La Llorona’s Cough

09/15/2014

Last night
Upon leaving my studio by the river,
I heard La Llorona coughing in the tall weeds.
La Llorona, the Crying Woman,
Hesitates mid-sob to let out a whimpering cough,
Trying to release ashen stories from her lungs.

She is the forest of weeds
The first touch of fall in the late-summer-night’s winds
Coyotes howling at the Harvest Moon
The coughing strangers in the shadows
The bumps in the night
The cobwebs decorating your home
The screeching thunderheads
The dusty cut and bleeding rocks
Never-heard-by-humans screams from dying trees
The sap sticky on our hands.

Ghosts, evil spirits, disturbed beings–
These are man-made realities.
Not divine, mythical creatures
But simply another monstrous manifestation of humanity’s darkest actions.

She is the things that go bump in the night–
Bombs dropping
The beaten and kicked and raped
The addicts of our streets
The adulterous lust of malcontent
The silence of police sirens and gun shots
The institution of forgetting and not listening
The cobwebs in your mind
The shrieks of pain and loss and passion, lost in the night, forgotten by daylight.

All just coughs in the dark,
Tangled in tall weeds.

La Llorona, oil on canvas, Meg G. Freyermuth 2014

If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All)

On a free ride home from the embassy, I saw the governor and his lover holding hands.

When I got to my place, I emptied my suitcase, and opened the windows wide.

If you could save yourself, you’d save us all! Is that what you called me for? Is that why you’re knocking on my door? The time I’ve spent working myself to death! Thought that’s what you wanted, I thought you needed my help to make it good again, to make us strong, to make you happy, to push you along! And gain some respect, to be thrown a crumb, I was on my knees, when you knocked me down!

The wheels fell off, the bottom dropped out.

The checks all bounced, I came in your mouth.

Your mother came calling but there was no one around.

The trash caught fire when the leaves turned brown.

The vultures were circling when the circus left town.

I left you a note but I wrote it in disappearing ink.

(Repeat chorus)

 

These are some of my favorite song lyrics to one my favorite songs by Ween. It is a great example of a fragment poem used in a song. The verses are full of short statements describing seemingly disparate things that, when put together, have richer meanings based on their context. I love this song because it’s extremely sad, yet, in typical Ween fashion, they manage to bring humor into it. Personally, I always struggled with bringing humor into my poetry until I embraced fragment poems. This allowed me to add humorous statements into a serious topic comfortably, and taught me that having humor in a sad story intensifies the overall effect.

One last thought on Ween and their songwriting: many people hear a few Ween songs and can’t get into it because on the surface, they seem too silly to be taken seriously. However, humor is how we deal with the toughest things in life. If you really listen to Ween’s songs, aside from being extremely talented musicians, their lyrics are very complex. You’ll find the things you’re laughing at in their songs are actually some very depressing and despondent human situations. Think about it: humanity’s despair is pretty hilarious.