Paul Siegell (Philly, USA): Three Poems

*11.17.05 – Galactic – TLA, PA*
(—most I've ever seen Fisher dance)

word moves
tour words
words with eyes open and mouths about to:

direction words:
start here, head down, turn left—hup,
two miles and a u-turn, retrace, turn right—
grocery list words:
pick this up, and this, o and don’t forget this:

put a “re” before “new”
after a space add “orleans”
and, crushed, you’ve got memorial words
constructive words—the t-shirt words
of a saxophonists in a quintet
from a mending delta city—

jazz-funk yeah-word fusions, song-
building, song-storming rock and
crowds of words
true word wings and roll word concerts
word tickets to word parties
eventful words and all the words attending
cute-girl words, stunning loveliness word
eyelashes, applause for word rhythms and bold
word drumming, beat-controlling time words
bouncing towering-wow words—
that moly is holy wow words—

with knowledge of not enough words:
you’ve gotta allow the wows—

and where do all these words come from?

useless words! instrumental-only words!
words pict outta the crowd:

there’re bands I love that never sing a word.

*06.22.07 – Wilco – Count Basie Theatre, NJ*

all for the show of audience,

a lyricist serves his language as if pulling down a building
from the small city block of bar tap architecture. a fluid,

inebriating pour.

like an ashtray anthem, lest we’ve penned some other medicine,
drinking smoke swims overhead in the night’s aquarium of air.

charged by an avant-guitar, listen-licked by the lyricist,

Wilco tension crescendos rendezvous with introspective
fluorescence

and whip the attendance of epileptic starfish into flight—

but what are the chords to when the kick drum shakes the serifs
off the alphabet in my eyesight?

if you look close enough, chord constellations take great pains—
while as wise as time, the audible dance of a drummer at drums

handshakes all the letters a pick uses, from string to string,
to spell a scale in the taxicab of a measure.


*06.28.07 – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – F at the TLA, PA*
(—for the sold-out, short-show disappointed)

a fan-thrown
rose

bemoans
stage front

as roadies
tear down

to boos

© Paul Siegell 2008