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Poem For The Pyre

from The Pulvinar Movements by GioSafari

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about

This is the earliest recording of this song. The lyrics were already quite old (about an autumn walk in Richmond, VA, November 2011), but the music was first written and recorded at Sleepaway Camp during the Heliotropism sessions.

lyrics

I stepped off the bus before past centuries
Wrapped with high-flying roadways and trains,
But I’d walk the rest of this lorn journey
From the corner of fourteenth and main.
Steps ‘long the tall grass, balanced on the rail tracks,
Indifferent to moldered relics of industry.
Factories and hydrants and sewers and sirens,
Tall barb-wired fences and penitentiaries.

But my passions were roused by a found cardboard box,
One man’s trash and my treasure.
This rough paper corner could now become home
To a sign or a song or a letter.
How I’d like to write to my friends abroad,
To tell them they’re free and valued and loved;
But compassion’s illegal and I’m too much a coward
To join them behind those cold walls.

So despondent, I resolved to make instead
A sign reading “protest songs are dead!”
To lay it by my open heart and case
As I played to earn a place to lay my head.
Thus I could justify to join and occupy,
To add my flame to this conflagration;
But as I soon learned, the fuel was out-burned
With two wingnut incarcerations.

My passions were roused by a found cardboard box,
One man’s trash and my treasure.
This rough paper corner could now become home
To a sign or a song or a letter.
I wouldn’t share my music or solidarity
With the occupy demonstrators out on the street
But there still was another possibility
For this brown would-be composition notebook sheet.

Trees glowed with orange and yellow and red
As Autumn inspired with fiery grace.
A homeless man passed under the bridge,
But I followed my Muse to a holier place.
Dozens of churches, yet buried in graves,
With steeples peering over top of a hill
Joined in chorus as I turned the bend to pay
Respects to a moment’s song (unfulfilled).

My passions were roused by a found cardboard box,
One man’s trash and my treasure.
This rough paper corner could now become home
To a sign or a song or a letter.
As each memory dripped a new hue from my pen,
For a palate to paint a new traveling song,
And my journey drawn near its beautiful end,
The blaze at the corner of Barton and Home.

credits

from The Pulvinar Movements, released June 16, 2013

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about

GioSafari image

GioSafari New York, New York

GioSafari was the pseudonym for singer-songwriter and peace activator Gio Andollo. He lives in NYC, where he has committed to music - songwriting, recording, busking, performing, promoting - and activism. He speaks truth to power in the heart of Empire, recalling the subversive musical traditions of American folk & punk, singing for peace & justice, and advocating the use of bicycle helmets. ... more

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