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The Chris Chandler Show

  • Sofas and #2 Pencils

    Sofas and #2 Pencils-still the same song to me



    poem by Phil Rockstroh and Chris Chandler

    "Still the Same Song to Me" By Chris Chandler, David Rovics, Samantha Parton



    At times I feel inmeshed in the loneliness and longing of all things,

    asking myself what would I rather be?



    THE WORDS HAVE CHANGED ON THE WATER TOWER

    IN THE TOWN WHERE WE FIRST MET

    IT STILL FEELS LIKE I'M COMIN HOME

    IT'S BEEN YEARS SINCE I LEFT



    I wonder if inanimate objects ask the same questions.



    PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR

    THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING

    THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO

    IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME



    sometimes I'm convinced that

    an exhausted sofa will sigh, longing to be a hammock swaying in a tropical breeze, tethered between two palm trees



    the hammock sighs longing to be a magnificent bed in a luxury hotel in a great city while two Champaign sipping sophisticates meet for an elicit tryst



    the cigarette lighter they use after there stolen hour sighs in a crazed desire to be the eternal flame that illuminates a graveyard of forgotten soldiers who gave there life in a forgotten war



    the forgotten war sighs "I wish I were just a quiet evening at home."



    I hear the loneliness and longing of all things



    THERE IS A DIFFERENT FAMILY ON THE FRONT PORCH

    IN THE HOUSE WHERE I GREW UP

    BUT THAT DON'T MEAN I'M NOT THE SAME GIRL

    THAT I WAS WHEN I GAVE YOU MY LOVE



    and I wonder do the practical #2 pencils of accountants fantasize about drawing bawdy pictures of urban sophisticates in a luxury hotel

    does the luxury hotel dream of dropping it's facade of rectitude and becoming a flop house quartering a poet sprawled on an exhausted sofa composing brilliant, unpublishable verse while being pestered by bill collectors on telephones which grow disgusted of tormenting the multitudes for niggling sums so that those telephones begin orating the sermon on the mount.



    Does the sermon on the mount really want to be a Vegas lounge act?



    PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR



    what if there was a great awakening of atoms



    THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING



    where they all remembered their vast and intricate histories,



    THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO



    an Atomic explosion of memory



    IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME





    we might hear the tale of a fleck of floating lint that had once been a part of a soldiers boot lace that he gave to his beloved to lace her corset the night before he died in a forgotten battle in a forgotten war.



    A fleck of lint that was once part of the molecular structure of the linen sheets in a luxury hotel lying beneath the skin of a cheetah, now reduced to being a bed spread, yet some how evolved into an alley cat which was gutted to became strings of violins that entertained elegant guests in a luxury hotel



    THAT OLD CHURCH DOWN ON THE CORNER

    WELL, IT'S NOW A CIRCLE K

    GRAND MA SHE WAS LAID TO REST THERE

    I STILL GO DOWN THERE TO PRAY





    PLAY ME A SONG ON THE GUITAR



    THE ONE MY GRANDMA USED TO SING



    THOUGH SHE PLAYED IT ON PIANO



    IT'S STILL THE SAME SONG TO ME



    That fleck of lint now has nothing but time on it's hands



    to float in the air and sing

    of love of beauty and mythical beast of poverty of sadness of luxury and that fleck of lint drifts into your beer unnoticed



    which you drink down and it sees the

    joys and sorrows of your life and you are

    buried forgotten in the earth and rise as



    grass, which is eaten by cows who go to



    slaughter and are served in a luxury hotel



    and washed down with a beer and you, my friend, get to see Saturday night all over again.