Thomas Anderson

singer, songwriter, rock 'n' roller

Henry Miller

by Thomas Anderson

from the album My Songs Are the House I Live In

Henry Miller was in his villa

His typewriter on his pillow,

The novel finished he tried to publish,

No one would touch such filthy rubbish.

He lived on charity he lived in poverty,

He marked the hours until his destiny.

A threadbare genius in the streets of Paris,

Brooklyn to Big Sur a nomad existence.

He kept his counsel he wrote for himself,

He followed his star heeding nobody else.

Oh the good years fly by in the wink of your eye,

And soon you're telling your friends goodbye.

And you hope it matters more than idle chatter,

Your work remembered when your ashes scatter.

He had no answer in Tropic of Cancer

In Tropic of Capricorn just his taxi dancer,

With the roaches running up the four walls crumbling

He was in the radiance of a love engulfing.

Henry Miller was banned and censored,

He was forgotten and he is remembered.

She will shine like radium in a haze of laudanum,

In deceit and faithlessness-your intoxication.

And people in their arrogance will pronounce it deviant,

You will understand that it is just their ignorance.

In the midnight hour you will find the power,

Beckoning the muse she opens like a flower.

Dingy horizon when the sun comes shining,

You have moved your mountain you are realizing.

Blackening the pages opening the cages

Knowing in your heart that it is for the ages.

Henry Miller was in his villa,

His typewriter on his pillow.