Tag Archives: music

Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts at Deer Lake Park

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All along the Navajo Trail
burnouts stub their toes on garbage pails

Ambulance Blues

Frankly, I was wondering which Neil would turn up. Would it be grumpy Neil? Would he decide to sing the whole first side of one of his lesser-known albums? Would his voice be up to it? So, when he opened with Ambulance Blues, I was relieved, I immediately forget the hassle to find parking, the draconian security check (apparently my backpack was too big and not the right shape),and the maze -like journey to get a beer because: ………

Ambulance Blues, a relatively obscure track from the “On the Beach” album is one of my favourite Neil songs never mind that it is almost 10 verses long , doesn’t really have a chorus, just alternating verses with different chord structures and he then follows it with “Cow Girl in The Sand” and he continues that way all night the old and the new and the sometimes forgotten and when he hits the chorus of Harvest Moon the guy beside me who knows all the words to every song and also likes to play air guitar, he joins in and so does his partner/girl friend who sings harmony along with the rest of the crowd and just then a yellow moon rises above the trees, no big birds flying but still…. and I’m thinking Neil has super powers and later when he hits the opening riff of My, My, Hey, Hey, I’m transported back to Pine Knob Michigan 1978 and Star Wars has been released the year before so Neil’s roadies are dressed as Ewoks and there are two giant speakers on each side of the stage and when the roadies are finished and the stage is empty, there is silence, then we hear the opening chords of Sugar Mountain and Neil’s voice and we can’t tell where it is coming from until there is movement on top of one of the giant speakers and yes it’s Neil shaking off a blanket and how he got down from there I don’t know but here he is now many year’s later and he hasn’t lost the magic and I know that this is a run on sentence because Copilot keeps telling me but I’m thinking and I know it’s a tad puerile but I’m thinking “bugger off Copilot, stop bothering me, I can work it out myself and AI and all that other crap we don’t need will never write anything close to what Neil can write”

and he hasn’t burnt out,

he hasn’t faded away.

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse

(not sure if this qualifies as a poem, a haibun maybe?)

Neil Young and those “lorries rolling by”

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Old man lying by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load
And the buildings scrape the sky
Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies
Dead man lying by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes

When I first heard this song (“Don’t let it Bring you Down”), I thought : “What’s with the ‘lorries’ , Neil? I mean you’re a Canadian, living in California, should they not be ‘trucks’?”

A side note: The word ‘lorry’ is a word used in Britain and it comes from the verb “to lurry”, meaning “to pull or drag”.

On reflection:

Of course, if he used “trucks”, it wouldn’t scan, but he could have sang “big trucks rolling by”. However, as we all know, Neil is a poet and the answer lies in his ear, not for music but for the music in language.

Consider the letter ‘L’, it appears in every line of the verse: “old, lying/ lorries, rolling/blue, load/ buildings/ cold, alley/ flies/ lying/ daylight”.

Consider the letter ‘O’ as in assonance, look at its role in the first three lines: “old, road/ lorries, rolling/ moon, load”; its repetition in lines 5, 6, 7: “cold, down/ morning/road”.

Consider the inversion, how the “lor” in ” lorries” becomes the “rol” in “rolling”.

No, “trucks” would just not hack it.

Phew! Glad to get that out of my system, otherwise, after a few pints I might start regaling my wife and two daughters with these insights and have to watch them getting that “beam me up Scotty look in their eyes”.

Photo (by Marie Feeney): Neil and Paul McCartney at Desert Trip 2016.

Taking on Open Link over at dverse. (This is not a poem obviously, but it is about poetry so I hope it fits!)

