‘The Road’, music by John Mitchell, lyrics by Jim Feeney.
From the album, ‘Crossing Lines’ by The Mitchell Feeney Project.
Available on iTunes (search for ‘The Mitchell Feeney Project’) or at
https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/themitchellfeeneyproject
Kissinger had Nixon
Cheney had Bush
Jim Henson had Kermit
Steve Bannon has Trump.
we can not
decide if
we are blessed
or damaged.
The night howls, fog curls
a thin cloud bisects the moon
at the graveyards’ edge
an abandoned well
from the bottom of that well
Thom Yorke cries for help.
The dead wake slowly
grey fists punch through mounds of earth
Thom Yorke cries for help.
Not the export it used to be,
nothing like the glory days
Hiroshima, Vietnam, Cambodia;
still popular at home tho’
nearly twelve thousand gun deaths a year
the gun barrel points both ways.
This is not much of a poem, is it?
That last metaphor was a bit clumsy
and there’s no music in statistics
but there is a rhyme in that last line
and there’s assonance in ‘American Carnage’
and there is an ass in the White House
but enough about that
stay away from the low hanging fruit
we need a rhyme
carnage, baggage, garbage, image
imagine all the people
that’s what this situation needs
a protest singer, a protest song
three chords and a chorus
that we can sway and link arms to
Where are you
Josh (Ritter)
Michael (Stipe)
Bruce ?
I have 4 poems up at Anti-Heroin Chic, an online literary journal. Check it out here:
http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/four-poems-by-jim-feeney.
Be sure to have a look at the rest of the journal too, some interesting art work, poems, etc.
it
does
not
augur
well.
Photos: Orange is the New Bleak 1 &2
The Art of the Deal
The Art of the Grope
The Art of Chaos
The Art of False Hope.
you call your
self a tree
my bank has
more branches.
For John D.
fecund, moribund, quincunx
fecund moribundity
moribund fecundity
rhizome, rissole, piss-hole in the snow
phenom, pheromone, genome
lissom, blossom, possum.
This poem is all about sound, association and perhaps, memory. The first three lines are an homage to the sound of ‘un’. The phrase -“fecund moribundity, moribund fecundity” – was uttered by my friend, John Damery (John D.) during a discussion about the music of Neil Diamond – his oeuvre, his place in the pantheon. This was some time ago but it has always stuck in my head, it has a brevity and clarity that could only have been brought on by the consumption of 5 or 6 pints and the ingestion of greasy chicken. After a long legal battle (not really) he has recently granted me permission to use it in a poem.
The fourth line is the workhorse of the poem, the engine, the poem’s midfield general. It inverts the ‘mo’ from the first 3 lines to create the ‘om’ that dominates the last two lines. it also introduces ‘iss’ which makes an appearance in the last line. As for “piss-hole in the snow”, I defy anyone to find a finer example of bathos . The fifth line is all about ‘om” but note the clever inversion back to ‘mo’ in ‘pheromone’.
The sixth and last line has a slick softness to it like blancmange. As promised the ‘iss’ from ‘rissole’ and ‘piss-hole’ makes an appearance before morphing into ‘oss’ and in a final stroke of nothing that remotely approaches genius, the transformation of ‘om’ into ‘um’.
Notes:
quincunx (a word that flirts with obscenity):
an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its centre, used for the five on dice or playing cards, and in planting trees.
rhizome:
a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.
Both words were used in an article in the Irish Times on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, sent to me by John D; ‘Cartesian dualism’ and ‘Binarism’ were also mentioned (and Jesus wept).
rissole:
a compressed mixture of meat and spices, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
My mom used to make them, although I remember them as being more like a hamburger patty without the bun…thanks, mom!
