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.

Nervous Ticks

 

The seed 

ticks alert me to

their presence by tickling 

the hairs on my legs

i squish them between my nails

if i can find them 

if i can't find them 

now, i will find them later

when i become

the meal.

salacious seashells by the seashire

 A sailor went to see see see

st francis of assisi's sea

to saw the sea he sees

too obscene to seize to be 

unseen the seam it steams

in streams it seems to dream

unspun it swims the seed 

to me

I guess 

I'll be.

Mattress

She flipped the mattress
and I averted my eyes
The blood on the fabric just poured fear into my lies
She muttered its over
I knew she meant us
I flew into a rage and I hopped the next bus
Now I’m down in Houston
Where the sun cracks my skin
And each night I dream of washing the sheets and wake up shaking again

There’s nights I still fall
And I track down the gray
And I walk past the windows that show me my life is passing away
If it’s a trick of the light
Or a sign of my age
If we passed on the street I pray you wouldn’t know my face
But I still see yours
In that early morning light
With the dust from the mattress surrounding you like angels in flight 

The restlessness of youth has faded

Into nights I can't recall. I waited for your footsteps rocked the cradle against the wall

I drank from flowing springs of my own mortality and watched the silver plated trumpets blow away my Sovereignty 

In memory I find you now where I lost you in my sleep a far more dangerous conclusion that I reached, but did not keep. 

Where does time go? 

Time is right here. 

Time is only right now. 

Where did you go? 

It's a shadow through my days.
Stranger standing in the rain
soaked alleyway.
Pistol smoke rising with the steam
like an early morning dream;
Sun caked and mean.

This highway is a lie
your rearview a fools perspective
the tires make the sound of nothing
the engine brings you nowhere
your home is a backpack
suitcased and slapdashed
crashed out on the interstate
free to go your way

when i boarded the plane
didn't know if you'd last through the flight
if you had i'd conceded
to put up one hell of a fight
so when i saw you standing there i threw up my hands
and lord i swear i tried
i'm all for lost causes and heartache
just not this time

theres something in mountains
and something in praries
makes em not quite what they seem
there's something in loneliness
seeps itself into
everything i believe
the dark side of moonlight
that loosens the leaves from the trees
deposits of ashes, misrepresented dreams

So when I was out past davisville

the last time i missed that right
landed back by the little church
where we turned around one time
and the essence of everything
you said burned in my mind
You gave up the ghost, but persisted
to prove you were right.

vagabond bag-a-bones

Last night I heard you died
With a needle in your hide
Never did quite get it right, did ya kid?

And your mom she had that car
Parked out in the barn
Covered in a tarp
Slowly rusting

And we talked a lot of times
About getting out alive
and then one night
you took it to the wire
and you didn't

Now you're just a bag of bones
Just a ghost without a home
Another one who died alone
Looking for an answer

And if I had been there
to pull that plunger clear
whisper life back into the air
Set you to breathing

last night I heard you died
With a needle in your hide
Never did quite get it right
did ya kid?

RNC

not the republican national convention, or
royal canadian.  Just cold deep dish pizza
and a beer in the fridge.

You Take The Young

I've drank poison to thicken my soles
beat a verdict that drove old men cold
I don't believe in a thing I'm told
You take the young and i'll take the old

Why Are You Drinking in Bed

Why are you drinking in bed?
The house is still a mess
The children haven't been fed
There's a chill in the air
and the furnace is dead
Don't lie to me darlin'
why are you drinking in bed?

Down in this hollow there's a hum underground
and the voices are churning, but they don't make a sound
they're just lying there dormant like the green underground
waiting for something to pull them out

Why are you drinking in bed?
The house is still a mess
The children haven't been fed
There's a hole in the roof
and the rains have set in
Don't lie to me darlin'
why are you drinking in bed?

Yesterday's worth is a borrowed dime
And tomorrow is coming and the factory lines
Are still churning out sorrow, like they have for all time
Don't lie to me darlin' at least not this time.

Why are you drinking in bed?
The house is still a mess
The children haven't been fed
There's a chill in the air
and the furnace is dead
Don't lie to me darlin'
why are you drinking in bed?

Image Imagined

white glare of the tractor trailer left back
of the parking lot half a mile wide and down the street.
cut through cold and ice, and wind blows. windows
shudder and click the still, latent simulacrum. hum
and crack the floor with your footstep

it's dark and the clouds cover everything below
and above heaven.  the glass huts that stand
stranded on the streets and left like leaves between
the sidewalk and the road
behind.

Hotter N Hell

It was hotter n hell on the side of the road
the sound of the radio cut through the smoke
on the overpass burning the windows stuck up
it wasn't an accident more than bad luck

it was all of them fast nights
stacked up like windows
choked out by high rises
dark clouds and funerals
and I can't go on like the heart doesn't matter
but it doesn't matter, no it doesn't matter

It was late in the parking lot
we were drunk so we stayed there and talked
and when we left we left alone


It was darker than death at the end of the day
I stood by your side til they filled in your grave
With the dirt of a lifetime, sins washing away
Caught up on the wind I could hear people say

it was all of them fast nights
stacked up like windows
choked out by high rises
dark clouds and funerals
and I can't go on like the heart doesn't matter
but it doesn't matter, no it doesn't matter

It was late in the parking lot
we were drunk so we stayed there and talked
and when we left we left alone