Vapid Magazine : A Personal Note ( from current editor, Jonathan Shallowpond)

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A Personal Note:
Jonathan Shallowpond, editor of Vapid Magazine, here, I’ll get right to the point. My wife kicked me out. Said she was tired of supporting me. Told me to go get a job. I told her that I had a job, that I was editor of Vapid Magazine. She said ‘I mean one that pays f***ing money.”
So here I am living in my parents’ basement, sleeping on a camp bed. My dad’s okay with it but my mother keeps giving me that “you should have done medicine or law” look.
It’s not too bad except the basement doubles as a rehearsal space for my dad’s band which consists of my dad, Johnny Shallowpond Senior on guitar and vocals, his friend Slim on bass and his friend Jake on drums. They rehearse twice a week in the afternoon which means I have to put my headphones on while I’m writing but they play so loud that it’s impossible to concentrate.
I’m not sure what they are rehearsing for because they don’t do gigs, I guess they are just jammin’. Their name changes every couple of months. They started off as The Liver Spots , then it was The Good, the Bad and the Varicose. Currently it’s Johnny Statin and The Beta Blockers and they keep playing the same song which they wrote to the tune of the Doors’ song, ‘Riders on the Storm’. It’s called “Geezer in the Pool”. It goes like this (my dad shouts out chord changes between the lines):

Geezer in the pool
EM! A!
Geezer in the pool
EM! A!
He’s got his swim trunks on
C! D!
He’s got his swim trunks on
EM! A!
Like a flag without a pole
A fish without a shoal
Geezer in the pool.
EM! A!

That’s it, that’s all they’ve got. They just keep repeating the same verse and then occasionally my dad tries a guitar solo and they all break down in hysterics. .
But, you know, we share a few beers after and have a chat so it can be a nice break from my work bringing vapidity to the world.

There’s one thing that puzzles me a bit though. Every now and then, my dad sits me down and says:
“You know, son, your mother and I are not getting any younger”
I mean. What’s with that?

at night
basement drafts
drumkit cymbals tinkle

Keeping it Vapid!
Jonathan Shallowpond

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.

Sunshine on Goodge Street (Donovan mash up edit)

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Sunshine On Goodge Street (Donovan mash-up)

in the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty
a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine

sunshine came softly through my window,
thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I opened my eyes to take a peek.

Yes, I could have tripped out easy
forever to fly, wind velocity nil

but I decided to stay.

(Donovan Phillips Leitch
Superman and Green Lantern
ain’t got nothing on you)

This is a found poem using lines from 5 Donovan songs: Catch the Wind, Sunny Goodge Street, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Mellow Yellow. I’m sure you can figure out which line came from where, but just a note on the second line:

“a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine”.

This line is from Sunny Goodge Street and is my favorite Donovan line because of its inherent music –violent, smoker, shook, chocolate, all those o’s, that recurring ‘k’ and the internal rhyme between hash and mash. Say it out loud a couple of times and it will stick in your head!

Sunny Goodge Street appears on Donovan’s second album “Fairytale” and , according to Wikipedia, it “foreshadows the jazzy feel and descriptions of life in urban London that Donovan would continue to explore over the next two years”. There are a few covers out there (Judy Collins and Tom Northcroft), but they are little too earnest and none match the sludgy stoned feel of the original. The recording of the song is almost perfect, except for Harold McNair’s flute solo in the middle which nearly derails the whole thing. Take a listen:

Tales from the Gym (I love the smell of nostalgia in the morning)

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And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan

Know your gym……Slim Volume

Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now

two geezers
pink and steaming
towelling down
after a shower
discussing gravity
how it is not fixed
how it decreases
with distance from the earth’s core
how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest,
since weight is the product of mass and gravity
one would weigh less at the top of Everest
and Slim’s thinking
this is one fucking erudite conversation
and he wants a piece of it
so he points out that
one would regain that weight
on returning to sea level
and one of the geezers replies
yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories
climbing up and down the fucking mountain
and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric
says shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine
and Slim fires back wryly
keep telling yourself that
and the locker room erupts in laughter
and in that moment
basking in the unbearable lightness of banter
Slim defies gravity and levitates
above the bacterial swamp
that is the locker room floor.

“A man who is tired of the gym, is a man who has been to the gym”. Slim Volume

Two Bros

Two bros on a mat
one on his back
hands clasped behind his head
legs bicycling like a capsized fly;
the other,
the one with the green hair
and the tattoos of a religious nature
is grunting weights .
Fly bro, it appears,
is having girlfriend problems
and is experiencing
some kind of vague existential crisis,
green hair bro listens carefully to his tale of woe
and after some reflection says:
It’s life, man,
stop trying to understand it,
no one can
and then, as if startled by his own profundity,
he repeats: no one can.
Out of the mouths of bros….

in the background a bearded jock
in a tight black T shirt
his muscles packed with powdered whey
his eyes a steroid yellow
is down on his hunkers
knees akimbo
moving sideways
across the  floor
like a slow motion crab
across packed sand at evening.

