Danny Imig - Guitarist, Composer, Author

Here are just a few samples of some of the poems I've written over the years, and just a couple samplings from the hundreds of song lyrics I've written. Someday I hope to compile them all in a publishable book form, but for now these will provide a nice overview. If and when there is a book, you'll hear about it first right here; so check back often.

Family Pride

The laundry mat is a horrible place for poetry to overcome you. With Lite FM sticking to your eardrums like the tack that binds the lint to their screens, or the soapy film between your fingers, you watch the thirty-some dryers in a row, portholes on a peculiar ship. The brand name emblazoned in chrome above each window which looks off into rolling seas of fabric patches reads “Family Pride”; and for those who are forgetting how to read there’s a picture of that happy family locked forever together in hand-held, metallurgical bliss, a generic testimony, raised, brail-like, begging you to run your fingers over them and feel the space between the shapes, the right-angle drop off to the miniature trenches and terrible corners where you could easily break a nail, or snag the pantyhose. Watch that picture. Dad, the tallest. Mom, with skirt. Child one, half-size male. Child two, slightly more diminished, skirt also. They could each have their own wash room door, but not today. Today they are “family”, perfectly grouped under a tipped over, slightly bent out “L” signifying the placatory protection of a roof. And you scan all thirty-some dryers again just to make sure they all say the exact same thing– “Family Pride”-- like any of those perfect families exist anymore, or ever had. Good thing they’re frozen in chrome to remind us, to sparkle, to tinkle like ice in a stiff drink. “Can’t remember the last time a family like that was in the laundry mat,” you think as you notice the porthole also reflects. And you toss another silver disc into a woven sea of tears and wish on “Family Pride” as you watch your clothes toss around in someone else’s world while you stand naked in yours.

D.B. Imig (1994)

Because

Here’s another poem I wrote in college as an assignment. It’s a very particular form, called what I forget, but you’re supposed to be able to read it in the order it’s written, as well as, first line/ last line, second line/next to last line, and so on. Or maybe it’s from the center line out, I don’t remember. It works each way, though. Maybe that’s why my teacher gave me an “A” and suggested I get it published. Of course, I never did. Didn’t seem long enough, or hard enough. But, back then I was too naive and afraid to realize that the mere act of creating something was nothing compared to that of getting it noticed; a lesson I’m continually relearning.

Because...

Your image wakes
Your picture speaks
I will still
After all is said and done
Remember you
Softly like rain
In my loneliness.

D.B. Imig (1982)

Everyone Thinks They’re Somebody

During my “I think I’m Buddy Holly reincarnated” phase, I had some publicity photos done by photographer Jon Elder, of Jamestown, NY. His studio walls are covered in portraits: wanna-be models, musicians, actors, actresses, real estate and insurance agents, wedding shots, etc. etc. Looking around, it hit me what it was that fueled his business: vanities such as mine. Who did I think I was? The Amish and some African tribes won’t let themselves be photographed; they think you’re stealing away a piece of them. But our modern society, just as Jon’s business, runs on the well-greased treads of squirming and squirting egos offering themselves up for consumption. Roll on…

Everyone Thinks They’re Somebody
(Everyone Thinks There’s Somebody)

Wake up to a new day, fortunes yet to be made
So much work to be done, yet the fun has only begun,
‘Cause everyone thinks they’re somebody.
Everyone thinks there’s somebody
Hopped a ride on a train, don’t feel safe on no plane.
Busses and trains might delay, but tall buildings don’t get in their way.
Now everyone thinks they’re somebody.
Everyone thinks there’s somebody.
What makes the world go around, the sparkle on the drum or its sound?
In a forest of fallen trees you’re forced to step to the beat on your knees.
‘Cause everyone thinks they’re somebody.
Everyone thinks there’s somebody.
On the day when my light goes out, I hope I save the strength to shout,
“Pay this fool’s life no mind; don’t even speak of me as you find,
‘Cause everyone thinks they’re somebody.
Everyone thinks there’s somebody.”

It's All Easy Stuff When You're a God

Mama's gonna go away today,
This time gone a long time.
Lot's of chores for those who choose to stay,
Some are hers, but most are mine.
For I will live to work another day;
Won't I always rise and shine?
Bill me now, I've got eternity to pay;
There's no end to means I'll find.

