2015/02/04

Joanne

I was nearly asleep
When she woke me up
With a moan
From some nocturnal scene
I turned and saw
Her open lips
And closed eyes
The light softly kissing 
Her cheek and nose
And caressing her shoulder

I so very much wanted
To interrupt her dream
And hold her in my arms
But perhaps she was 
In a better place
And I did not want to
Rob her of that pleasure

2010/01/31

Wondering Why

Days and nights and months go by
Suns and moons and seasons fly
As light and dark exchange the sky
And new born babies emit their cry
As older children find another high
And young men in foreign fields lie
Rushing to the day we all shall die
And all I can do is wonder why.



©1970 David P. Cannon 2-27-1970
 
In December 2009, this poem was adapted into a song by Bobby Cole and Cameron Restaino.

The Light

I’ve seen the light and it was dark
The blackness glowed as a spark
Tomorrow came and yesterday went
But where was today; how was it spent?

Perhaps I never knew you and you not me,
And that’s the way it always will be
If we never see each other again
It’s best there was no beginning to our end.

©1970 David P. Cannon 2-23-1970

Lost Words

I spoke the words
I had been looking for
As sleep crawled
Inside my bed

But this morning
I had to search the floor
Because the words weren’t
Inside my head

©1970 David P. Cannon
2-23-1970 Revised 1 31 2010

The Master of Rhyme

Why have all the years gone wrong
Why couldn’t the poet sing a love song
To the girl who listened with open ears
For the words that could evoke happiness tears

Instead the poet wrote of unsatisfied love
Themes of sadness and hopes to rise above
All the common and ordinary men
While the vibrant young girl became a broken woman

She grew tired of waiting to hear the words
And sought another for the bees and the birds
And while she was gone from the master of rhyme
He found the word “Love” but it was not in time

His beautiful words had imperfect meter
Here ears and her heart would not let them greet her
A little too late even though they were his best
Now without her love, he lets his pen rest.

©1970 David P. Cannon
1-13-1970

I Don’t Want to Makeup

I don’t ever want to makeup
Because I never want to breakup
With you

And I don’t ever want to see the day
When I hear you say
May I unpack
Because I never want to see your back
Walk away from me

I don’t ever want to hear your voice
Say that I’m your second choice
Because I never want
The day to come
When you and I are not one

And I don’t ever want to see the day
When I hear you say
May I unpack
Because I never want to see your back
Walk away



© 1970 David P. Cannon (lyrics) / Rob LaVecchio (music)

Someday...Little Angel

Someday

When you’re old and wrinkled and gray
You’ll remember
How I loved you
But now
You’re gone
And you can’t hear my song
I sing when nights are cold
And darkness stays so long

Little Angel, spread your wings
And fly back home
Call me on the phone
You know I’m here and so alone

Little Angel, spread your wings
And fly to me again
And say this is the end
And your life with me
You’ll spend

Because someday
When you’re old and wrinkled and gray
You’ll remember
How I loved you
And pleaded that you would stay.



© 1970 David P. Cannon (lyrics) / Rob LaVecchio (music)

Last Goodbye

We walked the sand
Strolling hand in hand
And then you turned to me
With a tear in your eye

And as you cried
You sadly said to me
"This is my last goodbye,
Truly my last goodbye,
I can't go on
Knowing that my love is gone
Goodbye."

I watched you run
Flowing with the sun
Oh, God, what could I do
I knew that our love was through
And as I tried to hold back the tears
Your words kept ringing in my ears

"This is my last goodbye,
Truly my last goodbye,
I can't go on
Knowing that my love is gone
Goodbye."

©1970 Lyrics: David Cannon
Music: Jaymee Cannon
1-31-70 She left for good two days later.

2010/01/16

If you are able

In 1970, when I was writing poetry, some of which was very antiwar, a soldier in Vietnam was also creating verse. His name was Maj. Michael Davis O'Donnell of Springfield, Ill. Forty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1970 he wrote this poem that I read more than a decade later on a Vietnam memorial wall in lower Manhattan. It has been something I've never forgotten, and today I found it in a drawer.
Remembrances

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.

Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.

And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970, Dak To, Vietnam

Two months after writing this poem, Maj. O'Donnell's helicopter crashed in Cambodia. He was offically declared dead in 1978. His remains were repatriated to the US in 1995 and DNA confirmed it was him. His identification was made known June 20, 2001. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetary. More details are available at www.virtualwall.org/do/OdonnellMD01a.htm

2009/12/28

Child of the Protest

I am a child of the protest
Though they almost aborted me
(But that was a different conquest,
I am here you see.)

