Welcome to Stacie Marinelli!

Photo by Jovica Trajkovski

Tonight I'd like to post some poems by my close friend Stacie Marinelli.  We met in a writers' group that met in Boston years and years ago.  I hope that you will enjoy her poems inspired by musicians born in the 1940s Michael Franks and Mickey Hart.

Breathless – for Michael Franks (born in 1944)

Stacie Marinelli

So now we’re on a beach in Rio

and the saxophones tremble, the flutes trill,

and we’re drinking margaritas,

but it’s so not Jimmy Buffet,

it’s New York cool, Paris chic

And now we’re strolling the Tokyo streets in the rain

and the cookie jar is empty and she has popsicle toes

and Michael dreams he swam with dolphins and

wrestled a live nude girl

Practice makes perfect when it comes to love since

love is a string of pearls, a slow dance, a symphony,

and, as we all know, love is the answer we seek

And Monk’s mixed into the melody

and Miles and Paul Desmond and even Van Gogh

and the cry for freedom echoes

from Red Square to Soweto

but mostly it’s all love love love

He’s a skinny guy with thinning hair,

growing older like I am,

and I’m showing my age just by writing about him.

Christ, this guy hasn’t been big since the 80’s

and now his music’s called “smooth jazz”

which makes all the purists I know cringe.

But I don’t care when I'm inside this musical dream

where jungle parrots scream, jaguar and python fight

to stay alive, and we all roast bananas, drink mate tea

around a fire, and are engulfed by the raging river that is love.

And as the lyrics gradually enter me, I'm no longer in DC,

I’m lounging in a kimono on a breezy Sunday, somewhere

seated on a patio flooded by sunlight, listening to waves

that resound endlessly

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stacie also provided some music by Michael Franks:

Rainy Night in Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoBH00oJa2M

When the Cookie Jar is Empty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1uL3xlIUGM

When Sly Calls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1bj-JYOW8k

Down in Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DR7ZpVkIsc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That moment  - Stacie Marinelli

dedicated to Mickey Hart (born 1943)

and his classic percussion album "Planet Drum"

Island Groove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvKBLIaSyAg

I was writing in my journal and you had that drum CD playing and

it was driving and urgent and

it was all the things I wanted it to be

as I wrote with the rhythms and remembered

a scene from back in college, dancing with a troupe of Puerto Rican men -

and as I was brought back with the music,

I remembered all the living I did back then,

all the living for the moment.

And the CD in your apartment ended

and I was left with the memory and the music.

This was not a transistor moment –

this was the edge of the world -

and you were there and you

were in a completely different moment

but for that moment

that one single solitary moment

it really didn’t matter

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Stacie's memory in the poem has even more poignancy, given what Puerto Rico has suffered from Hurricane Maria.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Photo by Juan Tituana

If you'd like to listen to more Mickey Hart, here is his "Umayeyo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5TVPNUF9xc

Here is his "Elephant Walk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxyqgdl_Ybo 

I'll add a video of him with Kodo drummers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuLWqw6btw8 

I'll finish with a version of the Grateful Dead's "Fire on the Mountain" that features him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jt-2huWAg

Enjoy!