Winter Wind

The winter wind is whipping through the trees

the sunlight hardly stands a chance against the white sky

it's all just dark lines

the craggy arms of the trees

Summer Monsoon

In the canyon of the Western skies

he walked with aching knees

a shadow of the mayhem

that he used to be

He sat down to drink my water

but the beds they all were dry

so I rained on him

and opened up the sky

Summer monsoon, came in singing

to quench his thirst on the way

Summer monsoon, the sky was ringing

out all the mercy it could 

He crept on, his shoes were muddy

the desert spoke in whispered tones

He made it to the shores so sunny

but by that time he was just skin and bones

Summer monsoon, came in singing

to quench his thirst on the way

Summer monsoon, the sky was ringing

out all the mercy it could 

Sanity

The bugs are no longer at the window, the bugs are in my ear.

The grip that I had on sanity then is tighter now.

I once did an experiment on schizophrenic speech.

I took words from schizophrenic people, and words from poets, and put them in chunks of text

and had people guess which ones were poets.

Most people got them right

the idea still stands

what is considered sane, and what is considered art, and what is considered mad?

The sunlight shifted in the cold apartment.

The blacktop was covered in ice and snow.

I once covered my head in a sheet and walked around like a ghost.

I had no concept of time I merely buried myself in my dreams.

The Imagination is Stronger than the Sword

The only limit we have is our imagination,

although it's hard to believe it when you are bleeding.

I am not going to tell you to imagine that the sword did not cut

but you can imagine that you will heal

stronger with the scar.

Country Roads

Driving down the country road, the engine rattled. It was the middle of the night, and the corn on either side of the car seemed to be growing taller the further down I went. The gravel was white, and led the way. The headlights shone on, but beyond them was inky darkness. I knew I was coming up to the bridge. My heart leapt as the white owl shot up out of the tall grass, its wingspan seemed to be 8 feet wide, it was like an airplane hovering for a moment in slow motion, then gone in an instant. Breathtaking. I drove on, now acutely aware that I was just another animal in nature. 

I pulled up to the old blue farmhouse, and the light was on. It glowed like a lightning bug in the middle of the pitch darkness. When I turned off the engine, all was quiet. When I opened the car door, a cacophony of crickets pierced my ears.

Inside, the place was empty. The clock on the wall seemed so loud, as I drifted off to sleep I could have swore it was a gypsy jazz guitarist, scraping on the strings, performing right next to me.

Ripped from the Notebook April 2020

 "Lockdown has given me what no other situation, other than death, could give me--freedom from my own bullshit."

Toy Necklace

There are a million miles of guitar string

between me and you, the memory of Nashville, and my broken teenage heart

what a fool I was, and not even a good fool

not even a crying in a beer fool

just a grasshopper type fool

then decades later--I thought I met a master

he wore a dark hood

and talked of Draconian things 

and I thought he must be the king of the underworld

or maybe the mountain

and his harsh words surely meant he knew it all

no one knows it all

and it seems silly now

like a toy necklace.

Ricochet

I am the echo of a madman in the subway

running down the marble, the metal and the steel

curving at the corner

falling at an angle

rising to the archway

reverberating in the shadows

Seen and Unseen: Study of Time

The guitar had been in a closet or on the floor, it was beat up pretty bad;

time had taken its toll on it, the same way a mountain would wear away

and the rocks would crumble, slowly over time.

The old woman was at the park every day for a year, feeding pigeons

in her blue parka.

Then, one day, she wasn't.

With physical things, time wears them all away.

My feelings and emotions whirred inside of me like a tilta-whirl

and platinum planes of ideas and moods broke apart

relationships severed the knife of distrust cut each rope

the broken pieces of the plate lay shattered on the floor

the bruises were on the skin, the stitches were in place

what can heal all of this?

With the unseen, time heals all wounds, time brings distant things together, and time completes the whole.

Time takes, and time gives.

The Tea and the Toil

The tea is hot and steaming, refreshing yet scalding

I take a moment in time, to embrace what is only mine

this moment, this tea, this me.

The toil is everywhere, it is in my bones

My hands ache and my back aches and my feet ache

and my head hurts and my arms are sore and my toes are even sore.

I build and move, I shove and push, I twist and turn, I slant and fix.

I toil for others, and jobs I did not invent,

yet these jobs invent me, I become someone new

based on 

what I do.