Randy Haddock

Years ago when I started writing songs, I only wrote them in Spanish. Then, along the way, I stopped and only wrote them in English. It's been years since I've written a song in my native tongue so I'm pretty excited about this song. It's called "La mórbida luz." I really hope you dig it, even if you don't speak Spanish.

La mórbida luz (no trumpet version)

"É Preciso Perdoar" was written by Alcivando Luz and Carlos Coqueijo. João Gilberto recorded it and released it on his 1973 self-titled album known as the "white album" (he has another self-titled album from 1961).

I'm pretty sure he was the first one to record this song. I'm not sure if Alcivando and Coqueijo wrote it specifically for him. It is one of my favorite Gilberto recordings, and that's saying a lot.

This here is my homemade attempt at playing this beautiful number. I hope you dig it.

É Preciso Perdoar

Faith goes into hiding in a cave
of even takes.
Holding on to what she knows:
the great Mayan lake is in despair.

I’ll look for you in Panajachel
if there’s still anyone to find.
I’m folding into achy spates
of the doubts that lacerate
flowing down volcanic slides of time

Are we turning into the Atitlán Grebe?
Has our swallowed earth run dry?
Did the reef’s luster rust with the tide’s early fuss?
Where is that land where I can roam?

Was it a shadowless, motherless
asynchronous moon?

We’ll stay apart 
but close enough to touch.
A drunken butterfly
crawling to its broken wings
wraps the ethereal hug
with a blanket made of shrugs
flowing down volcanic slides of time.

Volcanic Slides

Ser del mar que nada
al ritmo de ola tan pasmada,
al ver la falla del ayer.
Arropa la corriente con su
ancla en el coral,
al ver el agrio tren pasar.

Se entrampa en el escollo
del croquis
y se resigna al desecho fértil.

Esa trampa no le hará sufrir
y esa tarde no le hará sentir
la agonía de la desnudez.
Rompe el faro para no volver
y arruina la cosecha.

Ser de la esfera que vuela
al ritmo de la madrugada
ya ve el vaivén de la piel.
Por más que aletea
ya no se puede sostener.
Se cae en la granja de la sed.

Se embriaga de semillas
del erial
y se entrega a la tierra pestífera.

Ser del mar

Written by Carlos Lyra and Vinicius de Moraes.

Você e Eu

http://randyhaddock.com/post/75179670121/cannon-ball-blues-was-recorded-by-the-carter

Cannon Ball Blues

Janta

Fire, fire
underneath the deck.
Run fast.
Water, water
boards the sinking ship.
Swim out into the end.

I'll stay by your side
looking for the tide that 
brings us back,
or a flare to lead the night.

Waiting for a sound
louder than the howling
of an ever-slowing heart,
grabbing waves that hug the light.

The wreck,
hiding in plain sight, 
laid to rest,   
with a crashing fist of surge and regret, 
the undetermined emptiness 
of fate,
leaving cracks that trap the way
in its feebleness. 

We’re cradled by the 
swaying of permanence,
by the comfort of known hands and dry land
where

you amaze me with those eyes
you awash me in the sand 
that
swallows me whole
in its feebleness. 

The Swaying of Permanence

Written by Len Chandler and Robert Kaufman.

Green, Green Rocky Road

Waiting Around to Die

Howls,
night after night,
collide with the screams
of a torn fabric
left on the ground.

A map,
smeared on his face,
divides the crooked
byway.

Sighs,
between the sundowns,
confine the
unbounded clock.

The moon,
inhaling the peach,
penetrates the 
fatness of veins.

Into the earthy tones
of madness, 
the absence of light
breaks the hold of 
the hope
that stains the bleeding,
the speeding of hours. 

The mouth,
barrenly dry,
resigns from the flames
of the worn panic
lost in his sound. 

© 2015 Randy Haddock

The Worn Panic

Esa manigüera,
roja y coja,
moja la árida jarra.

Ya no la veo más.
El dulce aroma la amarra.
Del triste cúmulo
viene el diluvio de ratas.

Haré lo que pueda
para cortar
la boca que engaña.
Pero el jarabe,
en la ausencia de lo racional,
hala.

Se va hacia al fondo,
digerida en el pozo
del virus famélico.
La floración carga
la cicatriz de ella
envuelta en putrefacción.
Muerde la fugacidad.  

© 2015 Randy Haddock

Planta de Jarra

Siempre, siempre
coge la vereda merecida
allá en el fango 
de la excreción. 

En la covadera 
el guano se revela 
al sol lamiendo venenos

y expurga la marea su traición.

Si se perderá la claridad
de la grisácea cavidad 
con tu imparable caza,
retorna ahora
que no
podrás excavar la saciedad
de un estómago ojeroso
manoseando la llama
vaga.

Renacer por el
inquieto cormorán
es respirar el huevo terco
que alumbra 
la Nao Victoria.   
 
El gacho alfarero 
estruja su modelo
y enloda el jugo con los dedos  

en la cuarta hora del disfraz.


© 2015 Randy Haddock

Vereda Merecida

Te vi entre tus odios
 para descifrar y excavar, sin perder,
pues un fósil, contra rocas en tierra,
revela la línea total. 

Le di al lienzo sucio
un poquito de azul deslizando un prado
marfil manso que, versus el pincel furioso,
cancela la nube mortal.

En la odisea, vía el son
de La Parguera,
surge una tez luminosa
que nos aguanta.

Es obvio que la esperanza
se derrite al quemar mapas en el bosque
que me aísla y, sin el tono afinado,
demuela la torre troncal.

Y estamos esperando
por un esquema perfecto empapado en el
criterio ajeno que, durante el trance abreviado,
nivela la tierra noval.  

© 2015 Randy Haddock

Tez Luminosa

The cloud, ruptured by rage,
spills from his mouth,
a sprout of prate.

By the fountain at night
he cools the lightning
boiling growls in the knuckles of blades

and a wind under the ground
tweedles
ah, ah, ah!

She digs deep into his grief
to clear the deadly disease
stuck to the breast of tomorrow's bottles.

Hurry, hurry, don’t miss your canteen,
it rolls down the mountain
with the avalanche dancing with the defeat

of the naked, icy climber
burned by bubbles
digging screams in the chuckles of graves.


© 2015 Randy Haddock

Knuckles of Blades

Written by Gram Parsons and Bob Buchanan.

Hickory Wind

You Win Again

Don't You Take It Too Bad

I wanna hear from the mouth of the babe.
Waiting on my lover ain’t no easy game.
And I find a solution for the pain and the tears
sun’s gonna rise despite the weight of the years.

And you hold on, you hold on
fiery and red is the way it will stay
And you hold on, you hold on
the blues of the weight, it will blow away
like ashes in breeze
like birds from the trees.

I wanna beat with the whole of my heart
doing it so long, I memorize the parts
and I think of your absence when it stings me hard
it ain't no fuzzy feeling, no hallmark card.

And you hold on, you hold on
fiery and red is the way it will stay
And you you hold on, you hold on
the blues of the weight, it will blow away
like ashes in breeze
like birds from the trees.


Music by Randy Haddock
Words by Randy Haddock & Mike Hamel

Randy Haddock

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