Serendipity

You know how sometimes in life a friend introduces you to a singer/songwriter who seems to capture your exact mood or near-as-dammit exactly what's going on around you at that time. Well this was my experience when my friend Dan introduced me to the works of the late Elliot Smith (left). Needless to say it led to a poem or two as echo after echo of certain tracks began to reverberate.

Anthem for a Doomed 21st Century Youth
(Elliot Smiths’ Waltz No. 2)

'In the place where I make no mistakes,
In the place where I have what it takes'
I think I fell in love with your sentence structure
The bleak beauty you forged of the disassociation all around.
Dreams still flickering, under the inadequate crush
'Tell Mr Man with impossible plans
To just leave me alone.'
Simon & Garfunkel crossed with surfer dude and bite
A strange hybrid with an offbeat four-track heart
You took the fading of successful failure hard
'I'm never gonna know you now
But I'm gonna love you anyhow'
Yes I will. Gentle voice. Grand orchestral finish
Enveloping in your wavewall of intimacy.
I cruelly play you again, at point blank range, with a laser
‘You're no good, you're no good, you're no good'
Can't you tell that it's well understood?'
I would like to write these words in music notes
Share the melody with a page of rising, falling prose
Move others as I am moved.
'First the mike, then a half cigarette
Singing Cathy's Clown’
That sinister touch. Those hairs. The back of my neck.
There’s no rest, no life outside of music
As you knew, before life consumed art consumed you.

© LS King 2005

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