Yes, I am a child of the protest
But always “too busy”
And there were times I must confess
It was probably apathy

But being a child of the protest
There were things I never said
That proved in the final analysis
My insights were far ahead

For I never joined in their rallies
Cause I didn’t like the crowd
That chanted out degrading names
At a time when truth was loud

Yes, I am a child of the protest
And though the protest passed away
I remember all it taught me
So the protest lives today

© 1973 David P. Cannon 7-3-1973

Books Upon The Bookcase

Like books upon the bookcase
We stand in line and wait
For someone to come along
And justify our fate
By picking up our volume
And reading between the lines
To see what story we really tell
On the pages that we bind

And we hope they quickly turn each page
But cherish every word
So we can fill their minds swiftly
And prove we’re not absurd
Even though it is contrary
To every critic that they’ve heard

Oh, we’re books upon a bookcase
And books we’ll always be
Until we get down off the shelf
And write our destiny

And we’re nothing more than bindings
Indeed binding every deed
With hopes that someone will come along
To enjoy the nonsense that they read

Oh, we’re books upon a bookcase
And books we’ll always be
Until we get down off the shelf
And write our destiny.

©1972 David P. Cannon 2-26-1972

America is a Credit Card

America is a credit card
On which the balance is due
But our five and six figure leaders
Can’t see that this is true

They spend beyond the budget
Raising each and every tax
Destroying the dollar’s value
As their oversight grows so lax

And they pad each bill with pork
Fiddling with them like ancient Nero
Answering problems with more money
And our dollar’s worth approaches zero

©1971 David P. Cannon  6-9-1971
Revised 12/28/2009

My Library

Each woman is a storybook
And many I have read
Often until late at night
As companions
In my bed

And some of them were paperbacks
Soft and very small
With much inside their tiny binding
That isn’t easy to recall

And some of them were novels
Indeed novel in their ways
So I read them very carefully
And we lasted many days

And one or two I must admit
I never got to finish
So wondering how they really end
Makes their memory not diminish.

©1971 David P. Cannon
6-4-1971

2009/12/17

The Bus Trilogy (28 Bus from Montclair to Newark, NJ)

A Man Died

A man died on the bus today
His breath suddenly went away
And he turned blue in his lips
Convulsing down to his hips
And some people gasped
While others stared
But actually no one really cared
Except for the now vacant seat
We’d scramble for to rest our feet.

© 1969 David P. Cannon 10/11/1969


The Road to Happiness

Today they rerouted
The 28 bus
A rotting infrastructure
Changed the view for us
So we headed west
Out toward Caldwell
Then turned southeast
Toward our workday hell
Back down along
Bloomfield Avenue
To the stores and slums
That comprise our view

Some complained
That we would be late
“Why can’t the f-ing
Construction wait?”
But not the man
Some say is sick
He’s the old
Macroencephalic

He's ridden the bus
For 20 years
Staring at legs
The way every man leers
And talking to strangers
To pass the time
These were his only two
Disturbing crimes
And now there’s a third
That proves he deranged
For he was glad
Our bus route had changed.

©1969 David P. Cannon 10/11/1969 Revised 11/13/2008 and 1/17/2009


Mobile Friends

Everyday at 8 a.m.
I climb aboard
The bus with them,
Tired people
On their way to work
Near Broad Street
Downtown Newark.
Secretaries, a soda jerk,
Laborers, and a lawyer’s clerk.
And each day
At 5 p.m.
We meet aboard
The bus again.

© 1969 David P. Cannon Retitled 12/17/2009

2009/12/11

Like Sweet Ringtones

I’ll always remember the years we shared
The nights in bed with our bodies bared
Your tender kiss and sensuous moans
That filled my head like sweet ringtones

©1972 David P. Cannon
revised 11-13-2008

Inhumanity

I am the madness
That makes men want to kill
I am the taste of blood
That gives them the thrill
I am the feeling that
Drives a mother wild
Until she beats to death
Her helpless baby child

I am the fist
Raised in anger
I am the cry
"Let's gang bang her!"
I am the yell of a husband
Screaming at his wife
I am the verdict of a jury
Asking for a life

I am the first stone
Thrown in a riot
I am the taunter
Saying I dare you to try it
I am the daggers
Seen in many eyes
I am the forked tongue
Of a thousand million lies

