A Letter By Post

A letter by post
That she'll never receive
A letter that I'll never send

All full of things
That she'd never believe
All my sorrow that we had to end

I wrote it all down
And I left it to wait
'Til next chance I got to the store

The letter didn't make it
Out of my gate
In ashes it sits by my door

Oh darlin', it reads
Oh won't you forgive me
Oh darlin', I can't tell you why

Oh darlin', I left you
Oh won't you believe me
I meant not a tear to your eye

What I had to tell
Was not fit for her ears
So I didn't write her much more

I just wrote that I'd love her
For all of my years
And I laid it in wait by the door

I awoke the next morning
And got ready to go
I was turned away from the door

I wasn't ready
For I didn't know
Them old boys come to settle the score

This was the trouble
That I could not tell her
The reason that I had to leave

They took my possessions
Everything but for
The letter she'd never receive

Oh darlin' it reads
Oh won't you forgive me
Oh darlin', I can't tell you why

Oh darlin', I left you
Oh won't you believe me
I meant not a tear to your eye

See, I was a gambler
As many men are
But I never could win a hand

My plan was defeated
To evade debt afar
For they shot me down on my own land

Debtors in Texas
Are not treated kind
A lesson that I didn't learn

The men came and took
All of worth they could find
Everything else they let burn

Including my message for her

Oh darlin', it reads
Oh won't you forgive me
Oh darlin', I can't tell you why

Oh darlin' I left you
Oh won't you believe me
I meant not a tear to your eye

Oh darlin', I love you
Oh won't you believe me
I wanted you here by my side

When you make it here
Oh I hope you'll receive me
Your gambler for you has died
|back to top|

A Love Song To Mother Malady

Just bounding
Just pumping through three chambers
Out and 'round again
Mixed 'round again

Inefficient
Mother Malady riding high
Lady Lazarus
I was born to love this way

Borne on barre
A love song
To mother

Do leaves on your burner
Yellow with age in the back
Walls curling like paper?

Redolent
Mother Malady pleading so
Lying Lazarus
I was born again today

Borne on barre
A love song
To mother
|back to top|

Amber

You expect me to bleed
Oblivious of the inaction of my heart
You expect no less than sap
Unaware of the pressure of art

Amber

Nothing else surfeits
F-A-S-I-O-U my soul
What else competes?
What else rivals such a goal?

Amber

I give to you just what you ask
What inhibits you is your pride
You expect me to bleed
Darlin' my well-spring has dried

Everyone knows what you take from me, Amber
|back to top|

Apocatastasis Blues

Up from the Earth
And into my eyes
And it's gone

But everybody makes it home

Lost on the road
With Ansel's eyes
Allone

But everybody makes it home

Zion
Zion
O Zion

A sheep in the pack
A wolf in the skies
Unknown

But everybody makes it home

Zion
Zion
O Zion

A sheep in the pack
A wolf in disguise
Unknown

But everybody makes it home
|back to top|

Briefly

I seen you Sunday afternoon
She had her arm around you
She could walk
Briefly

I saw the final steps
Heard the last raking, gasping breaths
You caught my eye and smiled
Briefly

It all comes down to pride
Life won't be denied
Loss is what it seems only
Briefly

Monday
She was gone
You were alone
Briefly

The stone gleamed
It came down to me
And you alone
Briefly
|back to top|

Blackout

Your blackout curtains
Are wearin' on me
Such a shade of white
That you can't never see

Let you sleep
Let you dream

In your darkened dungeon
I know you have cried
Your pupils big as Hell
Big as the intents they hide

Let you cry
Let you scream

I've looked into your window
And knocked upon your door
But I've never seen inside
Those curtains reach down to the floor

Let you hide
Let you cry

Alone
|back to top|

Cayce

I return to you prophetic
Like the blood in Cayce's neck
And I've never heard you whisper
But I swear I'll hear you yet

Nothing will remain
When the elder brother calls
We'll lose our earthly pain
Our backs no longer to the walls

It ain't nothing can help
Evade our fate
I left you apathetic
All your tears shed just too late

The earth shakes
When the elder brother wails
Left only in his wake
Unrepentant corpses in their jails

I return to you prophetic
Like the blood in Cayce's neck
|back to top|

December

It's December eternally
With nothing to show
Only the worst days I've had
Repeated with a cover of snow

It hangs like the bells overhead
It lies like a blanket of death
It rocks you to sleep for ages
It chokes you of every last breath

And it won't stop
And it won't relent
When you wake up
Everyday it's December again

