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Love song from "Threnody for a Forgotten Plague", work-in-progress dealing with the early days of the AIDS pandemic, specifically the fracturing of voices which literally and emotionally occurs during any such outbreak throughout time: the medical, political bureaucracy vs. the voices of humans fighting for their health and well being.

lyrics

Buddy

I remember everything:
The curve of your palms, the shoulders’
Expanse, the compass of my chin
Tracing custom army soap scents
Amid duffel bag wool…

Lights on, a scuffle…
I leapt, scared rabbit, white tail vanishing
Through loose rain lit window…
Nobody saw whom, not even the sergeant,
Old metal head, a cinder block over…

For this you got hard labor, 15 months,
Shame to the family name, a dishonorable
Smirch. They figured you’d name names, break
Under pressure, your temperament, nervous,
Not a soldier, but a queer…

“Son, have a cigarette. Make it easy on yourself.”
Easy. Son. Across the seas Nazis gassed jews & we
Bombed Japs. From prison you wrote, said the fellas
Were nice to you. I pictured knuckles, submission,
Then gentleness covert. You were of use, a pro
In the jungle of Good Behavior, its one rule unwritten…

Today, on the radio, some Vet telling of his near-death
Experience: shell fire, blacking out, his astral soul hovering…
Next: flowers, a tunnel, & kind, intelligent light encompassing
Pain at the end…

Here, in the kitchen, Beethoven’s Last Symphony.
Outside, a snake-stretching cat, humidity, a sponge
On asphalt, blazing, our neighbor’s new sprinkler
Watering their patch of green, its multi-spout streams
Suggesting the shell Venus rode…

I have your letters in a basket, private guilt, secret rage.
Some disease the system gave you riddled all else.

Buddy, is there really the light that veteran talked about?

credits

from Threnody for a Forgotten Plague, released December 24, 2014
In addition to instruments and sounds recorded around the house, and samples from MusicCreator5, the following sites also provided royalty free sounds and music:
SoundDogs.com, SoundBible.com, MP3Skull.com, InternetArchive.org (Various Unidentified Choral Chants before "tweaking"*), and FreeSound.org
*Ofert.Deprofundis, Sanctus Mass Viii, Kyrie-MassXviii

Particular FreeSound users (Cormi, Kerri, Setuniman, Suburban-Grilla, Pryght-One, ERH) provided


179933__setuniman__sad-viola-0y57 (Buddy)

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Stephen Mead image

Stephen Mead Albany, New York

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested please place his name in any search engine in conjunction with any of the above-mentioned genres for links to his multimedia work and merchandise. To order CDs via VISA or PayPal please visit stephenmeadmusic.weebly.com ... more

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