INTENSE DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (SONG-IN-PROGRESS)

 

My road once was a riverbed
So hard to get it through my head
Although shells poke out of the watershed
It morphed into a now-ancient farmstead
//
But so hard to proliferate in sandy soil
Sweaty involvement of those who toil
Flora silently struggling in turmoil
Earth defeating by strangling coil
//
So now the road is rutted and rough
Neighbors look neither left nor right, oddly enough
Our lives here are admittedly tough
But wouldn’t dare call anyone’s bluff
//
What is the mystery and melancholy of a street
De Chirico painted the dreamlike retreat
I move through it with an irregular heartbeat
Within a life with memories mainly bittersweet
//
Where is the love promised once upon a time
No sense wondering since I’ve passed my prime
The clock slowed down, gave up its chime
And my mind is merely an internal rhyme
//
Sometimes I can sense your passion
There is definitely a mutual attraction
But will always deny my reaction
Because love is merely an abstraction
//
We’re all refractions of light
Looking different to each, is it right?
To some we look like day, to some like night
But rarely is it really visual sight
//
So I wind down the road symbolizing life
Rutted, rocky and sometimes filled with strife
Circular as stone or straight as a sharpened knife
Interwoven with noise or sweet sounds of a fife…
//
© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

 MODERN BEOWULF (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)

 

Beowulf came to me in a dream

Bragging about his limousine 

Grendel and mom floating in the lake

Double dragons kill each other, Beowulf’s mistake

I'm back with Beowulf's dragons of mythology

But what led to this embryology?

Grendel and his mom lived through the dis-arming

Dynasty of Cain’s learned to be charming

 

Wake up and decorate with a dip pen and ink

Drawing tarot symbols, my art stinks

But the song I wrote plays on tenor guitar

As I leave Philly to travel not-so-far

 

Between 2 rivers Schuylkill and Delaware

Arrive in East Village’s Tompkins Square

Dave van Ronk shakes my hand and welcomes me

Then begins singing the St James Infirmary

 

Wander into the Cafe Wha

Electric guitars? How bourgeois!

Oh, man, the guitarist is not only hunky

He plays incredible music that is so funky

My great folk career too late to write words acoustically

Name’s Jimi Hendrix, inheriting the seat of Geat musically

 

And then I see Beowulf from my dreams

Talking to three other Penny Poker kings

Hrothgar, Hygelac, and an unknown king of Danes

With the one-armed jack Grendel passing out cocaine

Three tarot queens flirt with the men

Hildeburh, Modthryth, Hygd and then

The Hag! Grendel’s  mother shaggy yet youthful

I wonder if this version is kind or still brutal

 

Walking through the night to my rented room

Anonymous writer seventh century presumed

Did you speak the poem or did you sing?

Did you play the oud or lute or anonymous strings?

Or pound drums while telling of the Scyldings’ Spear Dane

Got lost thinking of Beowulf in the rain

 

Or anonymous was a woman (says Virginia Woolf)

A mother telling her toddlers stories of Beowulf?

Such a good tale picked up and passed around by bards

Maybe she was one of the queens of my tarot cards

     

Will never know….

 

© 2026 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Beowulf 7TH CENTURY SUTTON HOO HELMET