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Twentyfive

by Jeff Kelly

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about

*Approximate date
**Written 10/87
***Written Summer/87

NOTE: These recordings are presented exactly as they appeared on the original cassette tape in 1991. There has been no editing and no audio effects added. Track 21 is from a radio broadcast and the drop-out and distortion are on the original recording.


The three poems:

PORTLAND NOCTURNE (5 April 91)

Remember the night in predawn Portland?
We walked through the stillness like nervous cats
Stealthy with eyes wide
Laughing and shouting in whispers.
Remember the town so empty?
After overstaying our welcome at the 13 Coins
We were banished to the silent city
Haunted only by one howling car
Always at our heels,
Never once glimpsed
We thought it would eat us.
Remember the quiet beauty of a city asleep?
Everything slept but us
Even the bus-stops, paper boxes, trash cans.
Secret things slept we couldn't see.
Finally we reached the station -
Locked doors
No one
No trains!
We doubled back to the purgatory bus depot
Hid there from the Greyhound police
Watched those little TVs,
A quarter for a quarter hour.
Then we rose with dawn
Found our train.


PRIVATE ELECTRICAL STORM (19 April 91)

You, who dance like thunder
Like electric shock ballet
Laugh in summer on the mild wind
And listens to me strumming
Melancholy mist-words in my
Private electrical storm -
Please come in


SNOW QUEEN (28 Sept. 90)

Nothing so beautiful as the Snow Queen
Dancing, crazy
Like Turkish ribbons blowing wild in the wind
Possessed by the dusk air
And the earth's ancient rhythms.
When the music dies
The gypsy's footprints look insane in the snow
Finally, they lead to an old mandolin
Its wood wet
Then the two sets of footprints walk off
Toward Argenteuil,
Toward the winter sun.



All songs © St.Brigid Publishing / BMI except, "Hearts and Flowers," "Pony and Me," "Oh, How I Love You," "Dance Away" and "Susanne" © Half The World Publishing / BMI.
The three poems are © 2015 by Jeff Kelly

credits

released June 4, 2015

All songs written and performed by Jeff Kelly except, "Susanne," performed with The Green Pajamas [Karl Wilhelm (drums), Joe Ross (bass), Steven Lawrence (guitar) and Bruce Haedt (keyboard and backing vocal)], "Blue Dress," performed with Bruce Haedt (piano) and Jon Ames (cello) and, "First of June," with backing vocal by Susanne.

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all rights reserved

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The Green Pajamas Seattle, Washington

Find Jeff Kelly and Laura Weller's Goblin Market recordings here: thegoblinmarket.bandcamp.com/album/ghostland
There are many more Green Pajamas and Jeff Kelly releases available here: greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com

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