Enjoy this song adapted from Walt Whitman’s great poem Song of Myself from his book, Leaves of Grass.

The Origin of All Songs Lyrics

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loaf and invite my soul,I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,Nature without check with original energy.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckoned the earth much?Have you practiced so long to learn to read?Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Stop this day and night with meand you shall possess the origin of all songs,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.

Stop this day and night with meand you shall possess the origin of all songs,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.

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Enjoy this country ballad inspired by one line in The Marshalls television series from earlier this evening.

Fresh Air Is Suffocating lyrics

The morning breaks like a pane of jagged glassAcross the green green lawns where shadows passI open the window just to feel the stingOf every polite and empty little thingThe garden is a riot of organized bloomWhile I’m pacing circles in a shattered room

They say the sky is an open invitationBut it feels like a heavy hand of obligationThe sweetness of the pine is a bitter pillThe world moves forward while I stand stillThere is weight in the purity of the lightThat pushes down hard and keeps my throat tight

Fresh air is suffocating for a soul like mineI’m drowning in the glare of the sunshineGive me the grit, the soot of a broken streetWhere the truth and the asphalt always meetI can’t find my breath where the air is clearSilence is the only sound I fear

The neighbors are waving from far awayBuilding a stage for another hollow dayI’d rather be lost in a tunnel of smokeThan laughing along at a well-rehearsed jokeThe oxygen is thin when the heart is in doubtI’m looking for a way to let the sparkle out

Fresh air is suffocating for a soul like mineI’m drowning in the glare of the sunshineGive me the grit, the soot of a broken streetWhere the truth and the asphalt always meetI can’t find my breath where the air is clearSilence is the only sound I fear

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This country ballad, What Is the Grass?, is excerpted from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

What Is the Grass? lyrics

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,Growing among black folks as among white,Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,Darker than the colorless beards of old men,Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

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