The
Harmelodian Anthem
by Dave Bidini
Have you heard the
story of the children who wandered
So deep into the garden where the monkeybird sings?
Swallowed by a green gulf of flowers and fauna,
They fell into the strange world of Dr. Drumstein.
Harmelodia.
City of the sleeping babies.
Ride the Toothsome Wavy.
(I took myself down to the bar, called your name out to the
stars.)
There's the big
museum, the lightbulbs, you've seen them,
The Horsery, and Seaweed Aquarium sit.
Dot and Bug were learning with the wingophones twirling,
So will they ever get back to father and home in...
I Fab
Thee
by Martin Tielli
No, you know you're
not the dumbest queer,
Like when they caught you in your undewear.
But you're different: peculiarly, uniquely strange (you're not
the same).
Somewhere, not here, there, not even between.
I fab thee in
the name of the fuzz.
(I fab thee so fabulously.)
They decided you
had okay hair.
That's when they caught you going "boop boop boop,"
So please be your lemon-sweet strawberry self,
No matter the hour, ever lay down with me.
(So long, folks!)
It's Easy
To Be With You
by Dave Bidini
Kingdoms tall and
the gardens deep, where the horsefly dreams and the locusts
sleep,
Royal flowers with their earthly wings, where the pollen seeds
and the queen bee feeds.
When has a girl
sniffed too much?
The worker's drone sting loses its touch,
And the birds all know, if it snows they'll go
To Harmelodia.
(Come on, now.)
The world's on fire in the garden.
The world's on fire in my garden.
The world's on fire in my heart.
Valleys rich with the vine and
rope where the horsefly dreams and the ants see low
(We got insects high as football pies.), where the wild dog plays
and the condor flies.
It's easy to be with you... (cause you're my friend).
Monkeybird
by Kevin Hearn
Monkeybird,
monkeybird,
My brother Bug and I heard you high up in a tree,
So high we couldn't see.
Monkey, hey. Monkey, hi.
Up the yobbinberry tree climb. My voice is hoarse and thin
From trying to imitate it.
I hope it
doesn't end before the day is done,
Cause we love the song.
It's sad when it's done.
Monkeybird,
monkeybird,
Do you eat bananas or worms?
Your voice haunting and free brings out the monkey in me.
(Monkeybird, up
high in banana tree.
Monkeybird, you sit all alone like me.)
Monkeybird,
monkeybird.
My brother, Bug, is a turd. He always sings along
And gets my favorite part wrong.
Invisible
Stairs
by Tim Vesely
You're flying high,
way up there.
Now you're sitting on the top of the air.
And you're falling, and you seem not to care,
Down invisible stairs.
Every up has its
down, so they say.
First a smile, then a frown takes its place
Until happy comes to clean up the place
And the rest of your cares.
Popolis
by Dave Bidini
In Popopolis,
pulpers pausing, playing in a pretty precipice,
And pointing to a pigeon, pouting, perching on a bust.
Plink! Popopolis.
In Popopolis,
pollys cling polly and a feather and a fool,
Peeling pomagranates, putting pennies in their pants,
Eating. Popopolis.
In Popopolis, ho,
Dr. Drumstein and the mighty blender bus.
Music is atonic, music is the rush
In Popopolis.
(You're beautiful, girl.)
I Am
Drumstein
by Dave Bidini
I'll push them
around, black dots on a page. Relay that together.
Impossible tools, taught badly at school. The children would
stay.
Was a humpbacked whale, was a leopard with spots. I knew I was
rare.
In Popopolis,
wingophone zubicus drums.
I am Drumstein.
Scenes of music, lush. Waxing words over belt lines.
Two hands on ten
strings, three pigeons who sing. We stand here together.
By wing or by fin, this melody's skin. The rhythmatic weather.
Crane, lily, and witch. Brain man in the fridge. Yes, everything
is real.
Cue the violins. Brings the cellos in. Pianos twirl for all the boys and girls. Hear the choir sing. Listen to the church bells chime. That guitar is drunk. The tympanies enraged. Wingaphones, we'll play them together. Zubicus, Albanian zither. Dot and Bug just stand there and listen. Drumstein providing, you're on God's mission.