I have always thought that the California coast is the acoustic version of the New Jersey coast

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In his dream,
the ocean is always on the right
which means he’s heading south to San Francisco
or Santa Barbara or Los Angeles
or San Diego,
saints and angels;
and his hair is blond even though it isn’t
and his companion’s hair is blond
and his friends in the back seat
their hair is blond too
and all that blond hair is blowing in the breeze
and there are surfers bobbing on the ocean
waiting for a wave
and a group is singing three-part harmony
on the radio, it could be the Mamas and the Papas
it could be Crosby Stills and Nash
it could be The Eagles
it could be The Beach Boys
and the band members
in the bands he’s dreaming of
have names like Dewey, Don, Randy, Jackson
names that arrived by railroad, by wagon train
and there is the feeling in his head
of youth and endless possibilities
something waiting down the road
and in the dream
he knows that he won’t arrive
he will always be on the way
and not arriving is the trick
and not arriving is the best part
the best part by far.

This is in part inspired by a prompt over on dverse;

“Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. Rooted in the Greek word krisis, meaning a pivotal decision point, we seek poems that explore moments of transformation, choice, and change.​

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.

The Road is an Endless Trance

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Sometimes a song lyric doesn’t look good on paper, so I’ll start with the song.

Here’s a sample of the lyric

The sun beats down like judgement
on the armour-plated road
I just called out God and the Devil
and neither of them showed,
and there’s a sour smell of whiskey sweat
on the air-conditioned air
sometimes I think I care too much
and sometimes I just don’t care……

and it’s not where you’re going
it’s what you left behind
there aint’ a colour out there
that could describe my state of mind

That’s John Mitchell on vocals, guitar and that’s his daughter Nikki on drums and background vocals. It’s part of a CD we made together, a little while back , (Crossing Lines , The Mitchell Feeney Project). I wrote the lyrics and John did everything else! It’s a dark lyric, I guess. Around the time I wrote it, a close friend of mine had recently died and also I was listening to a lot of Tom Waits and The Eagles. So it kind of morphed into a lyric, then with John’s input and some revisions it became ” The Road”!

Here’s a live version with John and Nikki.

Taking part in OpenLink over at dverse.

What I’m Listening to ( Lucinda Williams Sing the Beatles)

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I’m a big fan of Lucinda Williams but I have to admit when I saw the title of this album and read the song list, I had doubts. How would Lucinda’s world weary Louisiana drawl work on Beatles’ songs like “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “Let It Be”?

Well, the answer is that it mostly works well, particularly on the John Lennon tracks like “Don’t Let Me Down”, “Rain”, “Yer Blues” and “I’m So Tired”. The latter is, for me, the standout track. If you want “angst”, if you want “world weary’, look no further! I can still remember as a teenager, hearing the following quatrain for the first time and laughing out loud.

I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset

Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette

And curse Sir Walter Raleigh

He was such a stupid get!

Note Lucinda’s drawl coming through on “Rawleigh”

For a somewhat pedantic discussion about the word “get”, see below.

A few words about the band, because Lucinda Williams always hires a good band. She’s got Doug Pettibone and Marc Ford on guitars, David Sutton on bass, Butch Norton on drums, Richard Causon on Hammond B3 organ and Siobhan Kennedy on backing vocals and they have studied the originals in detail. Check out Pettibone’s solo on “Something”, which is an almost note for note copy of the original and why change genius! And Butch Norton channels Ringo…serve the song, serve the song!

I can’t get enough of this album!

A Somewhat Pedantic Note On The word “get”

Some websites write it as “stupid git”, but the album liner notes show it as “stupid get” which obviously rhymes better but also it would be more likely that Lennon being from Liverpool would use the Irish (and also Scottish) pronunciation ‘get’ rather than ‘git’ which is more common in the south of England. By the way, Wiktionary suggests that ‘get’ is related to the word ‘beget’, whereas I think it is more likely that it comes from the gaelic word ‘geit’ meaning ‘fright’ or ‘terror’. The meaning has since morphed into meaning something close to ‘jerk’.

