An album dedicated to the writing of Delmore Schwartz, “O Delmore” sings about malaise, indecision, and smoldered youth. Schwartz’s “The World is a Wedding” is the story of this album; I’ve just re-narrated it with scenes from my own life. Post-college is a miserable space.
“Stranger, You Are”
Let’s say you’re a river,
passing by me never slowly,
even a monster must stop to speak.
Just know that my affections
read like a postcard: a day late with old news.
On a sunny street, I’ll still ask
if I want to be anything anymore.
Cause it’s hard to feel young,
its difficult to keep time,
but its more difficult to die.
Stranger you are the movement of your hands.
It’s not your life’s problems that interest me,
nor the long stories you’d tell about your family.
I’d like to see you grow old but it’s a gesture I can’t mean.
Just watch as the silent film you make bring the child out in me.
To be young in body and old in memory
is to be old at heart.
To be old in body and young in memory
is to be young at heart.
To be old in body and old in memory
is to be wise as the dead.
“Through False Geometry”
The old wise men—they go—
they say, “Seasons affect me none.”
Is there another form?
Where the wise men
won’t show themselves;
straight to black they would go.
They all ramble on,
saying, “Where am I?”
Their eyes are leveled at the sky,
all mumbling three words,
“Where am I?”
Through false geometry,
across the sea,
I belong.
I’ve had a hard, hard time
being a man.
Through false geometry,
across the sea,
I belong.
“The Howl it Grows”
I care more for the wisdom of my friends
more than the books we’ve all read.
They cry “So! lust for life don’t make things grow.”
Just listen to the wind..
the howl..
it grows..
Listen to the midnight sky;
that it reads different every night.
Don’t tell me how to turn
the curse of this world around,
where you can’t be
just any one thing.
Silence, in the spring,
is when you hold all the cards.
Quarreling, in my dream,
is when you keep from saying
exactly what you mean.
Quiet road, I steer you so,
as the sameness of life unfolds,
how the clouds they roll.
“Sing Goddamn”
Have you discovered it:
that dull, heavy blow?
Once you lost the straight and narrow.
Did you heart sink
with that death-knell bell?
All paths now a grey carousel.
It won’t soon be over.
Cackle darkly, life goes on.
On we go, expecting some great change
to come and take us away.
Sing Goddamn
Sing Goddamn
Sing Goddamn
“Delmore Schwartz”
A boy readies himself
for a girl, who will say,
“It was a wonderful nothing.”
I hear she was a dancer,
who left him all alone,
in an orphaned world.
He let old mother earth go
with his light left on.
Now he’s seen the American lands.
He watched them grow fallow.
Of the children,
what do they think?
Do they need?
I believe they are a doomed seed.
So what do we do now—
now that they’ve gone?
The houses have
all gone underground
and the dancers too.
“Harvest Moon, a Blinking Light”
Outside, there is a harvest moon.
Inside, there’s a blinking light.
It’s drawing me inward.
Oh, let it stay on.
I’ve fallen in for tonight.
The moon has drunk me in.
It’s been a long time
since I have seen
the hills roll away from me.
Maybe I should go back to the coast
and unlive all of my unholy ghosts.
Not today, not tonight, not by the dawn’s wanderlust light.
For the moon has drunk me in.
Outside, there is a harvest moon.
Alex Colston 
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