It's All Over Too Quickly

 

It’s all over too quickly.  When I look

   Behind, all that I was and did are blurred,

Like someone’s flipping pages of a book

   So fast that I can’t read a single word.

Yet every day has something that I wrote—

   A hope, a love, a loss, a gift, a need—

And thoughts and dreams that only God can quote,

   For years are books that only God can read.

This one’s done now; another one begins

   In which I hope I’ll never try to be

Less than my best, or fret about who wins,

   Or live a single day complacently,

      But smile through what I cannot celebrate

      And word by living daily word create. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Christmas Wish

If I could give you anything this year,

   I’d give you all the things you are afraid

To give yourself—the perfect love you fear

   You don’t deserve; great success in your trade,

Whatever that may be—the kind of wealth

   That keeps the wolf from your financial door—

An optimistic attitude—and health,

   Good health, to give old bones new places to explore.

And then I wish you all that you won’t think

   You’ll need until some crisis will remind you:

Good friends—the calm to float when others sink—

   The heart to put all the bad times behind you—

      The strength to love when Fear and Hatred reign

      And a great weakness for all souls in pain.

 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

Sonnet for Gary

We all live after death in memory

   Which smooths the rough stone of our lives until

It has the curve and line of poetry

   Like happiness that we from grief distill.

In memory, our awkward symphony

   Will lose its baser frets, and all our false

Notes will be tweaked into a harmony

   That turns our halting tune into a waltz—

The way we made an album from your life,

   My brother—upbeat tracks that we can hum

Whose high notes are so strong they dull the knife

   Of grief that made the world bleed and become

      Empty without you—empty, cold and wrong—

      Until we close our eyes and hear your song.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

Tell Me What You Want For Christmas - The 2014 Christmas Compilation

And so we come to the end of 2014, otherwise known as either The Year We Lost A Boatload of Great Actors or The Year We Lost Whatever Patience We Had Left With A Militarized Police Force, Racial Profiling, The Justice System, You Name It.  Either one of which (but especially the latter) can put a stake of holly in the heart of anyone’s Christmas cheer.

So here’s something musical to help turn that frown upside down—music to lift your spirits over the next couple of weeks—music to trim your tree to (if you haven’t done that already)—music to wrap your gifts to (and I KNOW you haven’t done that already)—music to make you  feel the warmth of Shane McGowan’s Birthday  The Day James Brown Died  The Night We Bombed The Crap Out of Hanoi  Christmas.

 

 

Enjoy, and Haddy Grimble, everybody.