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
When 2016 began, slimverse was an obscure 12 syllable (3-3-3-3) verse form, standing in the shadow of its older sibling, the seventeen syllable (5-7-5) haiku and now that 2016 is being carried, battered and bruised, out of the building, slimverse is an obscure 12 syllable (3-3-3-3) verse form, standing in the shadow of its older sibling, the seventeen syllable (5-7-5) haiku. This is a collection of the best of 2016, compiled by Slim and I in the early hours of the morning following “the Poet’s Circle” Christmas Party which was held at the Accomplished Poet’s house. It was a fun-filled night of poetic over-indulgence and excess. The Accomplished Poet read a poem about pruning as a metaphor for the editing process involved in writing a poem, it was tortuous but accomplished. The Upper Case Poet had a minor shoving match with our newest and youngest member, who edits an edgy E-zine called “Capslock Off” – no prizes for guessing what the argument was about. Slim hung around the buffet all night like a dog that had come across a bag of pork chops while walking in the woods, then later insisted that he had an invented a new word : “tumultaneous” – when tumultuous events occur simultaneously. He was met with benign indifference.
Here’s the List:
Like an old
Christian
Brother, an
unkempt monk.
***
Golf
the one sport
that demands
blandness from
its heroes.
***
The Stack (remix)
And what a
beautiful
plume we have
here, Nigel,
a plume with
time on its
hands, look at
it loping
across the
sky like a
giant Chinese
dragon, let’s
hail a cab
to find the
plume’s end, where
the last wisps
of vapor
drift upwards
and a blue
mist hangs, yes,
there it is
in the sky
to the west
stalking the
cars in the
parking lot
outside the
big box mall
while the sun
bawls and the
sky gets all
indignant.
***
Holy Scripture
when asked to
pick a font
he replied:
baptismal.
***
And No Tom
Danger Mouse
Modest Mouse
DeadMau5. It’s
all Jerry…….
***
Vancouver Jazz Festival (Re-Mix)
a humid
lion house
hogo hangs
on the air
dogs and trees
dogs and trees
free jazz, jazz
for free, the
bass player
leans like a
drunk around
a lamp post.
***
Names
those that can
stand alone
those that can’t
hyphenate.
***
Old Cowboy
bowed legs
straddling a
ghost horse, beef
jerky thin
Holiday
Inn, buffet
breakfast, far
from the range.
***
it’s all fun
and games ’til
the body
bags come home.
***
On Hearing that Justin Trudeau had approved the Kinder Morgan Pipeline
there are 3
certainties
death, taxes,
corrosion.
Photo: Cranberriment
Hard Brexit.
Soft Brexit.
Brexit over easy?
Not on the menu.
Melons
When asked if the melon is ripe
The girl behind the counter at the Chinese-Canadian Deli
Sniffs the pale green globe, shakes her head
And pointing to a small beige circle, says:
This is the melon’s bottom
The melon is ripe,
When the bottom smells sweet.
While outside,
The Christmas traffic
Stalls on Dunbar Street.
Photo: Sitting on the Fence (2)
Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.
Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.
it’s all fun
and games ’til
the body
bags come home.
Photo: “Sitting on the Fence (1)”
Autumn
I
a clear day in fall
a call from the governor
a pardon granted.
II
trees leaking colour
like a paint store catalogue
et tu, chlorophyll?
This poem has formed and re-formed since I started this blog, I think this is the last re-incarnation.
Photo: Chlorophyll molecule (Chlorophyll-a-3D-vdw, licensed under public domain)
there are 3
certainties
death, taxes
corrosion.
Poem 2 in the series “poems with titles longer than the poem itself”
****************************************************
While you’re here, check out “The Mitchell Feeney Project, country rock with an edge!
“The sun beats down like judgement
on the armour-plated road”
From “The Road” by The Mitchell Feeney Project. Click here to check out our album, also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”).
Despite what he says
not everybody knows,
not everybody knows
like Leonard knows.
Not everybody knows
that the best songs
are about loss,
endings,
so long,
ways to say goodbye
closing time,
and that age
can be laughed about
but not at,
if I had a hat
I would raise it to Mr.Cohen
perched up there alone
in his ancient tower.
I have posted this a few times before, but I think it’s worth one last reprise!
potus
poultice
poultry
poetry
podcast
pomegranate
pornography
porridge
pork
only
one
of
the
above
is
a
lethal
weapon
when
given
to
a
fool
Thought I’d reprise this one on this sad day.
