Reach For Sorries

Think about a thing worth thinking about
and travel into your mind,
where you’ll find some wants and needs
and little else but worthless rhymes.
My head is on your shoulder.
No, my heart is on your sleeve,
racking up a sort of mystical fight
just like David and his giant,
named to show how big he could be
if ever there was a light on
to show everyone what he’s made of.
Still, he loses every time he’s read,
a pebble to the face could shed
some much needed soul in the clouds.
And David,he’s still around
basking in a victory
now centuries old.
Now sometimes he finds himself
just doing what he’s told
with no rebellion in the fold.
No soldier for the world no more.
No, now he’s wearing thin.
Like a dog he sheds and winces
at the sound of passing airplanes.
Surely one could take his eyes.
Surely one could snap his spine.
Surely the pilot has a plan
to revenge old Goliath.
Maybe now.
Maybe David’s all alone
because he twisted the plot.
No warrior can bear to be forgot.
Even when his memory rots
and shudders from his neighbor’s gardens
that he somehow never noticed.
Funny how we see some things in
different ways as time goes on.
My loveliness is shifty, I suppose.
My kindness has its limits.
My understanding drifts from claim to claim
and I’m not for a minute insipid.
And I haven’t been.
I’m as stable as a mule,
though all roped up and doused in fuel
to be aflame with nervous ticks and
subjective subatomic guilt and
the worry that the ticking clock is
everything to the story.

And I’m not sorry for the way I feel,
the books I read or
the soil I steal to
fashion semi-hydroponic apparatus
I used to grow a little faster.
You’re 32, you say.
Just ask what the fantasy proclaims.
And name yourself as David.
Laugh and scream and say,
“Take me as I am:
“Nothing if not a helpless little man.
“Nothing if not a shame.”
Reach for sorries.
Take the blame.

Title

It’s hustle to bustle beneath drainpipe sewers.
And nothing but nothing could trade steaks for their skewers.
My mind’s indecision comes couth in the mirror
but no one else knows what insanity incurs.
It’s too intrepid to dream
and too strange to differ.

Yet so goes the stripes of cloth,
dingy and dirged
through their penchant to saunter
both trite and disturbed.
As a combat zone winks at the world back at home
’til a drift of contrition goes weak at their nose.
Still, table teeth smile their pearly white bones
on a crowd of deplorables gagged with hormones.
‘Cause nothing but fewer could mean rats under molehills
built by antagony
droplets of steam
set by angles of brawn and brine
from angels of time after time
and the time after that time that speaks under dawns.
My insolence begs you for sure.
But crafts of the plagues go for dollars and purse.

Thoughts in the Belfry: Essays on the Songs

Listen to the album here

Thoughts in the Belfry

Introduction

Welcome to the listening experience of a lifetime, of eight songs I wrote years ago that never got their fair shake in recording technique, arrangement, nor execution, as well as one new thirteen minute epic poem set to two chords and a classic folk melody line (full disclosure, I wrote the words to the tune of “Ring Them Bells” by Bob Dylan).

What follows in this document are the brief stories of the songs chosen for this retrospective, their origins and their writing and anything else I can think of today.

Please listen to the record at a high volume, preferably with a pair of decent headphones, or in your car.

Gloria

This was the first song I wrote after getting out of the hospital, March 2012. My first full blown manic episode resulted in psychosis and internment at a psychiatric facility in Cleveland, Ohio, where I met people who I thought were other people, and where I doodled and rambled all over my hardcover copy of The Prophet, being both convinced that I had written it – albeit in a different lifetime – and that it was the one true bible of existence. I still have the latter feeling, and have since bought a clean copy to read and peruse. I rarely look at that first, hospital copy.

Either way, I got out after a week of thinking the food was made of plastic, and demanding I be let outside to smoke a cigarette. A carton or so later, I was sitting in my sister’s attic – which had become my bedroom, thank god – and wrote this song. It is chock full of words and phrases that can be said in different accents and rhyme in different ways, or not rhyme at all sometimes. The scheme of those rhymes is ostensibly random, but which also were wrought with great care and precision.

The lyrics go a number of ways as it progresses, but the hook of the song – some variation on “Oh my god” – is a natural viewpoint of my mindset after those ill events of 2011-2012. I can’t speak much about it because one, I don’t remember those years too well, and two, I was at fault for just about everything bad that happened, though I can’t blame myself. Bipolar Disorder is a funny thing, and mine is very very bad unmedicated. Oh well.