The Note…..(Caye Caulker Blues)

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A song that came out of a trip to Caye Caulker……This is a video of a live performance of a song I wrote with my friend John Mitchell. I wrote the lyrics and John did the rest, the hard part! That’s John and his band down in Olympic Village (Vancouver). I was in charge of taking the video (no self-respecting musician would let me near a stage and with good reason) and as you can see Martin Scorsese has nothing to worry about! Listen on headphones, this was recorded on an iphone! John and the band sound great.

Here’s the lyric:

The Note

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

Chorus:
And the note read:
Our love has lost its flavor
There’s no point in hanging on
No Doctor Phil, no savior
We’re done,
Yes, we are done.

And the people standing ‘round him
Have been on Caye Caulker far too long
They‘re talking about Paradise spoilt
And how it all went wrong

Well Earl knows that Paradise
Is a very, very temporary thing
And this little piece of heaven
Feels like hell to him

Chorus:
And the note read:
Our love has lost its flavor
There’s no point in hanging on
No Doctor Phil, no savior
We’re done,
Yes, we are done.

And Earl can’t put a finger on it
Why it all went up in smoke
He’s feeling like a punch line
In someone else’s joke

And he don’t believe in karma
Instant, good or bad
He’s drunk and lonely on the beach
With a bucket full of sad

Chorus:
And the note read:
Our love has lost its flavor
There’s no point in hanging on
No Doctor Phil, no savior
We’re done,
Yes, we are done.

B. Ramble And The Hedgerows

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B. Ramble And The Hedgerows

Proud purveyors of country music
to the English public,
English country music, that is:
no wide open prairies
no dogies that git along
no bucking broncs
no honky tonks
no pick-up trucks;
the occasional encounter
with a fox, a badger, a stoat….
perhaps,
but that’s as wild as it gets.

Why, you must all recall,
“Round Here, All the Cows are Called Daisy”,
the Hedgerows’ greatest hit,
written by Mr. Ramble himself
or Bert, as his friends call him.
Bert collects all the royalties
and the Hedgerows seem to be okay with that
except for Eric, the bass player
(why is it always the bass player?).
“What’s up with him?” Bert often asks,
“All he has to do is stand there hitting C”.

Bert’s not a man for rules,
he has one rule and one rule only –
no cheating songs,
just not his style,
he’s a happily married man.
There are rumors though,
sightings of Bert hanging around the backdoor of the rectory
while Vicar Derek is conducting a service;
glances exchanged with Derek’s wife, Cynthia,
while passing in the street.
Just rumors, his friends say,
what could he do in the forty minutes
it takes Derek to complete the service
and shake hands at the door.
Au contraire, Bert’s detractors say
Plenty of time, Bert’s detractors say

for a man who has mastered
the art of the three minute song.

Taking part in Openlink over at dverse.

I Tried to Write a Country Song

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I tried to write a country song
but my heart wasn’t in it
I tried and tried and tried again
but in the end I had to bin* it.

See, I don’t drink Jack Daniels
I don’t ride a horse
I don’t wear a cowboy hat
I’ve never been divorced

and I don’t own a pickup truck
or boots with fancy stitchin’
and the only range I’m home on
is that one in the kitchen **

Yes, I tried to write a country song
but my heart wasn’t in it
I tried and tried and tried again
but in the end I had to bin it.

  • the verb “ to bin” , i.e to throw something into the litter, the garbage bin

** poetic license, regarding my being at home in the kitchen.

Tking part in open link over a dverse.

The Parrot in the Liquor Store (Wild Thing)

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The Parrot in the Liquor Store (Wild Thing)

I’m standing in the liquor store
staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio
when Wild Thing by the Troggs
comes on the store speakers
and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard,
that song is a shining artifact of the past
and just as I’m thinking that
one of the Troggs launches into
a bizarre ocarina solo
and I turn around to find myself face to face
with a large blue and yellow parrot
perched on the leather-gloved hand
of a lady who has seen hippier times
never at a loss for words, I say,
“that’s a nice parrot”
and the lady says
“I have three more at home
one of them is a real man-hater
but this one here is my favowite
he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot”
she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak
the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage
let’s out an almighty squawk
and displays its full wing span
and I’m thinking
“Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing,
who’s that on ocarina
I think it’s the lead singer
what was his name,
Reg Presley, I think,
yeah, that’s it
Reg Presley.”

