The color drained from my face As my body felt the first arrow Aimed at my deep red heart On target Piercing the warm flesh Deep into its throbbing pulse
Bullseye was the word That fell from your lips Triumphant in your accuracy Fist-thumping the air Your wicked soul planned And executed my downfall
Only another’s pain could please you As you salivated your so-called victory Taking down your victim like a culled animal But your victory was short-lived Unable to quieten my heartbeat I rise again from the grey ashes of your contempt
The sparkle in your eyes Glints like gold Touching me with a warm glow It draws me in like a magnet Your arresting smile stops me in my tracks Rooting me in the ground I am frozen in place, immobile What has just happened?
Punam is hosting Monday Quadrille at D’Verse Poets. Her prompt word tonight is ‘Sparkle’ in honor of Diwali, The Festival of Lights celebrations today in her homeland, India.
A Quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words excluding the title.
Good morning and welcome to another Song Lyric Sunday. This week our host Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that mentions bones, sticks or stones. Lucky for me I remembered an old favorite of mine by Neil Diamond called ‘Stones’. It is from his 1971 album of the same name. I had this album and played it until the grooves were gone! In addition to the title track, it also featured his version of Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song ‘Suzanne’. In my opinion it is better than Cohen’s as his voice is easier to listen to. Just for fun I included it at the end. Of course you don’t have to listen to it.
The Song
It was difficult trying to find information on the song itself. The only referencee to it on Songfacts was this:
Diamond said about “Stones” in 1971: “I’d call it a desperate love song… Stones, to me has always meant things that hurt people, things that cause pain and that’s what the song is about.”
Diamond has not performed this live since 1972.
The album, for which it was named, was more about some other better known Diamond songs along with some covers of the aforementioned Suzanne by Leonard Cohen, and Chelsea Morning by Joni Mitchell. I found this review of the album by BBC Music. It gives more information on the album itself.
Cornball on top, but pulsating with intensity down below. By Chris Roberts 2010
Neil Diamond, normally a quick worker, spent four months agonising over the lyrics of I Am… I Said, and it shows. That’s why the song lingers. There are lines which don’t quite ‘fit’ at first, and seem almost fragmentary coming from such a craftsman, but they’re the lines which – once the penny drops – give it its confessional greatness. People magazine hailed the song as “Art at its best, which moves the audience to self-investigation”. Certainly it’s a masterpiece of introspection which transcends conventional pop limitations. Diamond himself rambled, “It tells of feeling lost and questions and doubts and insecurities… and realising that you can never go back home”.
As the opener to his seventh album – and, in reprise form, the finale – it tends to overshadow the rest of this sumptuous 1971 release. Like Touching You, Touching Me, Stones contains its share of string-soused covers, and in places tilts Diamond towards MOR. Yet there’s nothing phoney about the way his proud baritone commits to Joni Mitchell’s Chelsea Morning or Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing on My Mind. Each has depth beneath the slick veneer. Later, the angst is overt as Neil nails Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne and Jacques Brel’s If You Go Away. He’s aesthetically closer to Scott Walker than any lounge crooner.
While I Am… I Said was a hit with huge gravitas, the other hit here, Crunchy Granola Suite, seems its polar opposite, praising a healthy diet in very Californian fashion. He’s claimed it’s “meaningful”, but it’s a loony cereal jingle. Then there’s the title song, a durable Diamond gem in which “she would ache for love and get but stones”. It’s the quintessential Neil song – simple, laced with neo-religious imagery, yet powerfully sincere. Stones is, like much of Diamond’s oeuvre, cornball on top and pulsating with intensity down below. As I Am… I Said attests, he was coming to terms with fame (“you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king and then became one?”) while battling internal demons (“I’ve got an emptiness deep inside”). In his fight to keep both his career and spirits ascending lays the magic of Stones.
