ROBERT JOHNSON ~

 

Hellhound On My Trail

I got to keep moving    

            I've got to keep moving

                                                blues falling down like hail

                                                                    blues falling down like hail

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

                                                                blues falling down like hail

                                                                                    blues falling down like hail

And the days keeps on 'minding me

                                                    there's a hellhound on my trail,

                                                                                      hellhound on my trail

                                                                                                        hellhound on my trail

If today was Christmas eve

                    if today was Christmas eve

                                                                  and tomorrow was Christmas day

If today was Christmas eve

                                               and tomorrow was Christmas day

                                                                                (aw wouldn't we have a time, baby!)

All I would need my little sweet rider just

                                                                    to pass the time away

                                                                                        uh huh

                                                                                                    to pass the time away

You sprinkled hot foot powder

                                                    umm around my door

                                                                         all around my door

You sprinkled hot foot powder

                                                    all around your daddy's door

                                                                      hmmm  hmmm   hmmm

It keep me with rambling mind, rider

                                                            every old place I go

                                                                                            every old place I go

I can tell, the wind is rising

                                            the leaves trembling on the trees

                                                                                   trembling on the trees

I can tell, the wind is rising

                                              leaves trembling on the tree

                                                                   umm  hmm  hmm  hmm

All I need's my little sweet woman                                     

                                                        and to keep my company

                                                                            hmmm  hmmm  hmmm

                                                                                                                    my company

__________________________________

Lineated version by Eric Sackheim

UP IN CANADA W/MILTON ACORN & OTHER POETS ~

 

Milton Acorn

Al Purdy

Irving Layton

George Bowering

others

NO LONESOME ROAD (DON WEST) ~

 

R E A D   M E

LISTEN, I'M AN AGITATOR

“He stirreth up the people. teaching …”

Listen . . . !
I am an agitator—
They call me “Red,”
The color of Blood,
And—“Bolshevik!”
But do you of the toiling South
Know me?
Do you believe these things
About me?
You croppers, factory hands—
Negroes,
Poor whites, and you youth
Who look
Into a dark future,
You who love
The South as I do—
Do you understand?
Do you see that I am YOU,
That I
The Agitator am
You . . . ?

I am Don West, too,
The poet—
A lover of peace and quiet places
A working man
With rough hands that know how
To toil
When there is work.
But the poet
Is a cry for justice,
The Agitator
Is the restless soul of the
Toiling millions—
Stirring, stumbling, groping
Toward
A new world, a world of plenty
And peace!

I am the son of my grandfather,
Of old Kim Mulkey.
His blood burns my veins
And cries out for justice!
I sing to a submerged South,
And she responds
With deep sobs of misery,
She stirs
And anger sets on her lips.

I’m no foreigner;
Nobody
With calloused hands is foreign
To us!

I’m Jim West’s boy,
The one
Who saw his Daddy die
Young
Overworked, underfed—
With pellagra.
It’s not nice to say that,
To say
We have pellagra
Rickets
Hookworm
Bloody-flux
Starvation
In the South.

But I was raised on a hillside farm
Where my Daddy’s sweat
Salted down the red clay.
I’m the son of my mother
The woman who plods between
The cotton rows—
And I’m an Agitator!

And that means I want bread
And homes
And clothes
And beauty
For all the hollow-eyed babies.
I want songs
On the lips, and joy in the eyes
Of you anxious mothers
Who scrub, and hoe, or weave
In a factory.

Do you hear me?
I love
These things more than I love
Peace and quiet,
Or the gentle murmur of
The Chattahoochee
Dragging our old red hills
Down to the mighty ocean.

I am speaking—Listen!
I, the poet
In overalls, working man,
Mountaineer
Agitator!

_______________________

Don West

LEONARD COHEN TONIGHT ~

 

℗ Originally released 1970 All rights reserved by Sony Music Entertainment

ANNA BADKHEN ~

 

R E A D   M E

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER ~

 

In April

I am come to the threshold of a spring

Where there will be nothing

To stand between me and the smite

Of the martin's scooping flight,

Between me and the halloo

of the first cuckoo.

'As you hear the first cuckoo,

So you will be all summer through.'