After the Time Bell Rings

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After the Time Bell Rings

After the time bell rings
and the barmen start stacking the chairs
Guitar George packs his old guitar
in his old guitar case
and Honky Tonk Harry
closes the lid of that pub piano
and together, still in sync
they leave to catch the last bus home
to their adjacent council flats
where their wives await
in front of the television
with pots of tea
and plates of chocolate digestive biscuits
and later still in sync
they both reach for that last chocolate digestive biscuit
one eye on their gently snoring wives
before retiring to bed
and dreams of New Orleans
and the muddy Mississippi River.

Apologies to Mark Knopfler for using two of his characters from one of the greatest guitar songs of all time….The Sultans Of Swing,

Taking part in OpenLInk over at dverse.

Existential Boogie (It still Exists)

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Existential Boogie

I’m sitting in a café
smoking a Gitane
yes, I’m sitting in a café
smoking a Gitane
I’m reading Jean Paul Sartre
and wondering who I am.

Existential boogie
do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring.

If you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus
yes, if you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus
that dude’s been dead a long time
he can’t tell you what to do

Existential boogie
do that existential thing
well you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring

And don’t talk to me
about Immanuel Kant
no, don’t talk to me
about Immanuel Kant
well I know that you want to
but you can’t

Existential boogie
do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring

And Rene Descartes said
I think therefore I am
yes, old Rene, he said
I think therefore I am
well, I call that a beginning
I sure don’t call that a plan.

Existential boogie
do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair
summer,
autumn,
winter,
spring.

Limbo Blues/ Existential Boogie

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Limbo Blues

today I remembered limbo
you can’t stand too far from the tracks

today I remembered limbo
you can’t stand too far from the tracks

some days you’re moving forward
some days you’re hanging back

Bob Dylan mentions Rimbaud
Van Morrison does too

Bob Dylan, mentions Rimbaud
Van Morrison does too

today I remembered limbo
Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus

existential boogie
do that existential thing

existential boogie
do that existential thing

you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring

and if you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus

if you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus

that dude’s been dead a long time
he can’t tell you what to do

existential boogie
do that existential thing

existential boogie
do that existential thing

well, you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring.

I was at a concert last night at the York Theatre on Commercial Drive in Vancouver . Walter Trout and his band were playing with David Gogo opening. Walter is a virtuoso electric blues guitarist, he’s played with pretty much everyone starting with Canned Heat and on through John Mayall. One of the best shows I’ve been to in a while, electric blues at its best. But not just blues, Walter is an excellent songwriter and his insights between songs into his professional and personal life were fascinating. Rock solid band too. Made me revisit the above effort at writing a blues song! If Walter is in your area , be sure to check him out!

A Song on the Radio

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Yes, our song “Willie’s Oasis” has been played on the radio, RTE Radio One (Ireland). The show is Country Time, host Brian Lally , and he has some very generous things to say about the song. Here’s the link.

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/country-time/programmes/2023/0121/1350090-country-time-saturday-21-january-2023/

Our song is 3 songs in , but check out the whole programme, some great stuff on there , including some Willie Nelson .

If you like the song, let them know at

countrytime@rte.ie

Jim Feeney

The Road to New Year

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Just Before Christmas……

an Arctic cold front
Amazon trucks stuck
down snow-packed side roads.

Christmas

Between Christmas and New Year

You review your blog stats, as one does, and you wonder why you you are using phrases like “as one does”, have you been watching too much Britbox?

Back to the blog stats, number of views is down from last year which was down from the year before. Your viewing numbers appear to have peaked in 2019. Why? In 2019 you had the pandemic of course and a perfect storm of subject matter – the pandemic, the Trump presidency, and climate change. Now you have said pretty much all you have to say about these subjects for the moment. But isn’t that the way of some blogs, they fade because they need a fresh angle. Also, you have gone back to letting poems marinate for a while to see where they are going, giving them some quiet time.