I am the crowd
Full of faces
Chanting names
At other races
I am the soul of hypocrisy
Making a shambles
Of this democracy

I have raised civilizations
Destroyed powerful men
Ruined the lives of many
And I'll do it once again

For I am fear and trouble
Terror and death at my best
And if I get a hold of you
I will never
Never ever
Let you rest

For I am insanity
And there's a little bit of me
To a moral-less degree
In all humanity
I am inhumanity



©1972 David P. Cannon
10-27-1972

WEO

It was in the summer of 1964
We drove my ’56 Pontiac down to the shore
We’d pick up girls along the beaches
And take them to the outer reaches
Of the A&P parking lot

But WEO how things have changed
WEO, how things have changed
WEO, even the A&P has changed

We’d race up and down the Garden State Parkway
It was less crowded than Island Dragway
We’d always win, ‘cept to the cops we’d lose
And even then, we did what we choose

But WEO how things have changed
WEO, how things have changed
WEO, even the A&P has changed

We’d lie under the warmth of the sun
And when it got hot, we’d have some fun
We’d carry the girls into the ocean
The girls get carried away and cause a commotion

But WEO how things have changed
WEO, how things have changed
WEO, even the A&P has changed

We’d hang around the A&W Root Beer stand
Talkin’, eatin’ burgers and making our plans
We’d take the girls to the greatest parties on the earth
And then we’d take ‘em for everything they’re worth

But WEO how things have changed
WEO, how things have changed
WEO, even the A&P has changed

At night, we’d lay under the stars above
The girls always said that we were making love
But we’d make every girl that we’d meet
And we’d meet every girl on the beach

But WEO how things have changed
WEO, how things have changed
WEO, even the Esso station’s changed

©1973 David P. Cannon

Too Many Years

I can’t wait until tomorrow
‘Cause today has got me down
If I think another minute
I know that I will drown
In my tears...
It’s been too many years

The pain in my stomach
Is eating toward my heart
If I think another minute
I know that I will start
All my tears...
It’s been too many years

Now my heart has suffered too much
And my head is pounding madly
If I think another minute
I know that I will gladly
Greet my tears...
It’s been too many years.

©1970 David P. Cannon

Yawn

Morning comes too early
Chasing out the sleep of night

©1970 David P. Cannon
2-24-1970

Before and After Woodstock

Woodstock, the three-day music festival held on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York in August of 1969, is considered a seminal event in rock history, when American youth asserted their individual and collective power to change the world. But Woodstock was by no means the only major rock festival of the day, Monterey Pop and Altamont being two of the more famous counter-cultural gatherings.

I attended two other multi-day concerts, which bookended the Woodstock event as well as the rise of Richard Nixon to Commander in Chief during the Vietnam War. They were the Miami Pop Festival at Gulfstream Park (a horse racing venue) in Hallandale, Florida, and Concert 10 at Pocono International Raceway in the town of Long Pond in eastern Pennsylvania.

The December 1968 Miami Pop Festival was a precursor to Woodstock, which followed eight months later. Both events were produced by Michael Lang. Miami Pop was organized at a racetrack with facilities that could accommodate the 100,000 Floridian residents and students who showed up. Woodstock, which was held in an open field in New York State, proved to be a free-for-all for 400,000 attendees, although technically 186,000 had paid to enter.

Miami Pop featured acts like Iron Butterfly, Canned Heat, and The Grateful Dead, who would soon be able to draw half a million on their own. [Canned Hat and The Dead would play Woodstock too—while Iron Butterfly were stuck at the airport—Ed.] It cost me just $7 a ticket to see acts like Marvin Gaye, Richie Havens, The Boxtops, and Junior Walker & The All Stars. I also was really blown away by a new act, Three Dog Night, as they covered the Otis Redding hit “Try A Little Tenderness.” After Three Dog Night’s set, the lights went out, and when they came back up, a policeman, a businessman, a professor, and a doctor stood on the stage. An ominous beat began, and the policeman launched into a song:

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision

In the months to come, many would recognize the song as Steppenwolf’s “Monster,” whose lyrics were inspired by the recent election of Richard Nixon as President of the United States:

Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won’t pay it no mind’
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke

A joke indeed. A few months earlier, on September 16, 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon had appeared on the most popular comedy show of the time, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and uttered the show’s popular phrase “Sock it to me.” It was one small step for comedy, but one giant leap in political campaigning; such appearances are now commonplace on Saturday Night Live and other late-night TV shows. Nixon’s was totally out of character for a anticommunist hardliner who was playing the race card by fanning the flames of fear, while promising to restore law and order as riots engulfed American cities in flames following the spring assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and antiwar Democrat Robert F. Kennedy.

