“Regret”

Lives where the heat is on
And warms himself by the fire
On cold nights,
When he feels his presence being forgotten
He yells “I am here!”
When you try to forget about him
And leave him in your drawer
When you go on vacation
But the Florida breeze
Welcomes this man
Who lives in your blood stream
And flows from your heart
Through your fingertips
Into a pulse of reminder
The sun burn
That later peels
Reveling new flesh
But the blood underneath remains the same.

“Suspense”

Is a germ
On the end of your tongue
Waiting to be spat across the room
With the next word you say
To end a conversation
With the man who will not tell you his name
But says tomorrow…
The red lights waiting
For a chance to be Christmas tree green
And lend a hand to the unbalanced child
Falling from the balance beam
As the next word from the hymnal falls off the page
And the knowledge that a void is created by the man sitting in the corner
Who you can’t remember
If you met or not.

So many times...
have I tried to write this song down
in failure
since I have not yet used language
to illustrate unimagineable beauty
that sound nearing the edge of the earth
apocolypse heaving,
and the truthful silence when it is finished
a wave freeze
takes it all by surprise
redemption, in the purest sense
and forgiveness shaken out
like the pennies in our pockets
the change cast aside
has made us who we now are.

Sky Dreams
like purple waves
over a drunken body
drowning in the sands,
when air
is the whole of the sky
and the caravan
moves ghost bodies,
pale phantoms,
sahara mares
saddled for childhood,
spent like a penny
on whiskey spit cowboys
and a boy divided
from man to child
in the dense swirl of moonlight
dancing frenzy forward, forward
lanterns sway
with the soundless, and the
impact of horshoes
slapping hoofs
on a ten gallon hat
bent and balanced over confusion
intuition, the partition
of an artist
and an old west scene
guns slung
and singing,
the boredom
turned alcoholism
too many boys
too few mothers
too ugly to be beautiful
but true beauty comes from
reminiscing about
going west.