Poem: it’s actually simple, but not really

Poem: Meaning

i read somewhere,

that your purpose is

to give your life meaning

Clever, i’d thought then

now, never a truer thing I saw

It’s all experience, hands-on

full throttle even when time

moves at a snail’s pace

It’s a real thing, to have died

and still, be breathing, limbs moving

It was/is my experience living on this edge

To know what it means

to have a freezer-burned soul

The thaw promised growth and healing

What’s good for me was not for the polar bear

Scattered around my body

are holes i dug with my

bare fingers

Like from the earth my mother came

ivy and moss flank the trellis of my ribs

to hold myself to me,

Perhaps, i realize, not so i did not fall apart

but to contain the new thing I become

each time i change

into the thing i’m supposed to be

i know what it means to

sit quietly at dawn and to

let the dew bathe me

You can’t beat timeless: The Killers

It’s mind numbingly difficult to point out a singular musical influence that hit me upside the head, there are lots of those. Know what I mean? Maybe one day I have a stable mental list like Def Leppard, Dire Straits, Gorillaz, Durran Durran, and so on. Then there are the days I can’t even.

But if you asked me what bands have kicked me in the solar plexus, I could count them off one hand and have fingers to spare. They had me seeing stars on impact and there is a part of me, a questing part of me, that hasn’t looked back.

One of them, as you can tell by now, is The Killers. Frontman (and sometimes bass) Brandon Flowers, in particular, is a magnetic son of a bitch and I say that with much affection. There’s a perpetual faraway look on his face I’ve yet to see on someone else.

The rest of the band is not to be neglected. We’ve got Dave Keuning on lead guitar and backing vocals, Mark Stoermer with bass, backing vocals and Ronnie Vannucci Jr. on drums and percussion. Together they make magic, transcending beyond what I though Indie Rock meant and felt like.

One of my uncles introduced me to them seven years ago, along with a good number of other artists that have shaped my tastes to this day. I recalled being torn asunder, put back together again and afterward, I could see a new corner of the world that was previously unknown to me. The Killers were the first set of musicians that got me. I witnessed grown-up sentiments that I was just beginning to understand, they sang me to knowledge that I’m still trying to truly comprehend. Weirdly, I felt embraced.

A shot from Read My Mind back in 2007. This a bloody masterpiece of a song. Inspired the young Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots.

There are so many pain numbing, euphoric numbers, that at first, I thought I’d include a cult classic like Mr. Brightside that tells of unrequited love (as I understand). But personally, I felt the more recent Shot at the Night best illustrates that untouchable charm Flowers got going on, not to mention it makes the 80’s geek in me rejoice. Untouchable yet it had me, arguably a grown woman, in tears.