You can find the songs below in a zip file here

01 Tell Me What You Want For Christmas  -  Chris August

02 I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas  -  Leann Rimes

03 Christmas List  -  Vic Mulkey and the Blue Veins

04 Full Service Santa  -  Vic Mulkey and the Blue Veins

05 Santa's Got a Zoot Suit  -  Dave Rudolf

06 Poppa Santa Claus  -  Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters

07 Santa's Party  -  Nick en Simon

08 The Party's Still Going On  -  Marcia Ball

09 Christmas People (Radio Edit)  -  Naguale

10 On Christmas  -  Dum Dum Girls

11 Jingle Bells  -  The Minions

12 Goin' Up To Bethlehem  -  Bob Rivers

13 Good King Wenceslas  -  Fab Four

14 Make it So  -  Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise

15 Hannukah In Las Vegas  -  Richard Cheese

16 Joel the Lump of Coal  -  The Killers

17 Unwed Mother  -  Hoyle

18 Let It Fall  -  Over The Rhine

19 Autumn Carol  -  Leigh Beery et al

20 In The Bleak Midwinter  -  John Fahey

21 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening  -  Allen Leech

22 Let It Go  -  Pentatonix

23 Imagine  -  Emeli Sande

24 Make It Rain, Dear  -  Maggie Chapmen

25 My Reindeer Got Drunk  -  The Wise Men

26 Don't Need A Reindeer  -  The Moody Blues

27 Sleigh Me  -  Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler

28 Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairy)  - Duke Ellington

29 All My Christmases  -  Jillian Edwards

30 Christmas Day Blues  -  Cephas & Wiggins

31 Talkin' Christmas  -  Taj Mahal & The Blind Boys Of Alabama

32 Rum-Rum-Bells!!!  -  Los Temblooores

33 On Christmas Day (Radio Edit)  -  Magnum

34 Christmas Madness  -  The Rocket Summer

35 Being Alone At Christmas  -  Miss Montreal

36 The Ice of Boston  -  The Dismemberment Plan

37 BONUS TRACK

I Saw Mommy Doing Santa Con

I saw Mommy doing Santa Con
Up and down Third Avenue last night.
She flashed her Mommy boobs
Just to titillate the rubes
And sang, half bare, “Don’t Touch Me There!”
(A great song by The Tubes).

Then I saw Mommy leading Santa Con
In a conga line till dawn’s first light.
Oh how they loved to see her dance
In bra and underpants
During New York’s Santa Con last night!

I saw Mommy doing Santa Con
Underneath the Brooklyn Bridge last night.
She kissed her Romeo
Underneath the mistletoe,
Then slung his hash and stole his cash
Just like a ho-ho-ho.

Then I saw Mommy searching Santa Con
Until she found an elf who was her height.
Oh what a vision to erase
When they were both sucking face
In the bars at Santa Con last night!

 

I saw Mommy doing Santa Con

In Bushwick and in Williamsburg last night.

She tried her best to have

Every Russian, Czech and Slav—

They’d pussyfoot until she put

The bed in Bedford Ave. 

Then I saw Mommy during Santa Con

Hitting on each hipster jerk in sight.

So many drifters selling snow

And lots of flakes to blow

During Brooklyn's Santa Con last night!

 

 

I saw Mommy doing Santa Con

Wearing just a beard of snowy white.

She barely kept her feet

After shots of whiskey neat

Then drank a ton of Jameson’s
And threw up in the street. 

Then I saw Mommy spending Santa Con

In the back seat of a black-and-white.

Oh it was such a great divorce

When Mommy did half the force

During New York’s Santa Con last night!

 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Police State Blues

“Oh what is that red mess in the street

And why is that woman crying?”

“Because that body at her feet

Is her only son, and he’s dying.” 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

They say he acted like a threat.

They say he had a gun.

They thought he was a criminal

And treated him like one. 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

The witnesses know what they saw

But their stories don’t agree.

“They must be biased,” says The Law,

“But cops can never be.” 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

“Oh look at the men they’re arresting here.

Oh what can their great crime be?”

“It’s something they’re guilty of, my dear;

If they weren’t, they’d be free.” 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

If we’re concerned, we have the choice

To speak when wrongs provoke us.

But if we never raise our voice,

They’ll never have to choke us. 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

“Oh that man just asked a question—

Now they’re jumping on his back.”

“To an insecure authority, dear,

A question is an attack.” 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

“But we have the right to say what’s wrong

And stand up for what’s true.”

“Oh no, my dear, we have no rights,

Until they say we do.” 

     Move along—nothing to see here.

     Move along—nothing to see. 

“Oh why are there helicopters here

And soldiers next to our car?

And why are they telling me not to fear

When fear is what they are? 

There are snipers on the rooftops.

They’re making our neighbors withdraw.

They’re telling them that it’s nothing,

It’s nothing but the law.” 

     “And it’s coming for you and me, dear—

     Coming for you and me.”

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

I Want A Love That Time Cannot Destroy

I want a love that Time cannot destroy

   Or nibble till there’s nothing left but scraps—

A passion full of ever-present joy

   That laughs at Time and all its silly traps.

I want a flame that will not end in ashes.

   I want a light that will not lose its glow.

I want a love the future never trashes.

   I thought that love was ours, but Time said “No.”

So I say “No!” right back.  I want Time dead.

   Time took our vows and made them all untrue—

Time proved that we were lying when we said

   “I’ll never love another soul but you.”

      Time’s a bored toddler; passion is its toy.

      There is no love that Time cannot destroy. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Craving

I reach for you the way I used to reach

   For cigarettes—because my body craves

The comfort and the high it savors each

   Moment we touch.  You are the ache that saves

Me from the pain of loneliness, the need

   That says I lack for nothing—your cool skin

Melts my reserve like charity melts greed,

   Your eyes blind me with all that shines within

And deep beneath them.  And when those eyes look

   At me and judge me worthy, then I cease

To count myself a badly-written book

   And dare to think that I’m a masterpiece.

