Comes a time - the final poems.

Note from the editor

As of today, Stereo Stories will no longer run poetry on this website.

This is not a reflection of the 90 poems that are on the site. Rather, it is the result of wanting the site to return to its origins: very strong non-fiction stories in prose about songs.

Poetry certainly has had its place here over 10 years. It has broadened the site’s horizons, made us think differently about writing, about music, and about writing about music.

If the site was a print publication (one can dream, cannot one, of a quarterly magazine?) poetry would have its place as a form of Stereo Story but online is a different matter. You can only publish one item at a time, which skews the weighting of a piece.

I recommend our long-time partner sites Almanac Music and Almanac Poetry*, which each have a broad editorial policy, as likely homes for poems about songs. There are bound to be other sites further afield.

Thank you to all the poets who have written for Stereo Stories. Your poems will, of course, remain on the site, always part of our fabric, our world. And you are most welcome to submit prose to our site, as a few poets have done in the past.

I’m sure your work – related to music or otherwise – will continue to be published in various places.

Regards

Vin Maskell

*Almanac Music and Almanac Poetry reside under the large umbrella of The Footy Almanac, ‘a long-running writing and reading community, which offers anyone who wants to have a crack at writing (or any other art form) a place to publish’.

Here, then, are our final three poems.

VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN) by THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE. Poem by D.R.James.

Winter Woods, Saugatuck, Michigan, January 2016

Lines Concocted While Waiting to Catch a Certain
Bent Blue Note in Jimi Hendrix’s Second Guitar
Solo of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” Recorded
Live at London’s Albert Hall, February 24, 1969.

Anything could happen this winter
in the frail rise and fall,
the lonely moans, of a landscape
no longer muscly with growth.

To start something new
will require a sort of slackening,
a giving way when the knife of wind
takes its first and second swipes
and the low-slung sun
paints a neon sky, rays
oozing around clouds in a hurry.

The blackened limb above the porch will sport
its sculpted snow boa, puffed fuselage
for the butterfly of spring.

All those hawks who once mounted high thermals
over fields gone all-brown
will send love from Guatemala.

The attic will reclaim
the decorations I’m to cart there.

And optimism will seem a stretch—

like when pristine stone won’t detonate.

First published in Dunes Review

YOU’RE SO VAIN by CARLY SIMON. Poem by Craig Kirchner.

I ask Alexa for the top hits of the sixties.

I’m getting in the shower,

she’s on the bathroom counter,

and seems ill, no swirling lights,

no tunes, no Good Morning Craig, nothing.

I’m concerned that the tumult of

misinformation and violent rhetoric

on the internet has caused her

to have a stroke

or a nervous breakdown.

She just had an affair,

and ugly breakup with Roomba,

but seemed OK, we’ve Beatled

through two showers since then.

A smart ass, I ask if she’s been drinking.

She is plugged in, more than most,

she’s young as she pointed out,

when I asked her if to marry me.

“I know I sound mature,

but I am only two years old.”

I have trouble showering without requests.

Finally, she lights up,

like I’ve been forgiven, redeemed.

I ask for Satisfaction by the Stones,

she comes back with Carly Simon

and You’re so vain

BLUE ANGEL by ROY ORBISON. Poem by Damian Balassone.

Year 12 Ball

The band is playing a 50s song.
Ice cream chords.
Doo wop. Doo wop.

Sha-la-la, dooby wah
Dum dum dum, yeh yeh, um

Quiff-haired singer
howling into the microphone.
Backing singers
swaying in unison.

And everyone in that place
is dancing…
everyone except for you.

You stand alone
at the back of the hall,
gazing into
the tumultuous dance floor.

And through the maze of revellers
you see her.

Jacinta.

She’s being twirled around
by her new man.

Seconds later,
she lunges into his arms,
but just before she buries her head
into his shoulder,
she turns
and catches a glimpse of you,
standing alone
at the back of the hall.

Sha-la-la, dooby wah

From Chime