ice-cold wind and it’s ilk chills
– nay, freezes – the landscape
and every man, woman, child,
dog and windshield wiper in it,
slowing all things (except maybe
some excitable folks’ blood pressure)
a comparable fraction, though
everyone in the frozen landscape
can just barely feel it, even if they
can’t quite tell.

That’s the place we are these days,
shuffling around outside, not standing
still for fear of turning in to
whatever would be the closest thing
to stone, cast for our eternities
as statues on the sidewalk, only
freed once all the ice-cold wind
has blown itself away

counting every moment, every movement captured
shivering in starlight, all the sunlight chased away
until the heavy morning after, candles burning fast
as night-time finds it’s way, not to endless shining
evening, but back in to brightest day

Cities squandering their acres of development
as every soul and surveyor inquires to where
the money’s spent, and something calling, pointing
towards the landmark centering the dream; it’s
hardly heard as blueprints roll to cover up it’s scream

And listless! Like a tiny floating ship atop
the widest sea, the serpents swimming ’round
until the churning waters cause the crew to
flea, least they capsize and be swallowed by the
demon that does surely do it’s worst if just
to do the whole contingent in

Though sleep must surely come to even perfect
places such as these, with fires burning finally down
and breezes whispering through the trees decrying,
as much as any breeze may that Paradise is usually
not more than one day’s drive away

We’re living in the country where
the West had to be won before
the rest of us had somewhere nice
to drive to on vacations.
Two full days will get you to the
coast, or so I’ve heard – two more
days will probably get you back,
unless you’re waylaid by
a  band of countrymen who
aren’t content to coughing up
pay-outs for your little clay chips
at the end of a long, drunken evening
of pulling levers and shooting dice.

The facts of life is
a TV show and, can be
summarized as thus:

Everything important
in life
(probably)
has it’s own TV show,
or at least a special-
event miniseries

Connection points are often stressed
when maintenance is cast in to the bit
where items not maintained are cast,
and then the irony sets in.

Stress causes tension, which can
sometimes create music, but more
often than not it’s easier to cut ties
than to pluck strings, so we go for
the former, rather simpler way about
things

When strings running over long
distances, true or perceived, snap
is when you find out how hard it is
to get those lines to run again

Sometimes I forget what words like
‘propensity’ mean, yet scarcely do I
find a need to find a definition for a
word I use so rarely that I sometimes
fail to understand its meaning.

Although, I often find your own
propensity to using words you hardly
have a handle on quite aggravating,
particularly when often times, I find
you missing quite a couple little ones.

knife and pistol at the ready
homeward bound and moving steady
all in all the surest path
was got by fate alone

seven tried to turn me back
seven now dead on the track
well I may not know where I’ve been
but now I’m going home

Stepping firmly in a long black coat
and a wide-brimmed hat when it’s raining,
refusing to bow his head to any man,
woman, or precipitation, even
if the wind picks up just enough
that his hat is caught up and flies
unobstructed through fresh, wet air
down the city streets.

He’s looking ’round at everything
and everyone that’s looking back at
him (and that is everyone, as no
one dares to try and look away),
taking in the truth of life
and every other little, relatively
unimportant detail.

and the Illustrious Mr. Wilson knows
exactly what is weighing on the mind
of every soul in every crowd he finds,
people swarming over little pieces of
blacktop and garden and existential
bullshit wondering why they’re really
swarming and how long they’ll all swarm for.

Seeing all things reconsidered, Mr. Wilson
wanders through the rain and swarm
and wind, ignoring flying hats and
all the heavy things on peoples minds
and smiling, always smiling, knowing
all the while, he’ll find his way to
sunshine

There’s something to be
said
about
being
sick and tired
of being
sick
and tired.

The main problem
being, however
that the
thing
to
be
said,
is sure damn
tiring to say.

Difficulty phrasing
can be more painful
than the worst Indian Burn you ever
got from your uncle
when you were a kid.
But only, I suppose,
if you fancy yourself as
having a way with words.

