Tickle me pink
I’m rosy as a flushed red apple skin
except I’ve never been as sweet
I’ve rolled around the orchard
and found myself too awkward
and tickle me green I’m too naive
Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
muffled out and pushed back down
pushed back through the leafy ground
Time is too early
my hair isn’t curly
I wish I was home and tucked away
when nothing goes right
and the future’s dark as night
what you need is a sunny sunny day
Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
muffled out and pushed back down
pushed back through the leafy ground
Don’t know where I can find myself a brand new pair of ears
don’t know where I can buy a heart
The one I’ve got is shoddy
I need a brand new body
and then I can have a brand new start
Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
muffled out and pushed back down
pushed back through the leafy ground
Monsters in the valley
and shootings in the alley
and people fall flat at every turn
there is no straight and narrow
offload your wheelbarrow
and pick up your sticks and twigs to burn
Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
muffled out and pushed back down
pushed back through the leafy ground
Pray for the people inside your head
for they won’t be there when you’re dead
when you’re dead
when you’re dead…
The melody of this song is familiar to me. Chris Sidorfsky wrote and performed something very, very similar in 1989 at a talent show. I played the drums with/for him and at that talent show I used an old wooden trash can for the beat. I don’t remember the exact lyrics by Chris but it had something to do with a frog caught in a web.
What Michelangelo was doing was trying to remind Rome five centuries ago that Jesus was a Jew, he came from Jews, and that Christianity is based on Judaism. Florence in his time was proud of that connection, whereas Rome was not only trying to separate the two religions but to negate in great part its roots in Judaism — and even forcibly separate Jews and Christians. There were many Papal bulls outlawing fraternization and friendship between Jews and Christians, whereas in Florence everybody was partying together.
Q: Was Michelangelo simply promoting the Florentine agenda in Rome?
Absolutely. In his poems he complains about the abuses of power and hypocrisy of the church. It’s not us imagining it; it’s in his own words and work. This was not somebody who was thrilled about working for the Vatican on a ceiling.
Although today the message might be subtle, perhaps in his lifetime it was as open as his poetry.
One only has to be
finding windows and doors
a member among those with a key
to unlock what we all stare towards
At this rate, I must learn Spanish, or at least work on ferreting the words out myself from the poems of Benedetti; his writing is so compelling…until then, translations by Katya Rascovsky:
2
la muerte invade
de vez en cuando el sueño
y hace sus cálculos
death invades
sleep from time to time
and makes its calculations
66
en todo idilio
una boca hay que besa
y otra es besada
in every love affair
there is a mouth that kisses
and another that is kissed
143
el preso sueña
algo que siempre tiene
forma de llave
the prisoner dreams
something that always has
the form of a key
172
la poesía
dice honduras que a veces
la prosa calla
poetry
conveys depths that sometimes
prose silences
213
un pesimista
es sólo un optimista
bien informado
a pessimist
is just an optimist
who is well informed
130
me gustaría
ser noble y elegante
como un pingüino
i would like
to be noble and elegant
like a penguin