was the last time
we built such an empire? you wonder.

The sound of sand blowing across sand
is the sound of nothing.
You know, the pictures are there:
digitized, hard-drived, memorized
burnt in like cigarette spots on the beach
at the end of the night.
We wrote this story before
although I can’t quite remember
how it goes.