This year I shall hear it naked and alone;

And lengthening days and strengthening sun will show

Me my solitary shadow,

My cypressed shadow — but no,

My Love, I was not alone; in my mind I was talking with you

When I heard the first cuckoo

And gentle as thistledown his call was blown.

__________________________

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Twelve Poems

Chatto & Windus, 1980

TONIGHT INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (MUSIC) ~

 

 Oscar Isaac

AMERICAN SCARY ~

 

R E A D   M E

       Algonquin Books, 2024

FOUR WALKS IN CENTRAL PARK ~

 

R E A D   M E

EARL SWEATSHIRT TONIGHT ~

 

    Warner 2025

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Da Capo 2026

ALISON KRAUSS TONIGHT ~

 

   2025

SYNNOVE ANKER AURDAL ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Mousse Publishing

      2024

SEMISONIC ALL NIGHT ~

 

Released on: 1998-03-24 Producer: Nick Launay Mixing Engineer: Bob Clearmountain Composer Lyricist: Dan Wilson

THE WESTERN CANON (HAROLD BLOOM) ~

 

W A L T   W H I T M A N' S   B I R T H D A Y

1819, West Hills, N.Y.

 R E A D   M E 

     Mariner 2025

WOMEN PRINTMAKERS ~

 

R E A D   M E

an excellent survey; great gift!

THE BEATLES OWN IT ~

 

Released on: 1968-11-22

Other, Producer: George Martin Composer Lyricist: Paul McCartney Composer Lyricist: John Lennon

THEA MATTHEWS ~

 

Huntsville

ALABAMA, 2021

FOR CHRISTINA NANCE

"Your great grand-daddy was a sharescropper here,"

my gramma would say, "until he disappeared."

Her skin was smooth like dark apple butter,

and her daughter, my mother, would look at me

like I was a whitetail.  The windows would crack,

and I'd be left with keloids and jars of pickled eggs.

The rest of my family were alligators.  I grew up shy.

Bobbing back and forth in my Sunday best,

I didn't talk much.  And when I did, I'd speak

as if my tongue were a sweet potato.

And when I'd sing, I sang making the Lord so proud of me.

I'd feel the Spirit rise within, swaying

my hips and arms like a church fan in one hand,

and frozen strawberry lemonade, in another.

O did I love to sing, and hum hymns in the halls,

and when my sister would say, "Sing, Christian!"

I would! I sure would, knowing my heart would be safe

for long walks away from the forest edge with my sister.

With my eyes hiding behind shelves, I knew to pose,

pay my taxes, write letters, pick passing

blackbirds as lovers.  They'd leave, I'd stay

I can smell anything., The scent of passion seeping

in through a man's skin.  I'd smell the sheets, Old Spice,

what lotion she was wearing.  I can even smell

the white lilacs on the day of my funeral.

To be a whitetail hunter, you must be so still.

I stopped singing the day I went missing.

Supposedly, I'm seen first lying on the lawn.

Supposedly, I'm then seen leaning on the hood of a cop car.

Supposedly, I take off my shoes.

                                                Twelve nights go by.

Somewhere, a whitetail hunter

dressed in camouflage smiles,

one arm around his doe for the trophy picture.

I'm found in the back of a police van.

___________________________

Thea Matthews

Grime

City Lights, 2025

MAKSHYA TOLBERT ~

 

Eastbound

At the end of their lives, the trees,

they tell us, Do not stay where you thin.

Can I speak about thinning?  As a child

I wrote these poems I called A Plant Called Hope.

I loved sick plants and wanted more for them.

I loved my mother and wanted more for her.

I lost the small book then lost my grandmother

then lost her house then almost lost my mother.

Believe me when I say plants and people find

their way. This time, I am eastbound. A stranger

has the grace to ask me, "Are you ready to come

back to Virginia?"  I stop believing in California:

it hurts too much.  Tell me to have my easterly

shoes on.  Tell me east will have me back, if

I love softly. I throw on my transition shoes.

Ask me again if I'm ready to come back

to Virginia.  This time, ask me in front of the trees.

I'll find a place of rest in the middle of things.

____________________________

MaKshya Tolbert

Shade is a place

Penguin 2025

DAVID HENDERSON, POET ~

 

D A V I D   H E N D E R S O N

    photo: No Land, 2019