Archive for category relationships
Sensual – Poem by Asad Jaleel
Posted by asad123 in Poems, relationships, Uncategorized on February 18, 2012
Sensual
I want to write a poem
For people who don’t like poetry
People like you
Grounded, diligent people
Brilliant, generous people
Start at the senses
Don’t read this with your eyes
Taste it with your mouth
Swish the syllables under your tongue
Feel each word like a soft kiss
I would just speak
In whispered s’s
And rolling l’s
Erase the hard letters
Your k’s and t’s and p’s
Lustfully lick your lips
Sip sentences like cider
Letters leave from my hands
Settle softly behind your teeth
Vibrate against the drums of your ears
This is a love letter
Not a pedantic lesson
Step out of the school
Don’t study this like a chapter
Feel it like a pounding rain
Song Analysis – “Somebody I Used to Know” Gotye
Posted by asad123 in Music, relationships, Uncategorized on February 7, 2012
Gotye is Belgian and his name is pronounced “gaw’ tee ay.”
Now and then when I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and that’s an ache I still remember
[“But felt so lonely in your company” is a sweet turn of phrase. It suggests coldness and distance. Then he describes love as “an ache I can still remember.” Those of us who have been in love and lost it recognize this feeling.]
You can addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over
(I relate to the line about being addicted to sadness. During periods of my life, I have been stuck in patterns of feeling bad about myself. It’s weird that you can be addicted to feeling so bad, but all addiction goes from feeling good to feeling bad.]
She didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know (3x)
[Will Smith’s character on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” once said, “I was just a relative – you made me family.” The line here, “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know,” describes something that is going in the reverse direction. What is a person who was once your girlfriend? You can call her your ex. But she has no status in your life. She has no special rights or privileges as your ex. So she’s just somebody you used to know. There’s a poignancy in that because this woman went from maybe the most important woman in your life to a woman who is just one step above a stranger.]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something I had done
And I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Song Analysis – “A Good Year for the Roses” – George Jones
Posted by asad123 in Music, relationships on February 3, 2012
I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick
On the cigarettes there in the ashtray
Lyin’ cold the way you left them
At least your lips caressed them while you packed.
And a lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That you poured and didn’t drink
But at least you thought you wanted it
And that’s so much more than I can say for me.
Chorus:
But what a good year for the roses
Many blooms still linger there
The lawn could stand another mowin’
It’s funny, I don’t even care.
And when you turned and walked away
And as the door behind you closes
The only thing I know to say
It’s been a good year for the roses.
After three full years of marriage
It’s the first time that you haven’t made the bed
I guess the reason we’re not talkin’
There’s so little left to say, we haven’t said.
While a million thoughts go runnin’ through my mind
I find I haven’t spoke a word
And from the bedroom those familiar sounds
Of our one baby’s cryin’ goes unheard.
Chorus
[Frequent readers of this blog know I love story-songs. This is a fantastic example of a story song that uses subtle phrasing to communicate a great deal of meaning. It's a sad, touching narrative about a marriage falling apart.
It's almost as if time freezes and the speaker can see everything in crystal-clear detail. He sees lipstick on her used cigarettes and her mug of coffee. He muses that while the cigarettes are cold now, they felt the touch of his wife's lips, as if he envies these inanimate objects. Similarly, he talks about the half-filled (half empty?) cup of coffee that she didn't drink. Yet the coffee can boast that it was wanted and he feels like he hasn't been wanted in ages.
He describes the yard outside. It seems that he has turned to the yard as an escape. He feels powerless to fix his marriage but the garden is something that he can maintain. He notices that the grass is too long. The one thing in his world that seems to be doing well is the roses. Of course, roses are so often a metaphor for love and romance. The irony here is that he has these beautiful roses, but no one who will appreciate them.
It ends with a heart-breaking image- the couple's baby cries, yet no one hears the sound. The song could have ended with the man's tears, it could have ended with the wife's tears, yet by ending with the baby's tears, it makes the story so much sadder.]
Poem Analysis “Funeral Blues” W.H. Auden
Posted by asad123 in Films, Poems, relationships on January 22, 2012
(Poem #256) Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
[If this poem sounds familiar to you, perhaps it is
because an actor reads it dramatically at a funeral
for the man he loves. W. H. Auden also
likely wrote it for a man he deeply loved.
I enjoy the following lines, "He was my North, my South,
my East and West,/ My working week and my Sunday rest."
These are the four cardinal directions.The beloved dominates
his sense of both space and time. This suggests he went
everywhere with him and spent every moment with him.
I hear echoes of a very ancient poem in this Auden piece.
The Roman poet Catullus wrote a love poem in Latin that
resembles this one.
(http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/Latin1000/Readings/1020B/25catullus2.pdf/ ) It almost seems
comical that he goes to such lengths to mourn a little bird,
but this was a pet that his beloved adored.
Not everyone can write a poem like this when someone dies.
Yet there is something about the feeling of the poem that
anyone who has lost a loved one will recognize.]
Song Analysis “Change the Sheets” Kathleen Edwards
Posted by asad123 in Music, relationships on January 12, 2012
Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
My love took a ride on a red-eye plane
Going home
And we’re never going to feel the same
Change this feeling under my feet
Change the sheets and then change me
["In the music business bigger is not necessarily better. In fact, I believe smaller is actually better" - Chuck Kaye, Dreamworks.
Kathleen Edwards works on a smaller scale than some of her contemporaries, but she delivers meaning and passion with her own brand of folk.
Look at how she begins this song, "My love took a ride on a red-eye plane." Introducing the man she loves simply as "my love" is elegant and mature. And so much is conveyed by the phrase "red-eye plane." We immediately know the hour of the day, the probable emotional state of the couple (Have you ever been happy about taking a red-eye flight?), even the class of the flier (He has enough money to fly but not enough to go in style.).
My love is a stockpile of broken wills
Like Santa Fe, margaritas and sleeping pills
I want to lie in the cracks of this lonely road
I can fill in the blanks every time you don't phone
[I love this line, "I can fill in the blanks every time you don't phone." Herein lies a tip for my friends who are in relationships - always call home. I know the feeling of being so embarrassed by the situation one is in to call home. Call home anyway. The scenario she's going to imagine in the wake of your silence is many, many times worse than the reality.]
Here is the truth, I swear it used to be fun
Go ahead run, run, run, run
Change this feeling under my feet
Change the sheets and then change me
Won’t you change this feeling under my feet?
[Changing sheets is so easy. You pull out a crisp set of linens and suddenly it's like you have a new bed. If only we could change our emotions so easily. ]
I want to lie in the cracks of this lonely road
I can fill in the blanks every time you don’t phone
Here is the truth, I swear it was fun
Go ahead run, run, run, run, run, run, run
[Wanting to lie in the cracks of the road means wanting to disappear, wanting to erase one's self from existence. Where is the source of this guilt? She says, "Here is the truth, I swear it was fun." I think she's admitting to cheating, and for no greater justification than it feeling good at the time. But she leaves with a parting shot. By saying "go ahead run," she's implying that her former love is a coward. He won't face up to the deep problems in the relationship. Instead he's flying home in the middle of the night.]
Change this feeling under my feet
Would you change the sheets and then change me
Change this feeling under my feet
‘Cause here is the truth, I swear it was fun
Go ahead run, run, run, run, run, run, ooh (2x)