The arrangement for this recording, as with all of the songs on this record, was generally improvised at the point of recording. A few takes here or there incurred, but without question I couldn’t do it again if I tried. It’d still be good. But it’d be different for sure.

At the End of the Day

I remember thinking of the line, “I’m just a magazine on the newsstand at the end of the day,” and it floored me. I immediately sat down at the piano and bam, a few minutes later had a finished song. I say it about a lot of my songs, but this is perhaps the best I’ve written. Oddly, I’m sure I’ll say that again before this essay is finished. So be it.

It’s a funny thing, songwriting. At both stages of the writing of this song, I thought that it was perfect. And both versions are indeed. The original I released as a single from a recording I made on Islesboro, Maine, on a piano with more dead keys than live. The video of that performance still exists– probably on my Facebook page somewhere. Either way, it can be heard on some or other single somewhere else on my bandcamp page, which is where you bought this. Bandcamp. Dig.

Obviously, this version of this song is not played on piano.

One day, as I was sitting in our New York apartment playing guitar, I stumbled upon this riff and immediately knew it was for this song. I added the intro from a melody that I’ve been whistling for over a decade. This is a fucking good song. Thanks goes to Allie for suggesting I delete the double tracked vocal. It’s better for it.

The lyrics, as mentioned with that first line I thought of, are all about being forgotten. And the end line, “God save the queen ‘cause I love her eyes,” is a summation of my feelings about revolution for the sake of it. Truly we need one, yes, the world over, but I can’t condone stabbing anyone in the heart, as it were. “Fit for kings, not a nod to the knights,” is me saying, “aren’t you soldiers just hired killers?” Protect me if you might, but the clearest purpose you serve is to rattle the world into oblivion with your bombs and your guns. Cold-hearted, brother. Makes me ill.

Devil Driven

“Devil Driven” was written on guitar, but there’s a piano version floating around that I like a lot. This version is an attempt to combine the two, and I like how it turned out.

It was the first song I remember writing and thinking, “I’m pretty good at this.” There’s little structure to the words beyond their rhythmic nature, but the song I think flows nicely and without hiccup. The “devil” in the lyrics, putting his hands out to play on the baby grand, I do believe has taught me how to live and love…rock and roll as a product of Earth means it inherently holds a sort of evil, though amidst a sort of heavenly abode as well.

However, it should be said that throughout the song, I’m writing about my Dad, straight up. “Dry your eyes, my son, and lift your head to sing. Anywhere you are contains most everything,” is exactly what I would have expected my Dad to want to say to me after he died. “I’ll swear by you for my eternal life” are his words to me somewhere outside of space and time.

No Ship For Sailing

I was 19 years old, had just dropped out of college and moved to Asheville, North Carolina. I had played a house gig and a very talented local songwriter, and friend to my sister, et al, saw me and asked if I would open for her. So I did.

About halfway through my set of slow, sad songs – and one in particular with the hook “whose bodies are these?” …yikes! – a man from the back of the bar screamed, “The world is fine. Play something happy.” It goes without saying I took issue with it, and went home that night and wrote this song. It’s one of the first times I thought to myself, “how can I make this just really really catchy?” And I did. In some alternate universe, this is a hit single.

The nautical references ar a clear copy of Okkervil River, The Decemberists, and whatever else I was listening to back then (that’s about it, you could say) but I still like it because it takes the idea of sailing on a vast ocean and flipping it on its side, willing you to believe that all I want to do is sail, but I can’t figure out how. A later song on this collection, “And I’m No Boat” acts in a similar way, and to some degree is the slow, more plaintive version of “No Ship.”

Just FYI, the last lines of the song are, “I would send my patterns, thoughts and doubts as far to sea as I could shout. And you would do the same until it all ended up miles away. And by the way, it really shouldn’t end up miles away.” That’s important.

Fumblin’ Still

“Fumblin’ Still” was a strange song to write. For such an early song in my repertoire, it’s pretty complicated and it jumps around key signatures, strumming patterns, riffs, and melodies. It’s almost some kind of psychedelic rock, without the rock. All acoustic guitars, as was my custom throughout this record.

Using the opposite of the boat metaphor: the house metaphor. Originally meant for the Such a Sinister… album, I cut it because that album was too long as it was. It’s too long as it is, too. Nevertheless, it’s a really cool song. And the line “a gentleman in a three-piece suit is a fool. Unless it suits him well” is just great. I dig pretty much all of these lyrics. There’s good couplets everywhere. And the end, “it’s the grey skies that make me blue” is a lyric I know you wish you’d written.