I went through those tran
sitional phases, where you
stutter just a bit because you
haven’t quite calibrated the differences
in the speed at which your
brain thinks, and your mouth
moves.

Now things are all lined up,
though.
Now I talk just when
I want the words to come out,
and not an instant
prior.

But even now,
it’s hard to
bring
myself
to use up
all that
(precious)
energy
saying something
that I really don’t
have
to say.

There are times when I don’t need your
patronizing my every
word or move or pensive stance.
Times when I can carry my
verbosity and end up landing on
my own two feet.

And there are times
when the strange thoughts
I tend to string together make
just enough sense to just enough
of us, that it wasn’t such a complete
waste of everyone’s time sitting
around and listening ’till 4 A.M.

Do you remember when we used
to think we knew each other?
I keep looking across the room at you
hardly believing you could ever
be the same person I went to school with
all those years ago.

Do I know you? I must.
Because even though you
look a little different, you smell
just the same, and I guess my
face will have to be sore,
‘cuz goodness knows
I certainly can’t stop smiling.

Three hours under hot lights does
funny things to your thought-process.
Soon it’s keys and notes and stops and
starts and ones and twos and threes and
fours and then it’s nothing.

Nothing but the melody.

(and, perhaps, a bit of rhythm)

The heat’s on high, the water starts
boiling,
boiling,
boiling,
boiling,
running over edges on to ranges
surely ain’t been cleaned off in ages
but not a lot to worry about:
Water stains always come out
of metal

It’s not always an
interesting last name
putting you at the bottom
of every list.

Just saying.

Careful words are normally
a careless waste of time,
so please, cut all the bullshit
and just say what’s on your mind.
(Well, odds are good you’ll
at least be surprised with what you find).

When you’re used to breaking the
sound barrier, 165 miles per hour is
a safe and prudent speed.
So, despite the wing mirrors folding
and the windows shaking in their frames,
with four hot wheels balanced on the
rainslick pavement on the highway,
everything seems like it’s going to be
alright. And even if everything goes
terribly wrong, it won’t be that way
for very long.

there’s no good reason you
can’t keep your whole life
in an aluminum can.

Mostly, things you can can
are really not worth canning,
while all the things you can’t can
need to be kept fresh in dry-
storage anyway.

But there’s still a few things that
need canning.

Make a bigger life,
get a bigger can.

Some evenings after
songs are finished
ringing in my ears,
I tend to wander
towards the cafe
where the young hip
kids all sit and
smoke their
cigarettes, while always
asking questions that
mean nothing, though they
like to keep pretending
that they’re learning more
about themselves and every
other thing around them,
painting up a better picture,
just so they can finally
sleep at night, But
I know better. With
the songs not finished
ringing in my ears,
the whole damn world is
crystal-clear.

no good reason to
sit this one out, it seems
all of the time spent
on spending our money
has caused us to greatly
underestimate many
values determined by
supply
and
demand,
though all of the spending
leaves everyone feeling quite
spent.
God,
Damn it, why is life
so sweet at 3.a.m, yet
so sour at seven?

I’ve been spending a lot of time with someone
spending a lot of time with someone, late while
all the rest of us have run on off to sleep,
and while histories and jokes abound, I
can not help but fight the thought of feelings
moving upward, though they linger just beneath.

And in some respects I feel a baby sitter,
and in others, I must be the third wheel,
though there’s always four of us, all things considered
And anyway, what the fuck do we just
sit around for?

Alas, I feel beset,
both with the swelling urge to
write, and the swelling
urge to never write again.

The latter, it does not take
hold so well. The former, it
often stays not long enough
for anything to come of it.

So, as all such evenings end,
we (I, specifically) are left
with another ill-crafted, rambling piece
that was meant, at first, to
prove that things can still happen,
and yet it only serves to highlight
all the bits that havn’t happened yet.