A Place to Sing

By: David Lerner

—for the poets

there was time
when I whipped myself towards glory

there was time
when I required a stage so wide
I could 
walk across it from ocean to ocean

a time when
time was a weapon in my hand

and I almost knew
that all clocks would someday
bow before
our beauty...

I'm still faithful
to this cry
though it grows fainter
as the years march through me...

but now that 
time is not my club

perhaps now
as the room I live in
grows smaller and smaller
as the temperature climbs

I'm so hungry that sometimes
I eat myself

perhaps I can live for
a place to sing

a space for 
my heart to beat in

even break
I'm rich in nerve

perhaps I can dwell in 
a closet, a corner, a niche

maybe bang my drum
in the cracks of the street

in an alley
in a dark part of town
where only fools walk at night

for though
almost no one at all can see me

I can still see
almost everything at once

standing on 
this bump in the road

so hunrgy for the turning in my chest
I'm ready to break it open
and do it with my hands

maybe this tiny cave
where we're pressed in 
has air enough
to keep us going
today

maybe tomorrow too
if we're lucky and strong and wild

tonight perhaps I'll
learn to 
live in the inches

tonight in some tiny bar where the drinks are cheap
I'll skin myself alive
and show what's beneath
to others as perfectly ruined as I

a place to sing

to shout
without losing our voice
or selling it to the shiniest bidder

the fine and tortured music
we trick from
the cracks in our sighs
and the holes in our eyes

is what we have
to crawl and climb to

as we spin in the wind
of this terrible age

a place to sing

my voice
still raw and golden

---

From Bruce Isaacson at Zeitgeist Press: David Lerner expected poetry to save the world. He expected this quite literally and concretely. He expected both to change the culture around him , and to change his own position in life. He expected poetry to reawaken the primacy of feeling in modern life like some dormant gland. He expected poets to take the helm of modern culture, and steer us toward a future where the human soul is restored of meaning. A wild, impractical dream, perhaps, but let me not live in a world where such a dream is only madness.

You can find all of David Lerner’s fiery works of poetry at Zeitgeist-Press.

In a few short weeks, you can hear Julia, David Lerner, Vampyre Mike Kassell, and a potpourri of Babarian readings via the following never-heard-before audio recordings that will be offered as thank-you gifts for your tax-deductible donation in support of the in-progress feature documentary, Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone.  

• An entire evening of Café Babar readings featuring 15 poets recorded on June 23, 1988.  

• Poet Bucky Sinister reading his essay about the Café Babar, Julia Vinograd, Poetry Heckler from Our Lady of Telegraph Avenue: Tributes to Julia Vinograd (Zeitgeist Press).  

• Julia reciting 14 poems from The Book of Jerusalem that director Ken Paul Rosenthal recorded in her apartment in 1991.  

These audio confections will sweeten your ears on Giving Tuesday, November 27, 2023 via the film’s website.

Stay tuned to Poetic Outlaws for the link soon!