Cinema Song

Who was that under the marquee?
Who came to me in the midnight sun?
Was it you, wrapped in a blanket?
Was it you, hoping for the dawn?

Who came to me with large watching eyes?
Who watched me shiver in the winter wind?
Was it you in that wiretapped cinema?
Was it you reading subtitles as a child's hymn?

Who was it who wept on my shoulder?
Who watched the heroine disappear?
Was it you, draped in the midnight?
Was it you, sitting with me there?

Were you mercy, my love?
Were you life?
Have I found you, my love?
Have I laughed?

Were you always my love?
And was I not quite close?
Have I known you, my love?
Is this one life enough?

From the 70s during a period where I wrote a number of rhymed and metered pieces. This is more successful than I remembered it. I'm not sure of the movie, but I am thinking it may have been Jean Luc Godard's Breathless. This piece reflects both Leonard Cohen's songs, and Jacques Brel, the Belgian singer/songwriter. Those unfamiliar with Brel should try and find the broadway cast album of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. The songs are dark, funny, bitter, romantic and beautiful phrased.

Sister

down at the bottom of the sorry sisters
is a bad story figuring on my initial appearance
who do you think kept track of these things?
certainly it wasn't you oh sister who is not
my sister shoe-buyer memory changer
she who criticizes my voice at the very end
of time the fake intellectual the soft player
of sorry games seeking right and left
to find the maximum social success in a
limited definition crossed by financial success
of an aluminum nature and keeping me
out of it all, not that it matters, in a year
or three my children's children will still
see me and she will be a family story, the antic
aunt no one ever saw, afraid of having her
pockets picked and incapable of even
the mildest logical structure. Her sister's
jokes at her expense and my own words
about her folly. The Huntress pays off
her own guilt debt: "She was the first;
Mother's madness was the song she learned."
whereas she, the republican in the mix,
knew Mother was mad, early on and so
avoided the crushing burden of her judgement.
And I adapt it all, the sorry sister's poor
understanding, her critique of the Lovin'
Spoonful: “so ugly” her first
husband (gay ex-priest) running the coffeehouse
“since you asked” her wedding song
her inability to be gracious/Jacques Brel
Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
wasn’t cheap enough for her. She let
me know. What I hated the most: that
she took Tommy B.’s painting from me
a wedding gift, not like I had a choice.
She told mother I shouldn’t read Freud
when I was thirteen, like she could
ever really understand what it was like
in me. But I had her diary from high school
full of prayers and boys she liked
who wouldn’t give her the time of day
so boxed in she was and still is. So
Republican girl is right about the sister
She became Mother’s legacy child
And I am so glad I am not her. A
great gift from the Lady,
and my own choice.