Tricks of the Mind

Another manic episode song. This one was written in Portland, Oregon right in late winter, 2013.

It had been only a year since my first breakdown, and this time proved to be sooooooo much worse. After about six months of pretty constant decline, I erupted into oblivion (again around Valentine’s Day, my god) and ended up on the street, where I walked around for the next six weeks. And say “walked around” instead of “slept” or “lived” because neither of those words bring across the fact that I didn’t sleep and I almost died.

Sometime right before I hit the street, I wrote this song. The whole thing is me freaking out that my Dad didn’t want to be dead and buried in a coffin. I’ve always kind of had a thing about coffins, in a way. From my very real fear of vampires, to the idea that bodies aren’t at rest when boxed up…I dunno, but I know I don’t want one. That should be known. I also would prefer to die outside at night. Just so you know.

The recording of this version was really fun and it sounds just about perfect to me. That’s a clarinet (it’s a clarinet on a good few of these songs) and then the brass comes in, and my goodness. Terrific. Again, all these parts were effectively improvised, one after the other.

And I’m No Boat

A sweet little love song. The first one I wrote for Allie when we first met. I even include the line “…something I have written down in code,” like I wanted to make clear I thought she was aces, but I didn’t want to make it too obvious I was already writing songs about her. Goodness.

It isn’t really about her though. Really it isn’t. It’s that nautical theme flipped over on its head again. I’m the boat. Or no boat, actually. And I gotta wait for the wind, and even when there is wind, I’m being turned this way and that, but not really even this way and that because I’m following the stars, so God’s In Charge. Who knows.

I like this song a lot. Just guitar and vocals here. Nothing else fit.

Unwinding

“I don’t like this one. It sounds like you’re on an acid trip.”
-My Mom

It kind of is. Another song I wrote right after my first hospital stay. Originally, it was a beat Cory Maidens made, hence the writing credit. I ended up recording it not long after, full of noisy electric guitars and bad keyboard drums. This version is a simple kick drum, and “heavy metal organ” and I think it’s cool as shit. It doesn’t fit on this album at all, which is why it fits on this album so well, in my opinion.

The lyrics are just wordplay. They mean as much as you want them to mean, which means they don’t really mean that much. I mean, they mean something…you get it. It’s mostly just practicing internal rhyming and rapping instead of singing. This would prove to be the last song I decided was an okay variation on hip hop.

Thoughts in the Belfry

We’ve made it to the namesake, “Thoughts in the Belfry.” This is a long and complicated lyric on the guilt of living well in the time of suffering. It’s about recognizing the bullshit around you, especially those on the so-called “Christian Right.” More like Reich. Fuck them all, indeed. Neo-facism is no excuse for failing to live by God. Eat the rich.

It’s also about the passage of time, and the willingness to change amidst a changing society. But again, it’s about the bullshit entrenched in the thinking behind the movement. Sometimes people are dumb and don’t notice. And on the other side of the spectrum, so corrupt they don’t notice. “To steal is fine as long as you’re a company man” is just about the summation of it all for me. We have Socialism for the Rich and the Powerful. Bail out the banks, bail out big business. Don’t take me on my word that I need your help…but again, not Me. I’m living well. And there again is the guilt.

This song turns into a song about family, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. I call my Mother royalty. I call my stepdad father. I remind my sisters to be original and regal, because they are.

And then the end comes, after thirteen minutes, and the album is over.

Thanks for purchasing. Thanks for listening. Thanks for reading.

Toodles.

A Drift of Contrition

Why do my eyes deceive me? he asked.
What are the tides going to bring?
Where does the stretch of the canyon
meet animals, and birds on the wing?
Do such stipulations reek of deception?
Have the contents of reality sworn to be lost to time?
I imagine a drift of contrition,
before landlocked insanity felled
and we went blind.
Blind to the falling stone.
Blind to the worry wart.
Blind to the faithful and god-fearing.
Blind to the worship at midnight.
Blind to the daily prayers, repeated
without consciousness.
To the regretful actions and the outright sinfulness.
I doubt you bring cards to the table of god.
I bring cigarettes and a stoner’s guilt.
You bring coffee breath and flagrant lies.
You bring idiocy.
And what else?
Time will only tell us.
Time will, surely.

