Memento Mori -

This tune is dedicated here to my great friends, Doreen and Ellen, who died within ten months of one another. Doreen was the first real pal I made in the Bay Area when I was still in my teens. In 2025, she died unexpectedly while traveling in Ireland. She was 65 years old. We’d been friends for 45 years. Longer than the lengths of our four marriages combined. Ellen and I met while at college together. We’d slipped out of contact, reconnecting decades later, working and laughing together as closely and easily as if no time at all had passed. Ellen died just recently, of cancer, in 2026. She was 66.

When girls meet at a tender age, make friends, it’s a falling into love that is rarely repeatable in later adulthood. And it is lasting, whether or not you’re in one another’s pockets. These women have been with me in my heart of hearts my whole adult life, will be with me always. Love, lived fiercely, is the perfume they leave behind.

Haunted

written and performed by Amanda Moody

I’ve had my dead

and I have let them go -

That’s what Rilke said,

and every poet knows

the dead tend to malingering;

like a wedding ring stuck on a finger,

they hang around,

cuz a dead man’s heart

is a lonely town.

I prayed, Heaven, give us one more day,

and I got what I wanted.

Then I begged the devil to let you stay,

and now I’m haunted,

bound up in a phantom thread,

drowning in my empty bed,

I’m going down

on a raft of dreams

near a lonely town.

Did I catch you in the mirror?

Were those your footprints

disappearing down the hall?

Was that you laughing on the stairs?

Is this your perfume curling through the air,

or just another feeling leading me on,

another feeling leading me on,

or nothing at all?

I thought I saw you yesterday

climbing the curtains like smoke.

Baby, baby, you were not the same,

looking so uncertain, love;

neither shadow nor a stain,

you drag your wings around like rain —

you’re a sea change.

How strange and how familiar -

you’re in my head again, 4 AM,

breathing heavy on the phone again,

calling from inside the house again,

I never know when you’re at home,

I never felt so all alone,

so take your feathers and your bones

and steal away —

Why can’t we be happy?

I thought we’d be happy?

I’ve had my dead

and I have let them go -

That’s what Rilke said,

and every poet knows

the dead tend to malingering;

like a wedding ring stuck on a finger,

they hang around,

cuz the land of sighs

is a lonely, lonely town.

Haunted

Memento Mori -

Haunted

Jerusalem: