Memorial Day

Lyric/Verse/Poem for Paid Subscribers

I started writing poems and lyrics when I was 15 or 16. The lyrics I wrote were turned to song by guitar-player friends in garage bands. When I went to Bard College in 1968, everybody had been the crazy teenage poets in their high schools or prep schools, so I joined the school newspaper and followed that path. I jotted down lyrics occasionally over the years, and during the 2020 pandemic, took it up as a hobby again. But in between, I wrote these verses, inspired by some late 1990s songs by the Wallflowers that I couldn’t get out of my head (“Sixth Avenue Heartache” and “One Headlight”). I was also reading the novels and essays of novelist Walker Percy, and I attended a conference about his work at his hometown Covington, La. library. “Love in the Ruins” is my favorite Percy book, and some of the apocalyptic tone was inspired by that novel, a serio-comic take on a Civil War that takes place in his specific area of New Orleans, its suburbs, and bayous.

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