      And though the world may think the work is mine,

      Your love for me has written every line.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

The Beginning And The End

In the beginning, all we felt was love,

   Forgiveness, joy, contentment, ecstasy;

And in the end, we were the victims of

   Neediness, hate, resentment, jealousy.

While other hearts walked cautiously, ours dared;

   When every daring heart fell, we ascended.

We made a heaven out of all we shared

   And we were damned to hell the day it ended.

We swore that we would always be together;

   You cursed, I acted like a maniac.

We said: “There is no storm we cannot weather;”

   We said the kind of things you can’t take back.

      And though our future’s Never now, not When—

      Because it’s you, I’d do it all again.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

Byron And Shelley At The Hippocrates Club

 

 

Whenever he was visiting London, Byron would stay at the Hippocrates Club on Dean Street in Soho—a private doctors-only club of which Byron had been made an honorary member thanks to his contributions into the causes and cures of clubfoot. 

The first time Shelley met him there for dinner, Byron gave him the grand tour, showing him, among other rooms, the immense library with its priceless historical collection of ancient medical manuscripts, the Anatomy Room with its articulated skeletons and plaster models of the human circulatory system, and the Hall of Cerebella, in which were displayed the preserved brains of everything from dormice to dolphins. 

“Shall we have a drink before dinner?” Byron asked rhetorically, and led Shelley into a high-ceilinged room, with a bar at one end, whose four walls were covered with shelves that groaned under the weight of hundreds of specimen jars.  Upon examining the contents of these jars, Shelley was shocked to perceive that they contained perfectly-preserved examples of the male reproductive organs of every animal species on earth, including humans. 

“Good Lord!”  he exclaimed.  “This room is completely filled with specimens of Male Genitalia!” 

“Of course it is,” Byron explained.  “This is the Members Lounge.” 

 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

To Absent Friends

 

I wish that you were hear to hear me say

   “Thank you for everything.”  I can just see

You shake your head and mutter: “That’s okay,”

   Or say: “Oh no—thank you,” and smile at me

Like I did anything that could compare

   With what you did for me without a thought.

To find someone with heart like yours is rare;

   It can’t be measured and it can’t be taught—

Just missed and mourned so much after it ends.

   You were the definition of sincere,

And in your memory I’ll give my friends

   The hug that you’d give me if you were here—

      And be there for them all unselfishly

      The way that you were always there for me. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

The Catch Of Wings

When it came to romance, no one could top us.

   We met and it was instant chemistry.

We knew the arms of love would never drop us,

   So when we fell, we fell gloriously.

We shared the heights and never shunned the deep.

   We defined “precious” by each other’s worth.

We had a love that made the angels weep

   To see true heaven in two souls on earth.

And then it went to hell, in flames that seared

   A hundred times more than the fires of love,

When all we hoped was killed by all we feared

   And we became the haunted victims of

      A love that ruled the heavens like a hawk

      And crashed to earth the day we tried to walk. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

Dear Death

You’ve got a lot to answer for, you cold

   Son of a bitch—the way you work your trade

Sucks knives—taking the young before the old,

   Ignoring Kissinger (I bet he paid

You off with the Vietnamese he killed

   To get that Peace Prize)—letting monsters live

And profit while the world’s caskets are filled

   With innocents.  Just once, please, put a shiv

Between a tyrant’s ribs—just once I’d like to see

   The harmless make it out alive instead

Of being slaughtered by the conscience-free—

   Just once give those who deserve to be dead

      The dark dirt nap of your eternal slumber.

      And if you need that shiv, you’ve got my number. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

No Man's Land

When I was little I could barely see

For all the family surrounding me.

My parents and their parents arm in arm,

Uncles and aunts protecting me from harm— 

Making a special place for me to hide,

My brothers, friends, and sister at my side.

And when we marched, I moved where they directed.

No matter where we went, I felt protected. 

I took them all for granted, like you do

When those you love become a part of you.

So when the end began, I cannot say,

But one by one they slowly dropped away

Until one day I looked around to see

That there was no one else in front of me.

