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YELLOW MAILBOX (2006)


That’s a really pretty card
Where did you buy it?
It’s 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 sun’s up in the east
When you’re ready for the truth
When you’ve finally learned your lesson
There’s 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 I’m missing what’s
In the finale
Vision is blurred
Can’t read the marquee
Dropped my program
In the debris

(chorus)
Send it to the yellow mailbox, etc.

tapetape
song pic
tape

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 doesn’t say, or doesn’t 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 Jim’s 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.

crumpled paper