Just like I read the news
She stood in the doorway that day in fifty seven
on that warm bright sunny morn
leaning against the sill
told us what we didn’t want to hear
Children, dad died this night
we went on reading our comics
not wanting to listen
Here comes the son
there went the sun
out of my life
Grandparents and aunts perished thereafter
but it was just like I read the news, as a boy
I just wanted to hold his hand
Say, you want a revolution?
two died that year
well, you know . . . .
baby you can drive my hearse
it couldn’t get much worse
She sang will you still need me
when she was sixty
four years later
I thought I didn’t
I was heltered and skeltered all over the place
doin’ it in the road
no mother nature’s son
I got blisters on my soul
while my guitar loudly screeched
Hare Rama
I rode the pony
down the long and winding road
back to where I once belonged
She stood in the doorway in nineteen eight oh
on that cold bright sunny morn
head against the sill
she told me what I didn’t want to hear
Walter, John was killed
No comic books to block the pain
my guitar started to weep
and in the end
I got a phone call
no one in the doorway anymore
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This poem was first published at Blue Five Notebook in the summer 2012 music special.
Walter Bjorkman is a writer from Brooklyn, NY, now residing in the foothills of the Adirondacks. His poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Scrambler, Poets & Artists, THIS Literary Magazine, Connotation Press, Foliate Oak, Wilderness House Literary Review, A-Minor, Blue Five Notebook, BluePrint Review, Metazen and others. His collection of short stories, Elsie’s World, was published in January 2011.
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Thanks, Michelle! Too kind…
I love the interspersed lyrics throughout – gives the poem such a rolling, moving, almost journeying pace through such intimate moments. Thank you for sharing, Michelle & Walter!