Great-grandparents, uncles and aunts, my mother,

Grandparents, father, friends, my youngest brother 

Had all, all fallen, all fallen away,

And left me there alone to face the day

With nothing up ahead but No Man’s Land

And no one at my side to hold my hand. 

And now, as darkness overwhelms the day,

Like all who followed, I must lead the way

Exposed and frightened, wishing I could flee—

But it is my responsibility 

To be a comfort and protect from harm

The ones who walk behind me, arm in arm—

And make a special place where they can hide

With brothers, friends and sisters at their side 

And let them see me marching strong and tall

And make them feel protected, till I fall;

And one by one they take my place and stand

Upon the endless verge of No Man’s Land.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

 

 

 

 

Byron and Shelley and Buddhism

When Byron decided to become a Buddhist, he gave up all but five shirts, four pair of pants, three jackets, two pair of shoes, and one household appliance, a state of the art vacuum cleaner. 

One afternoon, when Shelley was visiting Byron’s Spartan accommodations, he noticed that while the floors of every room were immaculate, each and every corner was grimy with dust and grit. 

”I don’t Understand,” Shelley said. 

Byron, who was seated in the lotus position, replied in a low monotone: “Of course you don’t; it is the common lot of mankind.” 

“I’m not talking about Mankind, I’m talking about your Living Room,” Shelley cried.  “You obviously vacuum the Floors, but what I don’t Understand is, when you’re doing it, why don’t you vacuum the Corners as well?”

"Because," said Byron sadly, "I don't have any attachments."

 

A Delicate Balance

The plague takes many forms—a brassy lush,

   A daughter’s failure at the marriage game,

A wife who has to rouge her face to blush,

   A dead son who’s little more than a name,

And your best friends, blasé and terrified,

   Who only have to ask and you obey,

For in a world where love is petrified,

   The rights they have give them the right to stay.

And when the scale of what the years have lost

   Has overwhelmed you, and the scales you hold

Tip down to guilt, and you must face the cost

   Of that hard-fought retreat called getting old,

      You toss the verdict out and share the crime,

      Off-balance for the first and final time.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

The Plague

If you didn’t see the 1996 revival of A Delicate Balance with George Grizzard, Rosemary Harris and Elaine Stritch, then you will undoubtedly enjoy the current revival with John Lithgow, Glenn Close and Lindsay Duncan. Close uses the logic of Agnes like a weapon and a shield; Lithgow embraces the lost, bemused distance of Tobias; Lindsay Duncan (I dare you to find a syllable of her American accent that isn’t authentic) makes Claire a lost soul as well as a spirit guide (spirit as in liquor, mostly);  and Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins as Harry and Edna are fabulously offbeat, with Balaban down for a drink one moment and down the rabbit hole the next, and Higgins making you hate Edna almost immediately.  Only Martha Plimpton  as daughter Julia feels like she’s in a different play.  She is all bark and no bite—literally:  she delivers her lines like a tourist in a foreign country who thinks that speaking English loud enough will make the  natives understand her. 

So yes, on its own merits, this production is funny, it’s sharp, it’s disturbing, and it’s very entertaining.  The thing is, the 1996 version was all those things plus terrifying, which exposed a level in the play that is only glimpsed in one or two moments in this production. 

What’s this production missing?  I think of it as the Undertoad.  (And thanks for embedding that one in my brain 36 years ago, John Irving.)  In this play, there’s a crack in the ice that everyone ignores.  Agnes skates around it, Claire drinks so she won’t see it (and then drinks some more so she can get the courage to jump up and down on it), daughter Julia gets married to run away from it, Harry and Edna acknowledge it, and Tobias goes along to get around it.  Without that crack in the ice, the play runs the risk of being a glib comedy of bad manners, with a lot of laughs that should be nervous and add to the tension, instead of being, well, comforting.  And Tobias becomes a henpecked hubbie instead of someone who’s so afraid of thin ice that he measures and weighs every step he takes.  And because Lithgow doesn’t do that, there’s no sense of the lava in Tobias that causes his eruption in Act Three. 

