mikepowernyc

[mikepowernyc]

Rock'n'Roll

I listened to Rock’n’Roll today and had a religious experienceI don’t mean generic rock’n’roll – Chuck Berry or Buddy HollyI mean specifically the Led Zeppelin songIt’s electricI can feel the air crackle with itIt gets a little hard to breathe listening to itIt is the best Led Zeppelin songWhich is a crazy to say that because of all the great songs they haveBut it’s trueListen to it right nowThen…

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About last week...

The Catskills are magical. Every place has its own magic but it reaches a higher level in the Catskills. Part of it is the orgy of nature. The creeks, streams, rivers, and waterfalls splash the seeds of life into the air and you can’t help but inhale them. Inspiration drips from the trees. Beauty defies you to dispute it. Last week a group of people I had never met conspired [with each other]…

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Flash Fiction Friday: The Bus

Why do people say, “unless I get hit by a bus”? There aren’t that many buses on the street, compared with cars and trucks, but people always say, “unless I’m hit by a bus.” It makes you wonder what it is about bus drivers that makes people think they’re likely to be hit by one. I was driving in the Bronx one day, near Fordham Road, a couple blocks from Edgar Allan Poe’s old house, when I cut off…

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S2L: The Arms of Heaven

I have been saving this song. It might be the best one on my new album, Surrender to Love, which is available today for the first time in its entirety. The album is a collection of love songs, most of them about Nancy, but this one is about another woman I love. She died a few months after I wrote this song but before she did she left me with a lifetime of unconditional love. My mom was unhappy…

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for john

I just found out a friend of mine diedI knew him for most of my lifeand have a hard time thinkingof his facewithout a smile plastered across itI couldn’t stop myself from smilingevery time we meteven at the burial of a man we both lovedwhen I played a song over the graveand he said it gave him douche chillsWho else will have the ballsto sing a Freddie Mercury tuneon karaoke night?Who else will…

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Staged Readings of a New Comedy

Every day is a renewal, every morning the daily miracle This joy you feel is life – Gertrude Stein I am excited to announce that the Round The Bend Theatre Company will perform a pair of staged readings of my new romantic comedy, Renewal. Mark your calendars now for May 7 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in Woodstock and May 8 at the Mountain Top Arboretum in Tannersville. Renewal is…

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Scenes from a protest (and a parade)

Never a dull moment in NYC

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When I was young…

I just came across this poem today, written by Robert Frost in 1928.

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S2L: You Might Be Surprised

"You'll never know what you can doTill you lay it all on the lineRoll the dice, expecting to loseYou might be surprised." …getting back to that path from my last song. I’m trying to follow one that was laid down before I was born, by people trying to do their best. My parents and grandparents are the only ones I ever saw on the path but I know there are hundreds of generations before them who…

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The Lost Art of Letter Writing: The St. Patty's Day Card

I got this card from my dear old Dad, from whom I inherited all my Irish blood, some time in the 1980s. On this day that celebrates Irish heritage, I am thinking of him and all my Power and Walsh ancestors reaching back to a town in County Waterford, the exact location of which is lost to the mists of time. The reliable records of my Irish ancestors only go back as far as an apartment building at…

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Grab a slice of Mike

Listen to my latest single The Only Path on WFUV Friday, March 21, at noon. You can listen on good old fashioned terrestrial radio or streaming at www.wfuv.org. Do you remember rock’n’roll radio? The Ramones did and now you can too. And remember this: Love is the only path that never bends.

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S2L: The Only Path

Love is the only path that never bendsLove is the only dream that never ends Life is a journey that offers many paths. Some are appealing and some are treacherous, but for those who believe in things like truth and love there is only one path to choose. They call it the straight and narrow path but as you get older you find it can get pretty wide in places. The sun always shines on that path.…

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That Feeling When...

You find an old copy of the Village Voice where your band shared ad space with The Ramones.

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Valentine's Day

Love delights to struggle with difficulties and thrives the most hardily on the scantiest soil. Washington Irving, Tales of The Alhambra Love is such an enormous and ever-mutating force that it is impossible to truly comprehend. That incomprehension has kept poets in business for millennia. What could be a greater challenge for one who works with words than to use them to describe the…

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How Life Can Be

Robert Kennedy was riffing on a line from a George Bernard Shaw play when he said:Some men see things as they are, and ask why?I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?Now that Kennedy's son has made common cause with the sociopath in the White House, it's a good time to think of things not as they are but as they could be. That's what this song is about.A friend suggested I enter NPR's…

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The year in review

From summer’s scorching suburban sidewalksTo winter’s withering wondering whyWe tried to convince the men with snoutsTo get their heads out of the troughAnd those who would turn the other cheekNot to worry about getting slapped aroundFrom spring’s eternal energyTo fall’s inevitable illnessWe informed the teetering trillionairesThat their days, like ours, are numbered

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Be like the clouds

Be like the cloudsBe ready to dissolve at any timeBe ready to change your shapeOr fall to the earth in dropletsFeel the air that flows through you and around youFeel the sun on your face and the wind at your backWatch the worries of the world sinking beneath youAnd the glory of the stars rising above youLearn when to be quiet and when to make noiseAnd when the noisy time comesHold nothing…