I have the same dream every night
That I can't remember each day
So I walk the same damn roads
That have always lead me away (astray)

Like the frozen rivers and streams
That wander through the leafless trees
I'm lost in familiar surroundings
December just won't let me be

No it won't stop
And it won't relent
When I wake up
Everyday it's December again

It won't break
And it won't give in
I can't shake
The feel it's December again
|back to top|

Dorothy

Love in a vacuum
Like war

Can't touch nothing
Don't sound so unsure

Here's to you
Dorothy

Dorothy the first
The last

Baby don't
Don't feel bad

Here's to me
Getting just what I wanted all along

Here's to me
Everything I was after from the start

Here's to me
Finding just what I been lookin' for
|back to top|

From pp. 40

I believe Hell will fluoresce
Like so many idle threats
From too little too late
Lost time saving face

A saddish glow
No gleaming tongues of fire
Cells completed
Two sides no longer missing

I believe the lies on my breast
Are the lies of traditional threats
And all scorn is now waste
As is love and pain

A saddish glow
No gleaming tongues of fire
Cells completed
Two sides no longer missing

Now enclosed
New judge, renewed conviction
Ratted out
By the worst: sins of remission
|back to top|

Guadalupe

Guadalupe is dead
By the hand of a goat
Through the will of man
To persevere

In with a teaspoon and out with a shovel

All the raptors in roost
Are dealt with in time
Nothing belies
Our quest like time
|back to top|

Holly

From her bones
The brightest pawns
From her bones
The whitest pawns

And her fruit
What he bears
The darkest hues
That she shares

And I would want him free
I would free him, she say
Were I free myself

From her bones
The brightest pawns
From her bones
The whitest pawns

And her fruit
Just like my blood
From green of youth
To red of love

And I would want him free
I would free him, she say
Were I free myself
|back to top|

Jim

He saw the world
As a loop
And his first steps away
Were the first on his long journey home

She said he said
I was coming back if you could wait
She said he said
I always figured you would wait

She said in this world
There's no time to waste
In this world

She said, "another woman"
He said, "well"
She said, "drugs"
He said, "Hell, just say what you mean"

She said she said
Don't act like you're lost
You can pretend
But you know right where you are

And in this world
There's no time to waste
In this world

She said she said
Don't act like you're lost
You can pretend
But you know just where you are

Said I been fooled
But you're my last mistake
In this world
|back to top|

Letters

In doctored letters I write home
With affected hope I say all's well
I rethink my thoughts before they form
I can't acknowledge this as hell

I tell them all it looks like Canaan
That sometimes just out on the sea
I swear I almost see Jesus walkin'
I don't tell them I hope he can't see me

The family says they read the letters
And they always send their best
But Ma and Pa don't know the half of it
With these bloodied hands I just can't rest

In shorter letters I say less
But it leaves me time to think even more
I've come to know that I don't understand
Why I've been calling murder war

The family sends me little packages
New pictures packed in cookie crumbs
But thoughts of home won't take me back again
Don't think I've ever felt so numb

Somedays I can't hold a pen
Most days I can't clean my gun
And when the sand builds up and it backfires
I just hope I'm the only one

I've lost all interest in letters
I can't keep up the lies I tell
I just keep looking the other way
And try not to see that I'm in hell

So I tell myself it's just like Canaan
That somewhere just out on the sea
If I look hard I'll see him coming round
To take away my misery
|back to top|

Lorna

Somewhere between
Grey and blue
She was never mine

Wavering between
Grey and blue
But never crying

Much too much a lady
Much too much pride
Too little wind

Wheels cycle 'round
Away and beyond
The light of brass suns

Lost to me
Away and beyond
Overlooking the river-sea

On her side, her
On my side, I
Too little wind

Hesitating
Between
Grey and blue

Hesitating
Between
Grey and blue

Her on her side
I on mine
Too little wind
|back to top|

Malingerer

Let's call this proof that I have tried to write a love song
Something that would not be about me
Nothing that could ever be a signal
Declaiming my pathology

I wrote this about seeing you at twilight
I wrote it after seeing you at dawn
My appetite it seems is not surfeited
My lust for you goes on and on and on

My ache for you is not akin to sorrow
Like a river isn't too much like a lane
My long-suffering malingerer
How much longer must we live in pain?
|back to top|

Nothing So Bold

There's nothing as weak the human heart
There's nothing so bold as it tears you apart
It looks you right in the iris

What's second chance, when you've nothing
What's a second shot, when you've the blues
What am I waiting for, no one comes calling
What's the last solution, when there's nothing to choose?