A More Innocent Time…
It’s a Sunday afternoon in late August and I’m sitting outside The Post-Coital Beetle watching the traffic on Broadway. At the table next to me, four bearded guys wearing flat caps and plaid shirts, looking like the bastard sons of Mumford, are downing pints of over-hopped pale ale. At the traffic lights, an eighteen year old Asian kid checks his hair in the rear view mirror while his Lamborghini growls like a panther on a leash. And who is this slouching along Broadway his bald head shining in the sun? No, it is not an image out of Spiritus Mundi, it’s not one of the boys of summer, it’s Slim, a man with all the charm of a pit bull with distemper; his remaining hair is scrunched into an angry man-bun and he’s carrying a magazine which he slams down on the table in front of me and says:
“Look at this bullshit!”
For some reason, Slim is wearing a Bernie Saunders tee-shirt. The magazine is called “Windows 10 for Seniors”, inside a couple straight out of a Cialis ad, stare blissfully at a PC screen like they’ve never seen one before, which is a bit strange because they are well dressed and obviously middle class. So, it’s hard to believe that they have not encountered a PC sometime in the last 20 years. The magazine answers questions like ”what is the Internet?” I say to Slim:
“When are you going to admit you are not a medium?”
Slim’s gut pushes Bernie’s face forward. Bernie has that look of his that says “I need to fix the world, and I’m running out of time”.
Slim is silent, so I say:
“What’s your problem, you’re not a senior so why should it bother you that Microsoft assumes anyone over 60 is a complete idiot and where did you get the tee shirt?”
“Seattle, it was on sale and you’re missing the point. I wanted Windows 10 for Dummies and this is all they had, so the cashier assumed I was a senior, she called me ‘sir’!”
“You are wearing the face of a seventy four year old on your tee shirt, and you do not want to be associated with seniors, see this is the problem, people have recently acquired the ability to house two completely contradictory thoughts inside their heads. For example, Donald Trump doesn’t always mean what he says, Donald Trump tells it like it is”
Slim smiles smugly like a man who has just spotted the finishing line at the end of a long wank.
“Did you have to study to become an asshole or does it come naturally?”
“A bit of both, nachos?”
“Why not”
“Guacamole?’
“Knock yourself out”
And as the sun goes down over Point Grey and automatic timers turn the lights on in empty Styrofoam mansions, we settle in to a plate of nachos and one pitcher follows another until we find ourselves face to face trading lines like Lennon and McCartney (well, not quite) and two poems emerge which with election day approaching now seem like whistling past the graveyard and if that’s not a run on sentence I don’t know what is.
Here they are:
Ivanka (a slimverse)
Ivanka
you seem fine
but your dad’s
a wanka.
Melania
Melania
his megalomania
don’t let it stain ya
don’t let it restrain ya
and if he should fail ya
remember this:
you know the size
of his hands
and
his genitalia.
Boom! Everyone a winner! Not a dry seat in the house! Laugh? I nearly cried!
A few quotes from Neil:
“I tell you what….naw, I won’t tell you what”.
“Roger (Waters) is going to build a wall tomorrow night to make Mexico great again”.
Neil joined Paul McCartney on stage for “A Day in the Life”, “Give Peace a Chance” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road”. For me, this was the highlight of the weekend. McCartney has recorded with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Elvis Costello, Rihanna without ever getting close to the partnership he had with John Lennon and it occurred to me watching him with Neil Young that he was not only enjoying himself immensely but I got the sense that he was up there with someone who has a melodic and lyric talent in the same league as Lennon, but above all else, someone who has Lennon’s love of anarchy.
The Piano Men:
Another quote from Neil:
“We’ll play ‘Down by the River’ when we’re ready to play ‘Down by the River'”.
And he eventually did in a great set that included “Powderfinger”, “Out on the Weekend”, “Words”, “Human Highway” and of course “Rockin’ in the Free World”.
*************************************************
“And the desert is an absence
the road an endless trance”
From “The Road” by The Mitchell Feeney Project. Click here to check out our album, also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”).
I’m from New
Yawk, we were
raised to hate
Donald Trump.
My mother
used to say:
beware of
the man with
orange hair,
beware of
the man with
orange hair.
