YELLOW MAILBOX (2006)
Thats a really pretty card
Where did you buy it?
Its a little avant-garde
Tinged with disquiet
All your semantics
Come down to this
Coded lines
Concealed with a kiss
(chorus)
Send it to the yellow mailbox
Overnight express
In an envelope marked urgent
With no return address
Send it to the yellow mailbox
Tangled in the weeds
With the literary journals
That nobody ever reads
You can cloak those pouting eyes
Behind sunglasses
Easier to recognize
Pleasure as it passes
Lush wildflowers
Grow by the road
Thoughts condense
Then softly implode
(chorus)
Send it to the yellow mailbox, etc.
When the suns up in the east
When youre ready for the truth
When youve finally learned your lesson
Theres a diplomatic priest
With a slot inside his booth
To slip him your confession
I fall down and spill my guts
Out in the alley
Half-amused Im missing whats
In the finale
Vision is blurred
Cant read the marquee
Dropped my program
In the debris
(chorus)
Send it to the yellow mailbox, etc.
©2006 Z. Mulls
This lyric is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as part of the collection THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF Z. MULLS Volume One 1995-2006
This was another experiment in collage writing. A series of impressions around an emotional core. In this case, regarding what thoughts one has as a relationship goes slowly bad, and the words one doesnt say, or doesnt want to hear.
The title comes from an article about Art Buchwald. He was dying slowly in a Washington hospital. The author of the article remembers him sharing his address with her at one point, which was simply him at "Yellow Mailbox" in a remote New England town.
I liked the image of the deserted, desolate mailbox, receiving messages which might never be read.
In Sept 2007, I added a new vocal. A young man named Achint Ommen Thomas asked if he could do a vocal for it -- he has a lovely voice and his take melded with Jims original recording has a lovely sound.
This photo is used, by permission, from an Oregon B&B owned by Carolyn Gabriel. I loved her yellow mailbox on the river.