And surely, what with time as a whole,
in step with a continuum and a drunken spine,
do the ides of April go tumbling into May.
And the flowers burst like eggshells
and the leaves grow overnight.
And the grass gets greener,
and it’s mown sometimes.
However we are, with or without labor,
it is the temperance of being together
that goes slipped into dancing at dawn.
I wake and am perfectly calm.

So for goodness go forsaken
with a riddle at your side,
a sandwiched rock and hard place
you’ve gotten stuck between.
See neither one
while laying on the wall.

Nature’s Slow Resolve

Oh to work without escaping
into brilliant light, forgiven
by a candle’s wick.
Oh to treat afternoons like
stark white gloomy skies
are nothing but a shield
for the sunshine.
I cover my eyes.

Laugh like you were born smiling,
try to reach God with every grin,
with your cheeks tucked in.
With your railroad sins
hidden by tired sacks of dawn.
I’ve coffee then gone.

Please deny no passage
to a riddle on the beach,
like pleasure in the pulpit
was a sideways reach to heaven,
lowercase inside my mind.
I kick and scream in 4/4 time.

Lie under a whippoorwill
and tease the branches well
until the leaves tickle your ankles
and you cry from giggling.
Nature’s slow resolve
seeps through your skin.

But Not All Too Real

Have a way with wonder
and go grazing past the fields
of green. They are vast and
without scope, you said, and they’re
nothing if not lost to the past.

Funny how the tinkered tailored soldiers spied.
Wouldn’t you think the aim would be to stay
as far away from danger as you can?
I hole up and my whole self is calmed a bit.
At least until I read the news and it all becomes
all too real.
But not all too real
because I can stay in my apartment
and go places that are safe
for me,
a white man.
Stupid.
How odd
that history
should paint
this present.
I look at my skin
and see nothing special
at all.
At all.

My Oh My, This Place

Inspire me
Desire me
Require all my love
I’ll do it purposefully
Undoubtedly
Like a moth to the sun
Before the world lit up like madness
To a fantasy clutched like teddy bears
Oh teddy boys who party on
In working class duds
Boots of phony leather
Worn and weathered
Like the lines on their gums

Organically
You fascinate me
You’re more than I can judge
You are constantly
So lovely
I stare off into space
I can only sometimes think that way
It’s the position of the head
That helps me to say
Something
Anything

My oh my this place
It’s practically perfect in every way

Nevertheless

There is an indecisive man of goodness
who dances on the lawn.
High above his standing person
is the kingdom of God.
Yet the doctor is puzzled
and the leaders subsist
on creating danger in the heavens
with a rod or a fist
or a submachine gun,
or riot gear and tear gas to attack our lungs further.
It seems new war crimes –
amidst a new disease,
and a new stupidity
that don has evil-done –
are played out.
People are dying.
People are crying out
for a little guidance,
a little know how.
Not a play for cheap laughs.
Not insanity on no one’s behalf.
Oh where does the path lead?
Can I retrograde all my confessions
for the sins of a few thousand?
My head spins.
But words persist.

Rainstorm

Just a little better now.
Just a little simpler,
a little more meaningful.
It’s that it almost didn’t happen.
It’s that we were almost left alone
to be shivered by the lightning strikes,
to be arranged into the clouds.
Thunder.
Thunder.
Thunder.

The Perfect Guide To Rattled Swords

Distract no differences regarding indolence of seated sins.
Beget no patient sky’s inception on a whirlwind.
The mountains call to me
and I’ve not seen them in some years, you see.
I’m just a passing gaze upon a side street.
No shivering deception casts a net.

A package was delivered but it didn’t arrive.
Just like Indiana Jones with his Holy Grail eyes.
My separate need to sink into the grass blades
is like Nora Jones singing about the blues greats.

Pleasure is a pattern twisted.
Pain is something more.
It is the perfect guide to rattled swords.
It is a back porch.
It is a nice space.
It is cold drink.
It is a familiar face.

Pain is just pleasure flipped.
I feel them both each day
and moreso when the weeks stretch out
then slip away.
I’m happy now
but freaked the fuck out–
just not enough to scream from the fire escape.
Not enough to hear some voices swayed.
Not enough to stare down strangers
until I’m sure they’ll go the fuck away.

My pills wrap me up and warm me.
My pills wrap me up and warm me.
My pills wrap me up and warm me.

They Don’t Strive For Sainthood

What was once disregarded as trivial
is now touched by the hand of a serial criminal
lost amidst side streets trembling.
It is no more a canyon of dreams
than a patchwork of a cavalry,
tepid
tried
true.

