Soundbytes 1.8.25

Merilee

MOST OF THE SONGS IN THIS SERIES have at least a little truth behind them. Often it’s only a glimpse of a memory, maybe a regret, even an apology—probably too little too late. Did that really happen? Sometimes, after so many tellings, I’m not even sure myself.

Not that factual truth, if I’m honest, ever had all that much to do with most of these tunes in the first place. Songs about my first true flame or my grandmother Minnie Belle or my twin great-uncles Willie and Charlie only ever stuck as close to historical fact as it suited the lyric.

So, no, I never knew anyone named Merilee. I certainly never approached a pretty girl who had been abandoned, heartbroken on the dance floor, and talked her into slipping outside for a smoke. In my entire high school career, I went to only one dance. My date Ann Duttweiler fled to the girls’ side of the gym, where she huddled with her friends and giggled; I slunk over to the boys’ side and counted the minutes until my mother came to pick us up.

But really, in those days, I probably lived more in my imagination than in Dayton, Ohio, in my parents’ little brick bungalow with yellow shutters, a half-block from the bus stop and the enormous Dunleavy Plumbing sign. Usually, I was distracted, daydreaming, as my mother liked to point out. And still am.

Merilee, is that your name? Call me what you like tonight, it’s all the same.

Merilee

You are quite a looker 
I am quite alone 
Every guy on the dance floor 
Would like to take you home 
But something left you sad tonight 
Someone let you down 
Untied a promise of forever 

Don't you look so lonesome? 
You need a friend, I’ll bet 
I can do a step or two 
Counting in my head 
I can even listen to you 
If it comes to that 
Don’t need no promise of forever 

See the boy on bass guitar 
He’s a friend of mine 
I could introduce you if you’d 
Just stop crying 
If I can bum a cigarette 
We could step outside, but 
Just that, no promise of forever 

And when you’re tired of trying 
I could walk you home 
Or walk along behind you if you’d 
Rather be alone 
Bet your old man’s waiting up 
To run a third degree 
But not me, and no promise of forever 

   Merilee 
   Is that your name 
   Call me what you like tonight 
   It’s all the same 
   And a goodnight kiss is only this 
   Merilee 
   Is that your name 
   Call me what you like tonight 
   It’s all the same 
   And a goodnight kiss is only this 
   No promise of forever
   No promise of forever
   No promise, Merilee

---

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.