In true poet fashion didn’t really follow the prompt of using five random song titles, but did a thing where I worked some of Chet Baker’s titles and lyrics into a poem about him. He fell to his death from an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988:
A slow note, sad, not of this earth,
a pure tone getting lost around
the corners of the night.
You fell in love just once, foolish man,
fell so terribly hard you lost your teeth
but not your voice – and you can bet
your life it rains.
Turning back, they wanted you to climb
seven neat steps up the scale, to heaven—
the smoke and the stage and the night and the note.
But your heaven was in your veins.
It had to be, with you.
You, who fell too easily, never
bending your pitch but your bones,
plenty, never looking before you jumped,
soaring like a broken wing, playing the hot
and heavy, lead-bellied you fell
so easily, so fast.
For all we know it was an accident–
everything happened to you.
Incomparable.