And what portions of privacy
can be pleasing to the aristocracy?
I wonder.

Still there is nothing to fear but the fear of fear.
Seeds of a sentient ghost
will shiver
on pillows of black smoke,
on faint wisps of wokeness,
on crass waves of grain,
on shaking window panes.

There is much to be known
about the living alone
that is lost to the doldrums
of time.

So tidy up homes
and want no other.
As if a house is a kaleidoscope
painted over shutters.
True, there’s no one out there
worth seeing.
They don’t strive for sainthood.

Even in Darkness

From the foundation on up
to the rooftops,
my dear,
we are rattled with private planes
and suits on.
Where will a monument
capture the wild
when insanity brims from a heart racing?

It is played,
undone like an eagle identity shouldered.
No contempt for the wind.
Feel it play ’round your skin.
Feel it play ’round your eyes
’til you’re crying from laughter and built up
like a house which was once a metaphor for a heart.
Otherwise simply ascertain a percentage of canopy whistles.
My brain shorts.

Continue in earnest.
Watch sports.
Hug who is dear to you.
We’ll all die from something.
And no one knows when.
And I’ll tell you in confidence,
it is neither here nor there how I go out.
I could crack my skull,
I could scream and shout
’til my throat’s sore.
I bury tides with sand
gone
rushed away.
Even in darkness
the lights lead me astray.

Thoughts In the Belfry (a folk song)

What follows was written in chunks from beginning to end one morning yesterday. The melody followed, and my notes are included here. Song to come shortly.

Thoughts in the Belfry

part one

Oh to con society and figure on sleep.
Oh to be a weary man who can’t very well see
what is rush houred now,
what is lost in the clouds
And he can’t seem to shine his soles to be better off now.

Wing my lids and shattered tongue and teeth in my mouth.
Resist my mind and open lungs to be ran out of town.
‘Cause it’s breathless and bold,
it is both new and old,
and the seams are ripping past the point of out of control.

Sleep inside a martyrdom and wish on the stars.
Weep for lies, corruption, shadows, and the cycles of Mars.
For the planets align
and their signatures signed
as the past is washing, dried and hung on the lines outside.

There is wanting on the corner store to a shelter in place.
And the people screaming wash and fold in the center of space
are all asleep at the wheel
and delivered from steel
as their shadows slip and gauge the light of all that is real.

(intensify)
(rising melody)
Please beget no singing birds at the crack of all dawns.
And don’t regret your slinging heart, it is found and it’s pawned.
‘Cause the sleep in your eyes
is forgotten with pride
and the circle of the day is just the passing of time.

(ooo)
(ooo)
(ooooooo)
(ooo)

Wear no hat, St Peter, you are withered and freaked.
Your cap and gown don’t graduate from their weathered antique.
And the eagles on poles
were never kept in their role
and the songs you sung were always just a way to console.

(ole…4x)

(intensify)

My oh my, young woman, you are pretty and sleek.
And after wine your face turns red and you cower in sleep.
From the depths of your mind
comes a series of rhymes
and the smoke it coils ’round and ’round you every damn time.

(F#m)
Sing for children wiping out on roller skates.
(F#m)
(melody above the previous)
Cry for minutes so divine, yet coupled with snakes.
‘Cause the evil is tried
and the world’s on its side
as jolts of electricity have my skin fried.

Come with me, St Peter, St Geronimo too.
Come with me, we’ll travel far in the weight of our shoes.
As the books are described,
with their words all inscribed,
’cause the end is growing nearer–at least the stillness of night.

(ooo)
(ooo)
(ooo)

part 2

(quiter)
Sit with me a while and I will tell you a tale
of a worried man who can’t pretend that there’s beer in his pale.
He is drunk and disturbed.
And he is perfectly sure
that his country’s on fire and it surely will burn.

Have a drink, St Katherine, your baby is fine.
Smoke with me I wanna know all that’s on your mind.
Or just be on the way
to wherever you stay.
Yea, it seems to me the roads are froze, they shatter and shake.

(A)
Pick me up, St Martha, oh I believe in you.
Take me out for supper, man, there’s nothing to do
but be quick on the draw
as Jesus twice falls.
Your dogma is a strangle on the city of Paul.

(quietly now)
Find me in the cedar, Michael. Find me on high.
I will count my blessings as you figure me trite.
‘Cause you banish alright,
and your sword’s at your side,
’til finally there’s nothing but the stillness of night.