They babble about law and order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told
Yeah, there’s a monster on the loose

When he was done, John Kay, the lead singer of Steppenwolf, tried to remove the uncooperative police helmet and quipped, “It’s hard to take it off, once you feel its power.” Then, throwing the helmet down on stage, he performed the band’s psychedelic crowd pleasers like “Magic Carpet Ride.” Miami Pop was an amazing gathering, with profound, memorable acts and plenty of parking and bathroom facilities. The only shortcoming was the length of the day, and the fact that the two separate stages forced attendees to pray for Solomon’s wisdom in choosing which performances to watch.

The Miami Pop experience left me craving more. When I was in Nashville in June of 1969, the guy sweeping floors at Monument Records said he heard there was going to be a concert in New York in August, and encouraged me to go. His name was Kris Kristofferson, and within the year many would know his “Me and Bobby McGee.” The song was co-written with Monument’s head, Fred Foster, about a young woman whose name matched the record label’s receptionist’s. “Her husband hates this song,” Fred told me after picking up his guitar and playing it. Interestingly, it was a female singer, Janis Joplin, who would make the tune famous, simply by switching the gender (but not the name) of the song’s main character. It was not among the songs she performed at Woodstock, but it did become her only #1 hit, after her death.

I arrived in New Jersey with my wife from the Summer of Love. (On our 1967 honeymoon we drove across the US to the strange world at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco, and then quickly returned to the normalcy of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which had taken a stand on racial equality while dividing the nation on the Vietnam war). With $12 between us in August 1969, and only one upcoming job, we decided not to go to Woodstock, though one of my high school friends made the TV talk show circuit reveling about the transforming experience.

What my friend did not realize was that the anarchy of Woodstock had convinced many towns to turn down requests for similar concerts. So three years later, when Concert 10 was promoted on radio as ten hours of music in the Poconos for $11 on July 8 and 9, 1972, I (now divorced) jumped at the opportunity to go, and asked a Colombian student studying business at Montclair State College to take the journey with me. Despite her reservations about spending the night beneath the stars and my blanket with someone she barely knew, she agreed to go. We hit a traffic jam four miles from the concert site, and walked the rest of the way. When we arrived at the event, we joined 200,000 others who had come to hear Humble Pie, The Faces (with newcomer Rod Stewart), Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Edgar Winter, Badfinger, Black Sabbath, and Ramatam with April Lawton (whose reputation was that of a female Jimi Hendrix).

The weeklong Democratic National Convention had opened in Miami the day before. At its conclusion, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy introduced South Dakota Senator George McGovern and Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as the presidential and vice-presidential nominees for the Democratic Party in 1972. This antiwar ticket proved to be ineffective against Nixon’s monster, the Committee to Re-elect the President. CRP (or CREEP, as it became known) was headed by Attorney General John Mitchell, who applied subtle pressure to acquire hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions. Part of CREEP’s team were the “plumbers,” which included the Watergate burglars who had been arrested three weeks before the Pocono concert. The arrest of this seemingly bungling assortment of CIA agents and former Bay of Pigs Invasion volunteers wasn’t taken seriously by voters until after Nixon won all but one state and the District of Columbia (the scene of the crime).

The Pocono concert had been structured to be a commercially successful version of Woodstock. From where we settled, we could hear music in the distance but we couldn’t see the stage, just the backs of hundreds of people and one totally naked guy whose picture I snapped as the definitive shot of the concept “standing out in a crowd.” Within an hour of arriving, I began to feel so sick that I said I had to go. So we trudged back to the car and drove back home. On Monday I was diagnosed as having walking pneumonia (no boogie woogie flu, however), which took me four days to recover from.

The concert, too, was ill-fated and hit with rain. Black Sabbath and Badfinger canceled, and a total of twelve bands never performed. April Lawton and Ramatam (which also included former Iron Butterfly guitarist Mike Pinera and former Jimi Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell) never achieved stardom. April died in November 2006. The dream of Woodstock changing the world also went unfulfilled. Instead the echo of “Monster” at Miami Pop continues forty years later:

We don’t know how to mind our own business’
Cause the whole world’s got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who’s the winner
We can’t pay the cost

Monster

Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by MCA Corporation of America, Inc

Photos ©1972 David P. Cannon
Before and After Woodstock ©2008 David P. Cannon