The Music
Room
by Tim Vesely
Come one and all
down great glass halls,
Through doorways. Follow the floorways.
Bring nails and screws and inner-tubes.
Bring tin cans. Bring busy hands.
And enter the music room.
You have arrived,
now read the sign.
It's posted, clearly notified:
"There shall be no exception
To the law which states `No rules here!'
By order, Dr. Drumstein."
Zing-Zonic scales
on pans and pails.
Arpeggios up the wingophone.
We harmonize, don't memorize.
Just make it all up. That's the Rockery way.
Wingophone
by Kevin Hearn
I used to keep it
in a box.
One day the box was full of rocks.
I'm going to search my whole life through
Just for a breadcrumb of a clue.
My wingophone is gone.
You hold it firmly
with both hands
And stretch it like a rubber band.
Wonderful music will unfold
Just like a juicy jelly roll.
The Sky
Dreamed
by Dave Bidini
The sky dreamed a
cloud's death.
When you spoke, I saw your breath.
It floated down the avenue
Wrapped and rolled round a barber's poll,
And kissed all the little lips in the little town,
Made new all the sad and blue, took them from the ground.
Long roads,
dressing gowns,
Roses reposing in bloom.
Street lamps hover, swing.
A little smile on my little lips where there was a frown
Because of you.
Loving
Arms
by Dave Merritt
It takes a trip, a
step away from your own home
To see more clearly what otherwise you wouldn't know,
Like what makes a seed--sewn in garden fabric--grow.
Leave it up to the
sun to shine, the rain to fall around.
Leave it up to the earth to lie down and lay the ground
For something like love.
It takes a trip, a
step away from what you know
To trace your family back as far as time can go,
To see what made it and will forever let it grow.
Leave it up to the
loving arms to carry it along.
Leave it up to the beauty of love that's travelled on.
It didn't go it alone.
Leave it up to the
smallest pieces everything is made of.
They didn't go it alone. They hang on with loving arms.
Leave it up to the loving arms.
Father's
Sad Song
by Gord Downie
The concert was
today. I heard the wild crowd moan.
It's not that life's distasteful to me. It's just that I am all
alone.
If I should hear a bird, or when I'm making toast.
It's in the smallest moments. When I expect the least, I think of
you the most.
It's not that it's
a mystery, this newly-found malaise.
The trouble is, the mystery has taken your place.
I turn my head
away. Now everything is gone.
It's taken this catastrophe to see what you mean to me.
If I could have my way, I'd turn and start again.
We'd sing and dance and laugh and be exactly the same as we were
then.
Home
Again
by Martin Tielli
You know I've been
lost before. I don't need to metaphor
To speak me the power of this.
I just want to be home again
Where the bugs
aren't bugging me, the sticks aren't sticking me,
The owls aren't aren't hooting.
I just want to be home again.
Monkeybirds are
baiting us, crudely calculating us,
For dinner with us, not as guests.
But you and me, we're different. We always get along.
One and one are twice as strong as one.
(As one who's been lost before, I don't need to fairy tales, poems, or lies.)
Monkeybirds baiting
us--two, three, four songs at once.
The agenda is heavy at best.
But you and me, we're different. We always get along.
One and one are twice as strong as one
Who believes in you, always believe in you, be there when time goes like theives.
Song of
the Garden
by Dave Merritt
You couldn't have
asked for a better day to watch the Squeekums and the Sapbellies
play.
Take a recess from the hum-glum and step inside the Gardenarium.
There's a place
in the heart of Harmelodia...
It's greener than the greenest place you've been
(It's the keenest place I've seen.),
Where the honey crown vine climbs up to the clouds and tickles
them till rains comes out (and makes them...).
Frizzenlillies and Frankenfronds float like crocosmiles on sparkling ponds.
It's so nice to be back in Harmelodia...
Copyright (c) Jan 2000 - Feb 2005 by The USA Rheostatics Page