In the meantime you have been reading, and your top read for 2022 was “Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart. You read the novel one chapter at a time, each chapter accompanied by a can of Yellow Dog Play Dead IPA. Why, because Gary’s prose is too good to rush. You also enjoyed “The Nineties” by Chuck Closterman and “April in Spain” by John Banville.

You listened to “Stolen Car” by Beth Orton, because of the lyric and the guitar figure that slithers through the song like a poisonous snake. You listened to El Camino by Elizabeth Cook because who else would rhyme “annull it” with “mullet”. You listened to “Under The Milky Way” by Church because of the expanse it conjures. You listened to “Jesus etc” by Puss N’Boots because it’s Norah Jones doing a Jeff Tweedy song.

You thought “Licorice Pizza” was the best movie of the year because of Bradley Cooper and everyone else in the movie.

And now as 2022 draws to a close, you are wondering why the hell you are writing in the second person singular.

Happy New Year everyone!

JIM

Willie’s Oasis (Looking for drink in all the wrong places)

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Punam over at dverse asks us to “Write about your favourite drink (alcoholic/non-alcoholic), write about getting drunk, use drinking as a metaphor, in short: write a poem in a form of your choice with a drinking connection”. (Update: I omitted to link this to Punam’s prompt, so I am now linking it to Open Link Night at dverse)

Willie’s Oasis

Houses hunker in the heat
Out on highway 82
The landscape sweats and saunters
Billboards block the view
And this is not New York City
This is not Saginaw
This a dry county, son
This is Arkansas

And I need a pack of Pauli Girl
I need a bottle of wine
I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis
Outside the county line

There’s a woman in line waiting
Someone’s girlfriend, someone’s wife
Says she wakes up every morning
And asks:”Is this my life?”
Beef jerky on the counter
Pickles in a jar
This is a dry county, son
This is Arkansas

And I need a pack of Pauli Girl
I need a bottle of wine
I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis
Outside the county line

Good ol’ boys are chugging out
Storm clouds on the horizon
The water looks like iced tea
Birds are improvising
And this is far from New York city
Far from Saginaw
This is Ashley County, son
This is Arkansas

My friend John Mitchell turned the lyrics into the song above (that’s Ben Mink on violin, look him up!).

PUNK

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PUNK

Walking down Commercial
On a sunlit lunchtime
I see this guy talking to this girl –

She’s got tattoos, rings, black hair,
Blonde streaks – he is leaning forward
She is leaning back

And as I pass by, he says:” I have always thought
That punk and hip-hop have more in common
Than they have not.”

The peak of his baseball cap is flipped back
like he‘s caught in a wind tunnel.
Noise cancelling head phones circle his neck.

Is that an egg stain on his cardigan?
Did he play bass once in a band called Head Lice?
Or is he just another fan?

Who knows?
He looks disheveled, disinterred,
Pale as a Pogue*.

And I want to stop
And tell him
That I don’t know about hip hop

But I have always thought that punk
Is the sound
Of someone puking pints

Outside a pub at midnight
Without implying
That is necessarily a bad thing.

*Pale as a Pogue

I shared a plane once with The Pogues on a flight from Vancouver from Chicago . I got bumped up to business class (I was flying a lot at the time). The Pogues were also in business class, on the way to Vancouver for a gig. The year was 1991, I know this because Joe Strummer was with them and according to Wikipedia he joined the band for a short period in 1991 , Shane MacGowan had left due to drinking problems.

They were the palest, skinniest, sickest group of people I had ever seen. They looked like creatures who spent most of their time at the bottom of the ocean at a depth where the sun could not penetrate, or maybe they just got up late in the afternoon.

The only thing I remember from the trip is that Joe Strummer was ordering drinks as soon as the seat belt sign went off. Vodka and tonic was his drink of choice, I think. When the stewardess brought his first drink, she said:
“ I hope that’s not too strong for you, sir”
Joe replied: “Too strong? Too Strong?” and began to laugh hysterically and continued to laugh for quite some time. As the flight progressed he would turn every now and again to the other Pogues and shout “Too Strong?” and start laughing all over again. I guess he was taking the Shane MacGowan role seriously.

Graffiti Photo was taken in Getsemani, Cartagena, Colombia.

This poem was previously posted in Open Link Night over at dverse