(intensify)
So God becomes escapable and the water is black.
The springs and pools polluted will be drained and sold back
to divinity’s hands.
It was a well-devised plan.
To steal is fine as long as you’re a company man.

part three

(quiter)
Teach me how to rattle off a series of sleek.
Help me learn how flowers grow as we lay in our sleep.
We belong to the trees,
to the rivers and streams.
For all along the city was a weight on our dreams.

Play with piano, cello, and be joyous and sing.
Play like you were meant to when your mother said, “Please
will you get your guitar?
You’ll be famous, a star.
I’m so proud of the way you keep on playing all the parts.
Oh yeah.”

Mother, I miss seeing you in purple and gold.
Royalty drips off you and it is written in stone.
And the tricks of the mind
were just insanity’s chimes
waking me from the depths of my insidious mind.

(A)
Father, please be careful as pandemics increase.
Curve your speech to match the spike in patterns and pleats.
Yes, your blue jeans are dry
and God’s on your side.
I say bury me in a Beatles shirt with pennies on my eyes.
With pennies on my eyes.
With pennies on my eyes.

Sisters be original in finding your peace.
Watch as angels flutter by on the flashing TVs
with a major insight
to a world on its downside.
Don’t fall off where the sidewalk ends, St Francis will cry.

(quietly now)
So it’s over in the evening when the weather subsides.
It’s over in the morning when the hunger resides.
I am over and done.
I have played and have won.
And the beginning’s just a story of the end that comes.
And the end is the beginning for the newness of love.

(riff)

And To Sleep

To ease,
there is a stepping stone
forgotten of a sergeant’s skeptics,
sinister on ice.
My ears belie to notice sticks and stones
beneath my feet–
a distance courting high regard to peasants.

We lower middle class.
We homes with rooftops.
We internet and phones.
We detached proletariat all sent off alone
to be the voices of our generation.
All of us.
At once.
And we will rise and be risen.
We will Christ at the godfearing heron
who looks pretty from a distance
until you get up close and see the dinosaur eyes,
the beak protruding in a snap.
No bird is more beautiful with faith on its back.
That shit should be cradled;
be grown from a seed and reach far to the sun.
The bird’s wings of wax do melt.
And furthermore, my goodness.
Buckle your seatbelt.

This ride is absurd.
These strings are coerced.
These dynamite districts are breached at the curb
where we deliver our groceries to old uncle sam
who disturbingly gives us 1200 dollars
so it looks like he gives a damn,

and retreat goes the serpent of bloodthirsty tears
upon longitudes, latitudes til the rusty saw shears
off the wool on our eyes.
Are you sick?
So am I.
I, the devil intrepid with worse often side
where the dreams intertwine, where the moon up and shines.
My insolent positivity is wrought with disease.
What is your excuse, sir?
You’re meant to be leading this half-breathing indium,
chemically balanced to spot out bullshit in silence
til the caption reads Yes
and the picture screams No
and we read up some silliness, delusions and so
by the power i yield with my language, i tell you:
get out of the blankets.
Wake
the
fuck
up.

I Am a Patchwork Quilt

Suppose disintegrating into the soil
is the best next place to be,
surrounded by dirt and its worms chomping through.
It’s more there to me than it is to a student of suits.
Yet in an encompassed environment, stemming wood
from its fruit, we go laughing and brimming all cute.
Still disguise yourself, child.
The ecosystem is futile.

And all inside a wildebeest’s throat,
my all-time favorite sharpened toes
kick my own shins raw and tattered.
Who doesn’t know how that happens?
Who doesn’t play in the sand?
Who doesn’t want to ride into town on horseback,
all among the cowboys, dribbling.
Drooling at the sight of majestic hands clapping.
I am a patchwork quilt.
You are driven by fate.
We’re both late for work.

And speaking of work, my my.
Mine is somewhere inside
a place I never thought I’d be.
Seeing how the other half be.
Hearing all the garbage streets
wrapped in finer things.
To places I’m sure I’ll never see.
It frightens me.
But I giggle through grease
and match with a smile and pleasantries.
Caught with a neck pointed east,
dying to leave.

But to know there’s a fever to bear
makes me believe in a memory there
of a county fair,
where I saw tractor pulls,
ate fries
and drank beer.
I’m ready for planks to be planted.
I’m ready for trees and the like.
I’m searching for words, always.
And quietly.