Stones would play Inside her head And where she slept They made her bed And she would ache For love and get but stones La-lah la-lah la-lah la la la lone
Lordy child A good day's comin' And I'll be there To let the sun in And bein' lost Is worth the comin' home
La-lah la-lah la-lah la la la On stones
You and me A time for planting You and me A harvest granting The every prayer ever prayed For just two wild flowers that grow La la la la la la la la On stones
Writer/s: JIMEAU HINSON, JON MICHAELS, KIM TRIBBLE Publisher: CHECK PLEASE MUSIC, CONEXION MEDIA GROUP, INC., DO WRITE MUSIC LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
Alone is not lonely If anything it is a desired state I am not half of someone’s whole Although I have tried to be Twice And two times I was shown that it was a sure way to lose half of myself
Day after day I would see parts of me Get swallowed up Until there was no me anymore I became someone else’s appendage A decorative piece To be seen and not heard
So now Alone is something special It is mine and mine alone I thrive in its peacefulness Growing deep roots of stability The price of entry into this special world you probably could never afford
Lisa is hosting Open Link Night at D’Verse Poets and she has given us the option of sharing any poem we have written or to use one of her prompts. Her post tonight was about banned books and she shared some quotes from the most commonly challenged book list to use as inspiration.
I chose this one - Memory is the happiness of being alone. ― Lois Lowry, Anastasia Krupnick
Silken threads of apricot and cream weave their way across the late afternoon sky Changing hues on their journey towards evening A thin paper moon pushes up from the eastern sky bringing a thin cover of evening colors Greys and navy blues Continually changing patterns of colors and shapes Awe inspiring in its beauty A nightly fascinating wonder
We are saving the planet with this week’s Song Lyric Sunday selections. Our job was to choose a song associated with climate change or the environment. My immediate thought took me back to the 70s and Marvin Gaye’s classic, ‘Mercy, Mercy Me’. In my opinion this song was way ahead of it’s time and he brought environmental issues to the forefront by releasing this song. He was clearly cognizant of what was happening to the planet and not everyone was happy with his choice to use his music as a vehicle for the cause.
The Song
Many years before global warming became a hot topic, Marvin Gaye wrote this song about the environment and how we have an obligation to care for the Earth. For his What’s Going On album (1971), Gaye got away from love ballads and explored deeper social themes, which at first didn’t sit well with Motown boss Berry Gordy, who thought these songs wouldn’t be marketable. The success of the title track proved otherwise, and “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” became a #1 R&B hit and soared to #4 on the Hot 100.
The song features a laid-back groove, Gaye’s smooth vocals, and a saxophone solo, all of which were typical of R&B at the time and thus conventionally associated with light, enjoyable lyrics. But Gaye’s lyrics provide a vivid description of environmental crisis, creating an uneasy juxtaposition of typically cheery sounds with a pessimistic message, a disturbingly effective technique that leads to the dissonant breakdown of the music at the end of the song.
Gaye elaborated on this song and his spiritual quest in a 1976 interview with Sounds, where he said: “I am a student of Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda. I’ve read many books by many authors. My idea of living is, I would love to become an impeccable warrior, one who has no need for earthly things such as the wine, the women, the clothes and the diamonds, and the fine things to wear. I’d love to develop a distaste for those things and become only interested in knowledge and power that this earth will give us, if we’re only willing to put in the time and effort.
I would love to quit show-business and go after that knowledge and that power that the truly gifted sorcerer has. The power’s here, it’s in the rocks, it’s in the air, it’s in the animals. There are men of knowledge who could take these forces and elements and cause mysterious things to happen to the body, transform themselves and do many, many marvelous things. I would like to become a man of power, and I would like to use it in a good fashion.
The knowledge that we have is enough to catapult ourselves over the hurdle into super-knowledge, where we become super-beings. But at that point we always destroy ourselves. That will always happen because super-knowledge is only for the chosen few. But the few can be of a greater number, that’s why I talk about it. If only we would adhere to certain laws that Mother Nature… THAT’S THE KEY!
We appear to have reached the bottom line. And, just like Bunny says (here he’s referring to the Jamaican musician Bunny Wailer), it’s in obeying the laws of nature that this wisdom and freedom lies. Those songs aren’t written for nothing. A lot of the time, they don’t even know it as writers, but they’re just forced to put Mother Nature into the picture, like in ‘You Are The Sunshine Of My Life.'”
