There are a thousand words to say
over and over and over and over and
over again, but truths still exist.

Your friend is dead and buried

There’s a dark spot on the radar,
right between the low-flying planes
and the weather balloons, that gets
reserved for all the little things that
nobody can see coming

(this is a glitch in the system
and it’s been there for years)

Like all things worth doing, though,
there’s a trick to the method:
Just pay real close attention
to the things passing into darkness,
and you may just have a good idea
on where they’ll be coming out

Oh Goodness, I hope they end up coming out.

I saw a soccer ball deflated
near a fencepost. It was
covered
with dirt and mud and moss
and it didn’t look like it had been
kicked
in a great many years

So!

I moved to take the soccer ball
and plucked it from it’s rest,
down in the muck and earthy-scented
earth
and home I went, where
I threw it on the back sidewalk
and left it.

A few days passed, and so did
the memory of my new soccer ball.
It lay in back
the dog did not attack it
nor did anyone bother with the thing

Until

I stepped out back one day
and there it was.
There was nothing else to do,
particularly,
so I took that ball and
I ran it under hot water,
and I took a pump to it
and filled it with air

Now

that ol’ ball plays just as good
as it ever did. But soccer balls
are the only things so
patient

Whisper me those fighting words
I’ll tell you what I think of them
and you can never say I never
did nothing for nobody

Speak me clean your inner truth
I’ll weigh your thoughts against my own
and then perhaps we’ll find out
just exactly what’s inside of me

but don’t dare speak a cutting word
or lash your tongue against the thing
We’ve barely got all of our own
how could we ever pay that fee?

There was a gentleman

He was sitting on a park bench
not too far from the edge of the
busiest road in the whole city.

The sun was low in the evening
sky and there were vagrants near,
if I recall correctly, scratching for change
and drinking out of little brown bags.

There was a wind that picked up
and it pushed on everybody, tugging
on hair and clothes and bags and
everything, even if it was just a little bit.

Suddenly, that man’s hat was plucked
right from his crown, and in the flash of
an instant, the wind had carried it under
the uncaring tread of a passing car,
flattening it to the brim.

There was a sigh
and the man stood from his park bench,
ignoring the vagrants and turning away
from the red-orange bulb hovering just
above the buildingtops.

He started walking then, perhaps
towards his home, or perhaps to purchase
a new cap.
At least it didn’t rain that night.

Drop the beat
when prudent
but never too long.

Sometimes it’s harder
to get that beat back
than simply
one, two, three, four

I can see the sun pressing through
the branches of the trees, coming
down from somewhere too high to
reach with a ladder, or a long pole,
or a shotgun.

Well out of the way of foolish and
meddling hands, where things, un
maintained, just work the way
they’re supposed to.

And that’s where the boys are,
and that’s where they’ll stay,
and I know if I could see them
next to that untouched sun,
I’d see that they were smiling.

and baby I’d shake you
just as hard as I could
yeah baby, i’d shake
just as long as it took
oh baby, I’d bring you
on back, way back home
and we’d be here forever
and we’d be here together
oh, baby i’d shake you
if only I could

The music is
it is it is
and how it lives
it lives, oh
how it lives!

The bass it throbs
and all those frilly
fills flutter o’er
top of everything
and that’s the part
that sings, it sings
I swear we’ll make it sing

the only difference
between
thick skin and regular
skin is that thick skin
just takes a little
longer
to cut through

There’s a talk we always used to have
we’ll never have again
and now I miss you already
but that’s just how these
things gotta go, you know?

And that project that we started
last March, if I remember right
I guess we’ll never finish like you
wanted to. But I guess that’s
gotta be okay now. I guess
that’s what we’ll work with.

But Man,
it’s gonna be hard working
without you.

Soft eyes
sometimes
sometimes not
so soft
but do they cut!
oh, do they stab and
do they wound! I
hardly find the time
to parry those soft
eyes of yours. I
hardly ever find
the time to parry.
Oh, your eyes, they
strike so
deeply.

Some of you
you try so hard
I understand
you’re trying

but I wonder
do you get
all of the things
you seem to get
or are you lying?

paint a picture
show it to me
will the brush marks
stand the scrutiny?
Dear I wonder
do you get it?
Yes, I understand
you’re trying
but I can’t be sure
you’re half
you say you are

There ain’t nothing

NOTHING

better

than the good ol’ days.

And that I will hold
against any attack,
proof, or
opinion.

Now come on, darlins,
and stand out in the
parking lot with
me.

We’ve been playing the same songs for years
and they’re always sounding better
except for that Wish You Were Here

But fitting, I suppoe

Georgia’s a long ways
away, you know

And we’ve been playing that damn song for years
so maybe let’s practice
so next time we’re together
guitars in hand
we can pay it right

Until then,
rest assured,
WYWH.

The world has a way with itself, sometimes
and in that way the rest of us get
trampled
left for dead under the stamping feet
of the universe

Years pile on years pile on age and all
the lyrics in the world can’t
STOP
the sun from spinning out in space
and us spinning around it

And for the life of me I just can’t
put my finger on the reason
that we all eventually get out of bed
every morning

But we do

And maybe that’s just it.
Maybe that’s the truth that keeps concepts
of emptiness at bay. I
want to live. You
want to live. We
will live together,
on this rock, we will rock

And every morning we will roll on to
the floor of our bedroom, alarm clock be
Damned.

We will step out of the front door
from a hot shower and a cold bagel
and we will go where we will be
and when we finally get home
too late to crank the stereo too loudly
there won’t be anything keeping us up at night,
because here we are.
Let’s do it.

the words for city streets
are many, from colorful
explitives to dark and
malodorous concepts that
chill the soul, to beauty
and it’s life and light and
beauty

but when
the spaces aren’t really
there (oh fire hydrants)
the only words that come
to mind on these old gothic
streets is the beauty
of their beauty.
Fuck this city,
I’m going home.

Age and Guile
may beat
youth and a bad
hair cut
but,
youth and guile
is just a
mutherfucker,
ain’t it?

Your contours are just
right
but when your plastic pieces
break
how will your body bring
your fetid mind to bear
against the daunting task
of teaching it

I suppose you’ll learn
the hard way
what the choice of
beautiful vapidity
can do to a girl.

Or,
more likely,
you just won’t
learn at all.

Mr. Pierce was a
Mechanic. In the
Second Big War, he
worked on tanks and
trucks and jeeps
and other things
that mechanics might
work on in war.

His hands were sort
of a dark gray,
from all the grease
and oil and years
and years, his
fingernails the only
clean spot on those
hard used, elder
hands. Oh, they’ll
never come clean.

He killed a man,
he said. Those
dirtied hands had
pulled the trigger
on a rifle, aimed
at some poor fool
with a different
patch on his
uniform.

He washes his hands
after every meal,
and he doesn’t
even change his own
oil these days,
but his hands
are still that gray
color, and oh,
they’ll never come
clean.

He says that blood
and oil run a
different sort
of color, but
it all stains the
hands the same.
He washes his hands
after every meal,
but oh, they’ll
never come clean.

it likes you
and it’s breathing
it can smell you on his
breath and now
it hungers
yes, it wants to feed
on you
oh, god, it’s
breathing

and you’re running
but escape is not an
option when it likes you
like it does
and it can smell you
on his breath and
it is hungry

like every monster
always is