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Dear Zazie,

Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.

Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

confessional outpourin’s
veerin’ from hopeless
to hopeful

honed for physical need
but not much else
never could overcome
emotional detachment

had yet to discover
what matters…
but now
will not stand
for anything but to be
wreathed in this pursuit

a blessed and tormented
life of which only hints,
or sometimes shouts,
appear in these songs

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

you saw me
without a dream
you heard
you knew why
we were there
a prayer
perhaps
no longer
alone
without
well, why not
down here
anything can,
and usually does,
happen

even that

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Another from the archives, from the Quarter…

Outside, rainin’
thunder rumbles
We have returned
from pickin’ up po-boys, still warm,
and two six packs of cold Abita
The room is full of burnin’ candles
We eat and drink and talk
We laugh, we live
The thunder increases
in frequency and intensity
We consume

© 2013 Mac Tag/Cowboy Coleridge. All rights reserved

Today is the birthday Augustus Egg (Augustus Leopold Egg2 May 1816, in London – 26 March 1863, in Algiers); Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych Past and Present (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Lorenz Hart (Lorenz Milton Hart, Harlem, May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943 New York City); the lyricist half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart.  Songs he wrote the lyrics to include; “Blue Moon,” “Mountain Greenery,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Where or When,” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “My Funny Valentine,” “I Could Write a Book”, “This Can’t Be Love”, “With a Song in My Heart”, “It Never Entered My Mind”, and “Isn’t It Romantic?”.

Hart lived with his widowed mother. He suffered from alcoholism, and would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time on alcoholic binges. Some of his lyrics might be confessional outpourings of a hopeless romantic who loathed his own body. Apparently, Hart, who stood just under five feet tall and wreathed himself in cigar smoke, saw himself as an undesirable freak. Homosexual in the era of the closet, he pursued a secretive and tormented erotic life of which only hints appear in his songs.

Hart suffered from depression throughout his life. His erratic behavior was often the cause of friction between him and Rodgers and led to a breakup of their partnership in 1943 before his death. Rodgers then began collaborating with Oscar Hammerstein II.

Devastated by the death of his mother seven months earlier, Hart died in New York City of pneumonia from exposure on November 22, 1943, after drinking heavily.  His remains are buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens County, New York.  The circumstances of his life were heavily edited and romanticized for the 1948 MGM biopic Words and Music.

Sample Lyrics

“Blue Moon” (1934)

• Blue Moon,
  You saw me standing alone,
  Without a dream in my heart,
  Without a love of my own.

• Blue Moon,
  You knew just what I was there for,
  You heard me saying a prayer for,
  Someone I really could care for.

• Blue Moon,
  Now I’m no longer alone,
  Without a dream in my heart,
  Without a love of my own.

Mountain Greenery (1935)

• Bless our Mountain Greenery home!
  In a mountain greenery
  Where God paints the scenery
  Just two crazy people together

“The Lady Is a Tramp” (1937)

• She gets too hungry for dinner at eight…
  She likes a crap game, but never come late…
  She’d never bother with people she hates…
  That’s why the lady is a tramp.

Bewitched (1940)

• I’m wild again, beguiled again
  A simpering, whimpering child again;
  Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I.
• Couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t sleep
  When love came and told me, I shouldn’t sleep;
  Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I.
  I’m wild again! Beguiled again!
  A simpering, whimpering child again,
  Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

Have You Met Miss Jones?

• And all at once I lost my breath
  And all at once was scared to death
  For all at once I owned the earth and sky.
  Now I’ve met Miss Jones
  We’ll keep on meeting till we die,
  Yes, Miss Jones and I 

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