Also (and I don’t think there’s a word for this, so let’s call it hop scotching) a lot of the time, the actors are moving before they’re grounded—reacting before they’ve taken in the thing they’re reacting to.  If this was music, they’d be coming in before the downbeat, and with the same off-tempo result.  The strong moments are weakened and diminished because characters are acting out the results of a decision that is skipped over—they’re hop scotching over the moment when they take in the fact that they’ve been attacked or questioned or defeated, a moment they have to acknowledge before responding to it or else there’s no gravity behind anything they do. 

The only one not guilty of this is Lindsay Duncan, who spends a great deal of this production living in and reacting to a deeper version of the play than is presented onstage.  Her reactions retroactively raise the bar on everything that’s going on.  But never to the level of the bar that was set by the 1996 revival.

So if you never saw that revival, go see this one. 

And if you did see that revival, go see this one as well—because it will, by what is absent in it, reinforce everything that made the 1996 revival a classic.



Feminism

 

 

When something in you hurts or causes pain,

   You fight it with a dose of something strong—

Take medicine until disease is slain;

   Pop pills to counteract whatever’s wrong.

And that’s what Feminism is: a cure

   To stabilize the body politic—

Fighting an ill with medicine so pure,

   The fear of taking it makes some men sick.

Like casts are burdens once you heal the break

   And wheelchairs useless once you’re on your feet,

The point of Feminism is to make

   The need for Feminism obsolete.

      It’s not about enforced diversity—

      It’s about healing inequality.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells



Byron and Shelley at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

While attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Byron and Shelley obtained lodgings from a local lawyer who had two beautiful daughters named Faith and Hope.  Because of the thickness of their accents, Shelley thought of them as Feth and Hawp, and while Feth was the prettier of the two, she did not hesitate to express a flood of aggressively vocal opinions about everything from the weather to politics, and spoke so constantly that it would have taken a medical examination to determine exactly how she managed to breathe.  Shelley much preferred Hawp, a demure and respectful creature who had little to say about anything at all while in her sister’s presence, but she was smitten with Byron.  

On their second night in town, Shelley took Feth to see a comedy from England, during which she continually whispered comments, questions and opinions about the acting.  Meanwhile, Byron took Hawp out to dinner, and the moment they sat down, Byron found himself in the company of a woman who was just as vocal, twice as opinionated, and ten times as discontented as her sister.  His sole contribution to her unceasing flow of invective and dissatisfaction was the occasional grunt of sympathy and the infrequent interjection of the words “Oh really?”  “Do you now?” and “Is that so?” 

At the end of the evening, having bid their respective dates good night, the two men retired to their chambers in a state of wearisome distemper. 

“How was your evening?” Byron asked. 

“Oh it was Intolerable,” Shelley declared.  “The Creature chattered away throughout the entire Performance.  She is a sad Paradox, Byron—her opinions are as Odious as her features are Beautiful.  And how was your dinner with Hawp?”

 

Byron shook his head sadly. “It was a date worse than Feth,” he replied.



Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Lear's Daughters

Three Daughters Of King Lear by Gustav Pope

There were three sisters once upon a time:

   One sister was as brutal as a fact,

One sister spoke of law and dreamed of crime,

   And one had all the heart the others lacked.

There were three girls who served an angry fool:

   One kept the peace, one tried to be endearing,

One gave advice that hid her ridicule,

   And all three learned the trick of disappearing.

There were three daughters of a lonely queen:

   One was the softness that she had to hide,

One was the need that made her feel unclean,

   And one the hate that burned her up inside.

      Three princesses: one hard, one soft, one shrew;

      One warm, one cool, one sly—and all untrue.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

Everything that our eyes see is a vision

Everything that our eyes see is a vision

   That our eyes were constructed to believe

Is worth a look.  Each glance makes a decision

   About what it will not or will perceive.

Sight is a tool that’s differently endowed—

   Dogs can’t see colors, cats stare at a ghost,

And we see faces in a passing cloud

   And Jesus in a piece of melba toast.

We look upon the world like it’s our book,

   But it’s a mirror—it needs us to be.

We see ourselves no matter where we look

   And never see past what we need to see.

      So tell me, love, and always tell me true,

      What I’m not seeing when I look at you. 

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells