David Edwards

As poetry recycles Nurons

Week 7 reverie

“The whole vanished universe is preserved by an odor”

I’m waiting for Rose at Radiance. Someone lights a beeswax candle. The smell. The smell of a thousand beeswax candles! Can you imagine it? When I was living in England there was an estate in Summereset. Several times a year the owners would polish up the chandliers, bring in a string section and we would dance as a thousand beeswax candles glowed above us. “It was so splendid Rose , so romantic” Rose is not impressed. ” Just a vestige of Imperialism Colonialism” she replies. ” Perhaps, but it was charming. I guess I will be writing this one by myself.” ‘Why are you going to even bother to try and take it somewhere” Rose asks. “It’s an exercise in reverie” I explain. I start to write. She takes out a huge marine biology textbook. But she can’t stay out of the game. The song is coming fast and the book is tedious. “Lets see what you got” she says snaching my notebook. “Well it’s cute” she has to admit “But you’re six verses into it and you still havn’t mentioned the candles.” ” I cant seem to get the damn candles in there without breaking the mood I’ve created” Rose picks up the pencil

The violins like nightingales

The cellos soft and low

The melodies rise as above our eye

A thousand candles glow

Damn she’s good! It moves in both directions. Up and down at the same . And there’s that perfect interior rhyme, right on the third line where it’s supposed to be. ” So do I get some copywright?” she asks. “You contributed a whole stanza. Of course you do” I replly.” Dosnt really matter. No one will be interested. it’s archaic nonsense.”

Have the house to myself through the night. The silence and solitude are intoxicating. Something will come through here. And it does, just as I wake. “If I could only love someone like you.” The music is coming at the same time. Root to the minor6 two times then minor 2 to the 5 chord. Pure pop. – Four Fig Newtons for breakfast and I head straight for Café Love. Rose is there. I write the line out and hum the melody. “So what we have here is an If-then statement” Rose says stirring the steam out of her coffee. “The if- then concept comes from a book of poetry. But this is a pop song. You’re not stealing an idea when you move it into a different art form. You’re adapting it. So just take it somewhere.”-  She sits doodling for twenty minutes then starts writing. “Then we’d grow like a tree in the sun. Complementary intertwining and shinning as one” It nestles right into the melody perfectly. Minor 2 to the 5 chord- “so who is the you” Rose asks.” There is no you” I reply. “Then what the hell is the song about” Rose wonders.” “I was married for twenty years. It was an emotionally dead relationship but I stayed in it because I felt it was what was best for my daughter. After the divorce I was in some pretty turbulent relationships” “Hurts so good eh” she smiles quoting John Mellencamp” “Exactly, that’s what the song is about and the chorus is about putting all that behind me and settling into a stable relationship”.” Is that what you want to do” Rose asks. “Hell no but my daughter thinks it would be a good idea. “Like a moth to flame” she writes. I head over to Radiance for some demiana. Four hours later we’ve dumped the whole bottle of demiana into our coffee cups and filled over 11 pages with lyrics, some of them pretty good. “Where the hell did the mermaids and the flying fish come from” I ask as I look at what she has just written. “Too much demiana” Rose replies.

Spend the day at Cafe Love. Rose is prepping Vennesa for her Chemistry Exam. H2O That’s chemistry, Water-tears. Brooks crying spells when we were first living together. So strange because we were so happy then. “I don’t know why I’m Crying” Rose and I spend the rest of the day writing “Tears”