“This Shirt” by Mary Chapin Carpenter

On By Christina's WordsIn Music

This shirt is old and faded
All the color’s washed away
I’ve had it now for more damn years
Than I can count anyway
I wear it beneath my jacket
With the collar turned up high
So old I should replace it
But I’m not about to try

This shirt’s got silver buttons
And a place upon the sleeve
Where I used to set my heart up
Right there anyone could see
This shirt is the one I wore to every boring high school dance
Where the boys ignored the girls
And we all pretended to like the band

This shirt was a pillow for my head
On a train through Italy
This shirt was a blanket beneath the love
We made in Argeles
This shirt was lost for three whole days
In a town near Buffalo
‘Till I found the locker key
In a downtown Trailways bus depot

This shirt was the one I lent you
And when you gave it back
There was a rip inside the sleeve
Where you rolled your cigarettes
It was the place I put my heart
Now look at where you put a tear
I forgave your thoughtlessness
But not the boy who put it there

This shirt was the place your cat
Decided to give birth to five
And we stayed up all night watching
And we wept when the last one died
This shirt is just an old faded piece of cotton
Shining like the memories
Inside those silver buttons

This shirt is a grand old relic
With a grand old history
I wear it now for Sunday chores
Cleaning house and raking leaves
I wear it beneath my jacket
With the collar turned up high
So old I should replace it
But I’m not about to try

“This Shirt” by Mary Chapin Carpenter, from State of the Heart

This Last Great Country Song

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I took the interstate in a ’53 V-8
I followed her from Haight
Ashbury to Ashbury Park
And my spirit soared
With that coast-to-coast billboard
Now I get my kicks
When mail-order mavericks
Fill the billboard charts

But my heart still aches
When I think of the kiss
Into which we rushed headlong
I don’t know if I can take
Much more of this
This last great country song

I danced a jig at The Blind Pig
I took another swig
From a fifth of Maker’s Mark
I walked the buzzard-buzzy sky
Where the deer were getting high
Now I’m on the floor
At the convenience store
Loading soda into a cart

But my heart still quakes
When I reminisce
On drinking all night long
I don’t know if I can take
Much more of this
This last great country song

With its failed crops its foreclosed loans
Its store-bought whiskey its wit home-grown
Its waitresses who’ve left no traces
Of their pantie-lines their X-tans
Their monster-trucking exes their dash-mounted fans
Their fanned-out cartridge cases

Through which I ran for my life from a guy with a knife
I’d been led by his wife
To their trailer park
Where the strung-out utility poles
Still found no use for our lost souls
Now I’ll be running for mayor
I’ll be leading a prayer
Breakfast next to Wal-Mart

But my heart still breaks
To think I’ll no longer be remiss
To think I’ll no longer do wrong
I don’t know if I can take
Much more of this
This last great country song

“This Last Great Country Song” by Paul Muldoon, from Songs and Sonnets. © Enitharmon Press, 2013.

“If you want to be a writer, do the writing. Chase the feeling …

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote2 Comments

If you want to be a writer, do the writing.  Chase the feeling.  Follow it faithfully wherever it leads.  Don’t write to be admired.  Don’t write for fame.  Don’t write to get published.  Don’t write because you have something to say.  Don’t write to become immortal.  Don’t write because you think you know the truth.  Don’t write because you have an attitude.  Don’t write to strike a pose in black clothing.  Don’t write to be cool.  Don’t write because you have an image of yourself as you see yourself squinting through the heavy burn of smoke motes rising in stage light from Gauloises cigarettes.  Don’t write only because you are lonely or because you feel deeply, see clearly, know truly, and are one of those who has paid attention to world and to the inner life.  Write for writing’s sake.  Write because you write.  Becoming a writer begins in the act of writing.  Do the writing.  All else is peripheral.  All else is secondary.  Write for the love of words as they appear upon the page.  Write for the love of words as they pass your lips.  Write for the love of language entering the ear.  Write first and foremost for the pure celebration of dictionary music.  It has been said that writers are those who have fallen in love with words and the world.  And yet, if you would become the best writer that you can be, there is something beyond simply ‘chasing the feeling.’

– John B. Lee, from Building Bicycles in the Dark: a practical guide to writing

I Love You More

On By Christina's WordsIn Art, Humor6 Comments
I Love You More
“I Love You More” by Doug Savage, SavageChickens.com

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I love you more.

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved …

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote4 Comments

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

For Jen

(updated to correct the link to Jen’s site at The Soberist Blog)