It's all easy stuff when you're a God.
It's all easy stuff when you're a God.

Jack the taxes, losses up every year,
There's more and more that will not work.
Still mighty minds are mostly of good cheer,
For all will earn their just desserts.
Now you can bend me but I will not break;
You call a coup, but who will fall?
I can not lose 'cause there's nothing at stake.
I'm double-blinded, seen it all.

Rod and John left empty drinks in my hand,
Two songs cut short without a rhyme.
Kissed the sky and found the promised land;
Now every day I take my time.
Hear how those drums of hollow dreams still play,
Don't all those dreams rest in my sight?
See that tomorrow's yet another day,
To seize what's left and set it right.

Dedicated to my friends J.C. and Rod Welling. Two fine drummers, finer men; always missed, never forgotten.

JOHN CACIELLES
October 7th, 1960
April 5, 2004

ROD WELLING
May 10th 1971
June 14th, 2004

February 2, 2001

I will always remember, always, my dad standing at the end of the alley, at the top of the hill, like the giant elm tree that seemed then to hold up our house on the top of that hill. I had just turned seven in the winter of '66-'67, walking home in a snowstorm that Chicagoans still refer to as "The Big One". We lived on the far edge of a far, far, almost-suburban farm town, our house a long mile or more from the school; and I had trudged towards home through a hip-deep and growing blowing snow that had transformed the landscape into a strange and scary howling wasteland of submerged perils, to finally stand at the base of the hill, the end of the long block where my house could usually be seen from, holding up the far end of that hill like a firm hinge, or so I hoped, for now the swirling snow let show no such connection. The once familiar tree line that fenced one side of the alley I had to ascend appeared buried, and loomed like a topple-prone wall of whipped-up whiteness. Another day ago, it seemed, I had left the warm winter confines of my school. With a mountain of snow forecast, most kids had gotten rides home, or took the busses home, or had shorter walks home; but my parents both worked, and as I made my way home, the familiar haunts slowly disappeared into the drifts, dissolving into a grey-white wash-out., as did the sidewalks, the curbs, the corners to turn to get home. My normal relaxed hour-long walk home had become a prolonged harrowing heart-pounder, and it wasn't over yet. Falling upon some unknown neighbor's front door, phoning mom at work, the long fidget I'd face waiting for the ride-- all forms of a failure I'd have to explain. I felt water on my face, and melting flakes. I must get home on my own. Gritting my teeth and sucking in one more breath of the chill, I forced another boot into the snow, thrust a thigh against a drift, and trudged ahead; and again, and again, and again, my head down, concentrating on my footing. Halfway up the alley I stopped to catch my breath, and glanced up to mark my progress. I wasn't halfway at all, and I had just reached the real foot of the hill. It must have been then that I became aware I was openly crying, a shameful flush of fear and frustration that, being alone, I didn't care to fight; or perhaps, it was the second time I looked up and caught a glimpse of my dad up there at the top of the hill, a red flannel coat open and flapping; and if I could have seen his face at that distance through my tears, I know he was watching me, smiling. I pushed on ahead so he'd not see me flailing upon the snow, clear crackles around my eyes, and hoped he was coming to get me. Then he was there in front of me like he had dropped down on a string, and as I looked up once more the final few feet between us closed, and his grip latched under my arms to catch me up and I rose to sit on his shoulders; I probably was still crying as he carried me up that hill, because he was laughing saying "It's O.K.; It's O.K." …It was too deep dad… I couldn't… too deep… "It's O.K. son; we're almost home now."
There was no more school for days; we built snow forts we could stand up in that lasted for weeks; and the snowman that my dad, uncle, and a neighbor erected, took all three to lift the head in place, finished its melting maybe April or May.

I live in Pennsylvania now, my dad in California, says he doesn't miss the snow, but I think he might. As I write this Punxsutawney Phil has just seen his shadow and divined six more weeks of winter, and I say, "Six?, Is that the best you can do you, bucktoothed, lame-ass, dandering varmint? Send me eight, ten, hell twenty." Here in Warren, PA the weather radar warns with green a great wall of white wetness on the way; and I stand in my drive, shovel in hand, peer at the graying clouds overhead, and curse towards the sky: "Bring it on, bury me you bastards, you limp-wristed, impotent glory-less gods of gusts and barometric tedium. I will always remember, always, my dad."