It's nothing so morbid as living without
Nothing so bold as to throw you out
Into the sunburnt twilight

What's the last thing you said to me?
"What good's patience when no one comes calling"
In your second retort, what nerve you had
That's the second I knew, there'd be no more balking

But nothing empowering like knowing your sins
Nothing so bold as confronting the demons
Nothing exciting

This waning
Won't be the end
All the waiting
Though no one comes to call

What's a second chance
when I gave you a million?
I can't let you leave
I'm not so vicious

Still I'm not bold enough
to ask you to stay

|back to top|

Of Lilly

I know it's louder than it really oughtta be
But it masks the words the road whispers at me
Tries to tell me not to go

But it's alright, I mean it's fine, I mean I'm okay
I'll find another station if this fades away
Into the static to which we all return

I wax poetic in the dusk, isn't that what you said?
When I wander to the things I have read
That I couldn't impress on you

What is it now?

I wax pathetic in the dark, isn't that what you meant?
In light of all the roses and tears that I spent
On the quiet of your porch

You went to visit all the roses on my mother's hill
Saw them grown up and diseased, I think you saw them wilt
Still rooted to the ground

I spent my time in the cellar while I was there
I needed one more taste of the cool dry air
Which the city can't afford

What is it now?
And what will it be?

Remember winter in the snow and the kerosene?
Three pairs of socks; still a beauty queen
But never quite aware

We made love on the couch later on that week
You were afraid, but I couldn't speak
Transfixed by your look

You looked over your glasses when you said, "Don't go"
I knew your eyes were on me, but I closed the door
And I won't look back

What is it now?
And what will it be
When it's grown?

I settle down in the seat, and I can't help but laugh
I know you'll cry, but you'll get over that
Sure as I will not

I cut the volume off and I open my ears
The sounds of whispers turn to jeers
I curse the road and drive on

What is it now?
And what will it be
When it's grown?
|back to top|

On Life

I dreamed a ribbon
Fallen from the back of every war-machine
It's a war on life

I groped the walls
In search of the switch to turn it off
'Till I learned to turn away

I dreamed a march
The likes of which will never come again
It ends in February

I stacked the cards
I am the dawn of the twilight
I am the dawn, I am the dawn, I am the dawn

I stacked the cards
I am the dawn of the twilight
I am the dawn, I am the dawn, I am the dawn

I am the dawn, I am the dawn, I am the dawn
I am the dawn, I am the dawn, I am the dawn
And you hired me!
|back to top|

Ours

So the one thing to tear us apart
Is the only thing truly ours
We reap what we've sewn
We are culled; the virus grown

So it is the death of two
Deservingly, me and you
Nothing further, wait and see
Nothing more, you and me

A bedside speech in the ICU
Soon it will be me, right now it's you
You close your eyes, "Fare thee well,
"In six months time, I'll see you in Hell"

I hope it's the drugs or the breathing machine
Makes your tongue articulate just what you mean
I'll join you there, of that I'm sure
For wretched sinners there is no cure
|back to top|

Plea

I would treat you so nice
If you were mine
You'd never wantfor anything

I know you're pretty
And you do too
But I know I can love you

You know you're pretty
But I don't think that's the point
I just want to love you

I only want you happy
I want to make you happy
That's really all I have to say
|back to top|

The Sea (For The Survivors Of The White Sea Canal)

The frogs below
Croaked by the millions
But too small to see
The water was low
The sea
Was emptying out

Life was so bold
But nothing familiar
Not sure what's free
Or willingly sold
The sea
Was emptying out

Wasn't it enough to be trying?
Wasn't it enough to try?

When in doubt
Of whether she still hurts
It's not looking back
It's living without
Like the sea
Just emptying out
|back to top|

Terms

I was losing my mind when you returned to me
I was starting to think of myself in terms of him

And what matters is not what I do
And you let me forget
But what I'm losing in ground
I'm gaining in intellect

It's the back of your neck and your sloping smile
And how everything all of us knows won't never connect

And nothing is waste if nothing's wasted
If you don't care where I've been
And the precedents set subvert love
And I'm only a friend

I don't cry, I don't bleed, I don't sweat
I don't toss in the night
But I know you'll haunt me yet
Given time
|back to top|

X-ray

Under and up
Can't catch my breath since they caught me
Under and up
Under and up

This is the point
I grow gills
And I evolve
To suit myself

Like an ant
Magnified and maligned
Like an ant
Polemicized

This is the point
I give in
And ethics evolve
Suit yourself

Suit yourself
|back to top|