Subway Weather
Liner Notes
“Subway Weather” - #fawm 50/90 2024 song 28
Coming across these lyrics was a pleasure — I don’t remember if the challenge was to write without rhyme, but there’s very little rhyme here.
This song reminds me that I was a poet first. Sometimes my songs should probably be poems, and some of my old poems have become songs. I love language.
This is about transportation and weather-related danger in NYC but it’s also about mortality, as so many of my songs are, and fits my self-defined genre of #americanasati (Americana + maranasati). Maranati is a Buddhist meditation practice that keeps in mind the constant companion of death. “Oh that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow…” (Maranassati Sutta).
All my originals: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6mTUlPL-MmAm45IMVgat1necrh2mGnT6&si=sAdXP581ZNU__9rn
Remaining 2023 Skirmish lyrics to finish: 21
#fuc #acoustic #acousticonetake #ukulele #personwithukulele #onetake #girlwithukulele #singersongwriter #poetry #subways
Lyrics
The subway platform underwater by a foot
We watched the waterfall that poured from overhead
Until you mentioned hanging wires
And we thought better of it all
The tracks slope up and spring out of the ground somewhere
We ride in windstorms past raw shreds of caution tape
Ice-lines in winter’s carnival,
Emerging from the city’s heart
Subway weather forecasts dirt and rats
Along with tunnel trash
The fires of a city summer’s pulse
Meteorologists losing their sanity
With desperation holding doors
And lying down on seats
Radiation radiating rays around
Sometimes the wall beyond looks more like flesh or bread
I hold your hand, we ride the sky
It’s not like bridges never fall
I hold your hand, we are inside the earth
It’s not like walls do not come down
I hold your hand, we ride the sky
It’s not like bridges never fall
Comments
"It's not like bridges never fall" is such a knockout blow. Don't know why. I think it's the efficient way it combines dreadful violence and the speaker's resignation. Also, "the wall beyond looks more like flesh or bread" is deliciously strange and freighted with potential meanings.
(By the way: thanks so much for giving mine a listen - this last couple of FAWMs-50/90s I've only really had enough juice to do my own output, let alone put time in to listen to other people's stuff. Sorry about that. I will try!)
I might have not even noticed that this didn't contain rhymes, if I had not read your liner notes. It still flows, as if they are there. Some wonderful(?) images contained within.