According to Earl Van Dyke of Motown’s house band the Funk Brothers, Berry Gordy did not know what the word “ecology” meant when he heard this song. It had to be explained to him.
“Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” won a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2002, an honor also given to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” – one of his several duets with Tammi Terrell – in 1984, and “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” in 1998. The entire What’s Going On album was also recognized in 1998 with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
The Lyrics
Whoa, ah, mercy, mercy me Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no no Where did all the blue skies go? Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east (Father)
Whoa mercy, mercy me (oh, mercy) Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no (mercy Father) Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Ah, oh mercy, mercy me Ah, things ain't what they used to be, no, no (help us, Father) Radiation underground and in the sky Animals and birds who live nearby are dying (help us, help us, Father)
Oh mercy, mercy me (mercy Father, please help us) Oh, things ain't what they used to be (mercy Father) Oh, what about this overcrowded land (oh, have mercy Father) How much more abuse from man can she stand? Ooh
Oh, no, no, no, nah, nah, nah (ooh-ooh my sweet Lord) My sweet Lord, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah (my, my sweet Lord) My, my Lord, my sweet Lord, ooh-ooh (help us Father, please help us)
Writer/s: Marvin Gaye Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind and
I must admit I was stumped this week when I saw Jim Adam’s challenge for Song Lyric Sunday. Talented With Potential But It Didn’t Pan Out. I was going to give it a miss and then I happened to be in the grocery store yesterday evening and the song ‘Breakout’ by Swing Out Sister came on the Musak. There it was, My pick for this week!
I always liked this song but it was the only song I ever remembered by the band. It was in the 80s and I remember thinking the beautiful lead singer, Corinne Drewery, a former fashion designer, should get together with Bryan Ferry because they would make a handsome couple and have gorgeous babies together! Anyway after researching the band I find that they are still around but they have found their niche market in Asia where they are very popular. They just did not make it big in the UK or the USA apart from the initial couple of songs.
The Song
“Breakout” is a song by British band Swing Out Sister. It was released in September 1986 as the second single from their debut album It’s Better to Travel. Written and performed while the group was still a trio, it became one of their biggest hits, reaching the number four in the United Kingdom; in the US, it rose in 1987 to number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The song was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards in 1988.
Lead singer Corinne Drewery wrote the song while recovering from a fractured skull she had suffered in an equestrian accident. Swing Out Sister had already signed a two-song deal with Mercury Records, but the first song, “Blue Mood”, had failed to chart. Mercury said the band had to have their second demo in by the next Monday morning or risk being dropped, causing the band to compose “Breakout” under stress. This influenced the lyrics, as Drewery was inspired primarily by her decision to give up on a much more secure career as a fashion designer to pursue her dream of being a singer. There was some controversy around the bass line used in the song; it was claimed that the band had taken it from an unpublished Elezze Records track, and the band argued that they had created the line on their own after listening to the 1986 FIFA World Cup TV theme in Britain.
The music video for “Breakout” features lead singer Corinne Drewery as a fashion designer, who with the assistance of the other two band members designs and makes her own dress, and later makes a successful runway debut, modelling the garment while her bandmates open a bottle of champagne and toast to her success. There are two versions of this video; the official monochrome version and the alternative colour version. The video was directed by Nick Willing.
The early morning sky of feathered pinks Blends with the last of the night colors Creating wisps of candy floss Across an awe-inspiring expanse
Birds already in full chorus Brighten the spirits of all who hear their song Sights and sounds of the early day Soon to be forgotten As morning gives way to the hustle and bustle of life
Just a few moments stolen from an unimportant schedule allows one to take in the wonder all around Reassuring and soothing the soul Before the daily grind
When the last petal falls from the wilting blossom Is when your love will leave me The last remnants of what we shared Will lay lifeless on the cold hardened ground Our hopes and dreams to be scattered and swept away in autumn wind
Poetry For Healing 