THOUGHTS I HAVE LIVED WITH

     These are poems I love.  They are each quite different.  I'll add more as time goes on, but for now this is a beginning.  "Lady In Flight" is perhaps my favorite poem, it has a jazzy big city blues feel to it, but on a darker side, it dovetails a tragedy, which at the time I didn't even know I was writing about.  My forth book of poetry is titled Lady In Flight, and themes from this poem run through the entire book. 

       "Datsun Red Lemon" ,  yes, I owned this vehicle, and never have I seen a vehicle fall apart so regularly.  Only now can I laugh about it. The poem is hilarious, until I remember how much of it was true.

      "Lucy Looks Twice" , was originally titled, "The Dark of the Dawn and The Dusk are Just Mating".   It takes its inspiration from the Bob Dylan song, "Who Killed Davie Moore".  But it takes it into the gut of America, and how one half of the coin of our democracy is the reality it was built on, and was dependent upon, the genocide of an entire continent of American Indians.   I lampoon various Presidents, Generals, Bishops and the like, heck, I make sure I don't even spare myself.  While Christianity certainly gets a thrashing, at the core of the poem is an intense respect for Jesus, and his willing choice to be a martyr, an example so few of us follow.  This poem is written from the perspective of the Indian, so at times it is brutal in its honesty, but it is also a very modernesque poem. I've even got my e-mail address embedded in it, go figure.  I am well aware of the other half of the coin of our democracy.  My ancestors were pioneers, extremely hearty, extremely brave, very loving people, but their story I have yet to write.  Oh, Lucy Looks Twice was the daughter of Black Elk.  I just love the name.  Here are the first few lines from these poems. 

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Dancing Across Heaven Together Again

I was there the night that they met
Blowing my horn in a bar by the road
He came from the shadows and asked her to dance
Like a prince his hand twirled her once
Then laid her out right

Too Hot To Handle

I know that I'm too hot to handle
I know that I'm too cold to know
Yet I lay here wanting and aching
An island too hot to handle
Please, can you handle me well

Lucy Looks Twice     (Sees So Much More Then I)

The dark of the dawn and the dusk are mating
Black wings of dust
Have set upon the prairie
The tribal lands are scattered
To the sand to the sand
And the pearly white man’s
Has all the sand in his hand
While the question, "Who done it"?
Lies buried in time
Lost in a nation
That cares not for its an

Datsun Red Lemon

Oh Datsun, Oh Datsun
What ails you so
I was going to call you "Good-body"
But "The Great Red Lemon" took hold

Lady In Flight

Flight 901
      There’s a lady up there
       who rips the sunrise
       right from beneath the street lights
                      She’s a lady in flight

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Gary Lange © 1999