For My Family: From Colorado

Mama there's a mountain under the moon tonight

and the starlight is falling

there's a thousand miles between us, across this great divide and it's too late to be calling

But I wanted you to know that even through this snow

I’d be crawling on my hands and knees to find you

Though the stations have been set I know I won’t regret

Even the smallest hint of kindness to remind you

Papa there’s a big cloud and it’s coming down quick

Swallowing the moon and stars that guide you

There’s trouble on the hillside and trouble in the ditch

There’s nowhere to turn that it won’t find you

But I wanted you to know that everything you’ve shown

Is a beacon in this dark that seeks to hide you 

So be luminous and brave and hope for better days

In the morning the sunlight will still shine through

Sisters of my heart although we’ve been apart

These miles stand between us as illusion

And brother in my dreams we are stitched up at the seems 

And drink from flowing streams of sweet collusion 

So I wanted you to know that every day I grow

A little less entitled to my knowing 

And even though I’ve gone I’ll remember you in song

Gathered around the coals watching their glowing

Alice and Philip

 

Alice walks the graveyard 

In the half light just from boredom 

And Philip gathers flowers 

Down from hilltops to reward her

And never once they falter 

Though the signs are all against them 

And the twilight slowly mingles

With the soft sounds from their lantern

And all the times they questioned 

the ways that they were raised 

Or thought that they were different 

than the people they became

I’ll hold the door 

We’ll make the spoon 

I’ll laugh out loud 

You’ll chase the moon

We’ll fly too high

Come down too soon

Count the stars in the thin night air 

It will be spring soon

And after in the evenings 

As the stars come out to see them

And the sidewalks are the foothills 

To the pathways that precede them 

And Alice asks for nothing but the nighttime to surround them

And Philip asks for Alice and wraps his love around them 

Cuz Alice caught a lesson 

he had the privilege to ignore 

And Philip asks forgiveness 

but doesn’t know what it is for 

I’ll hold the door 

We’ll make the spoon 

I’ll laugh out loud 

You’ll chase the moon

We’ll fly too high

Come down too soon

Count the stars in the thin night air 

It will be spring soon

How you doin now?

 The snow is really coming down

The wind is whistling all around

I'm wondering how you're doing now

But I'm guessing you don't care

Did I say this already

Are you a fable, or a myth, an ancient monolith?

Forgotten on the bottom of some troubled little stream?

Do I remember you from different times, or has something older got behind me and slipped around it with no sound?

Cuz I’d follow you down

If you’d follow me down

I’d stop throwin all that sound if you’d simply come around 

But if you’d follow me to hell then I’d be better in between although the soot chokes out the daylight when they burn the whole place clean

Please forgive me I know it’s a bitter way to say goodbye. 

Go dry your eyes.

I can see the light is leaving now, even vacant in your eyes

Can you tell the difference clearer there between the sunset and sunrise?

Here the hills are mist and color, but they’re losing all their leaves to the ground.

And I’d stop coming around 

If you stop coming around

I’d be toiling underground if you were up above the clouds 

And if you’d follow me to heaven then I’d meet you in between although the daylights not so dirty there as the streets surrounding me.

Please forgive me

I know there’s better ways to say goodbye

You can close your eyes.

Life is Heavy

Can't carry it alone

walking home with your punches thrown

Holding your guilt like a broken bone

You can’t forgive

you buried it away but it still eats at ya

you can’t forget if you can't forgive

All those times you were lying to yourself

While you were lying in the dark 

Thinking you were someone else

you lost your grip

your body was strong but your fingers slipped 

battlin' demons ain't for ya kid 

now your heart is split

between a thief and a suffragette

maybe it's time you called it quits

All those miles that you carried it alone

now you've carried it too far

thinking you could hold your own

can't carry it alone

walking home with your punches thrown

pain in your heart like a broken bone

Can you grind yourself some meal?

Can you grind yourself some meal?

Can you make a little flour? 

Have you got yourself some starter that will rise it in an hour?

Have you got yourself a stove and some wood to get it hot

Ya gotta have a fire to boil the water that you got 

Can you catch yourself some game? 

Have you got a friend that can? 

If you trade him for some meal he might lend a helping hand.

Have you knives to skin a boar 

Have you strength to kill an oxe?

What will you use for medicine

When your wee ones get the pox? 

Do you know about the ginseng patch?

And the river bed ground cherries?

Have you brewed the tea with rose hips

And with sumac berries? 

Can you trap a rabbit, track a coyote? 

Run the ridges and take the low roads? 

Are you ready for the melee on the day 

The world explodes?

Mad Marchness

I used to start talking at the top and work 

my way down. 

I find my self in the middle now and the talk is aimed

at me and the differences I can't make. 

If I sit shirtless long enough my thoughts become 

disjointed and I can't think of another line. 

At least I'm not overly warm. 

-----

Candle light trickles down through the crack in the floor and my face pressed to the slim space between the joists and the cross braces catches the scent of cat pee and a dankness like the rats of the bloody flux running between my feet. 

This is not a place where I should stand, but here I am.  

A hushed darkness false with the promise of dawn erupts in a chorus of water droplets hitting the rubber rooftop and leaking down towards the cement pond. where the green duck weed grows and channels itself into an umber deity of greater older world, beneath and across from the senses we thought we failed, but bailed on instead. 

-------

If I drink to starlight and starlight drinks to me can I starlight be?

What if I'm already starlight, sterilized and striate drifting in an empty dream?

Would the color of a dawn wanderer wonder if I were reeling in the evening of my dusk?

-----

The musk of million years instrumental movie moves makes most moderate mention of Manassas but none of Bull Run. Interprets what yous cans from that. Mayhap methinks my time has come to drink the dream and sign the seem. To glint my eye at another prize, seek the lost of the humors and the last of the luminaries of last week weakening the hold steady beat of time and this heart of mine.