“The Sun is the same
in a relative way
but you’re older”
Maybe so, but Roger has lost none of his anger, he managed to have a go at Donald Trump and the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestine and entertain 75,000 people at the same time. Oh yes, and that pig in the title photo carried a none too subtle message.
This incensed the guy in front of us, who was obviously a Trump supporter, he started to swear at the pig, and give it the finger, but the pig sailed on full of truth and helium.
(All photos by Marie Feeney)
“He’s got a concealed weapon’s licence
a shot gun and a rack,
and he has no idea
how he’ll pay the hospital bill
he says guns never hurt nobody
only people kill”
from “Saturday Morning in Idabel” by The Mitchell Feeney Project. Click here to check out our album, also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”).
The Galway Review has been kind enough to publish 4 of my poems, check them out here at
Earl sailed up the Belize coast
In his brand new custom built boat
With the mother of all hangovers
No water and a note
And now he’s sitting drinking
In an ocean-side tourist bar
Trying to get a jump on happiness
In the hour before happy hour
I had just landed on Caye Caulker, which is little more than a sand spit off the coast of Belize, when it started to rain heavily. There was nothing else to do but go to an ocean-side bar, in the hour before happy hour. It was as crowded as a bar gets on Caye Caulker and there was this guy bragging in a loud voice about how he had just sailed up from Placencia in his new boat with “the mother of all hangovers” and no water on board. The guy was a bit of a jerk, so I decided to write him into a poem (which turned into this song lyric) and give him a hard time. By the way I tried working “Placencia” into the lyric but the word just hissed and flopped around like a drunk snake, so I gave up on it! Take a listen, and then John Mitchell will explain how he managed to sound like a rock band all by himself!
Here’s John:
I could hear “The Note” played by a real southern rock band. That’s the attitude I took to the musical arrangement. Earl had a bad case of the regrets mixed with a helping of anger, a bad hangover and topped with a soucent of despair, all in all a pretty heavy feeling, so it needed rough and heavy music. The opening distorted guitar lick is a nod to “Susie Q” by CCR played through an overdriven Fender Deluxe amp. I tried to make the track sound like a 5 or 6 piece band playing live in a smokey, roadside bar. I added the rock and roll piano on the choruses, as if Leon Russell was playing and the greasy Hammond organ as if Greg Allman was sitting in, especially the solo played through an overdriven Leslie speaker with a tear in the cone. I think Earl would appreciate how the band interpreted how he was feeling after getting “The Note”.
Click here to preview/ buy the whole album or individual tracks! Also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”, no hyphen)
There’s a dead armadillo
on the side of the road
empty beer can in his claws
that joke just never gets old.
There’s a dog on the shoulder
trying to bite his own tail
I’m in the motel parking lot
watching that dog fail.
This lyric started with a poem I had published in The Shop literary magazine (called Down and Out in Idabel), then took off in a different direction. When writing the lyric, I was thinking of the feel of Kris Kristofferson’s, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and the structure of songs like John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses” in which the verses are a series of snapshots that connect back to the chorus. Play it in your car and sing along with the chorus when no one is listening! That’s what I do!
Here’s John to tell his side!
When I saw that Idabel, Oklahoma was in this little bitty, piece of land between the states of Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma I jumped right off the front porch, because now I could REALLY do a country song. I’ve always loved the pedal steel guitar but you have to have it in the right song, and “Saturday Morning in Idabel” is just the song.
The chord progression is pretty much true country. I found a lovely little rhythm track with some nice tight fills, added the bass and then I used my Larrivee D-50 to lay down the acoustic track. I added some Fender strat. with heavy Duane Eddy tremolo for flavour. I called up John McArthur Ellis, a wonderful pedal steel player, and asked him to just play whatever he felt fit the song, and he was fantastic. Again the tracks were exchanged by e-mail. I think the best way to be a producer, is to let players play the way they feel, with only a soucent of direction. If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. After I did the lead vocal, I called on the John Mitchell choir to do a little back-up singing, and there ya go. A swell little country song thanks to the inspiration of Jim Feeney.
Click here to preview/ buy the whole album or individual tracks! Also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”, no hyphen)
Stopdraggingthepanda 