G57 – We Sing Together

dedicated to Kerry Schooley (Slim Volumes)

Songs of sixpence: pockets of cheap rye

one note at a time. We sing to get her,

a phalanx of larynxes and

the song has many feet.

Husha husha we all fall down.

Whisper the beat, hassling sandcastles

kicked face down in the street words

evolving into rhyme, syntax

flowing forward

running with the

right now

overall

like all the languages in

Bringhurst’s Ursa Major

off key

out of step but

tongue sewing

tongue sowing

the crickets’ melody do

remifa solati sound

of music with no choir

I can name.

Old prison chain gang:

we sing together cannot

overcome the deep vortex

of sound

and note your absence

which will be recorded

in an opportunity

off-beat songs of innocence

and thank you Blake wringing

the sound out of bird’s wings we

sing in the middle of the factory floor.

This is the song that never ends

my friends singing it forever

this is the song that never ends.

In rhyme

you are afraid of singing.

You alienate speakers of your language.

Are you hiding?

Show me it hurts like a hug.

A manifesto, a womanfestival

together with words;

should we?

We sing together

and shout others down

in the sanctuary,

lip synching the wrong songs

to John Cage.

Andréa Ledding, Bryne Helen Lewis, Robin Moses, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard, Priscilla Brett, Joseph Brown, Brian Bartlett, Rob Budde, Alice Robinson, Warren Dean Fulton, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Slim Volumes, Kinga Jakab, Andrew Topel, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Neil Hennessy, Christopher Taylor