Next week I'm doing something not so vile

Clearly, art has become a way for me to do emotional violence to myself. I think the time has come to find something true that isn't shot through with pain. That's the goal next week.

And I've been recording, but I don't know how to post audio to these blogs.

Something less grim

I became invisible

And then I lived 100 years ago

Or so then it seemed to me

I walked captured by my daydreams

Along the shore of the river Ohio

But I didn’t walk alone

My dear friend you were there with me

Hair wet, tall grass, summer rain, can’t you see it.

Back then I had a sister

Oh lord I used to kiss her goodnight

She would sleep in a sundial

And when I walked alone

I shattered into daydreams and stayed broke

On the banks of the Ohio    

And my horizons ended every night

Dark and root and touch, yeah, it was alright

           

But oh how time lies

Time lies away

To yesterday

And oh how shy’s time

Time shies away

Stays home most days

And you were my lover

In ways that were 100 years ago

We would swim in the shallows

The depths of that water

Swallowed me and you I suppose

In the river, in the Ohio

I gasp for air as I dream

I breathe it in and out like fire dying

And look! How time sighs!

Time sighs for

A hollow space to scour

And look!

Here I am!

I’m hollow with the love of them

These people who have never been

A Kind of Blues

The Blues is in the repetition and the playful exposition of the war of the sexes.






Sometimes I get this daydream I can’t ignore

I close my eyes and see a quiet morning and you with a gun in your hand

You shoot me and then shoot yourself.

There are circumstances under which I wouldn’t mind

For example,

If I had three lives I’d give one of them to you-- know all about the times we broke- down another shot-gun sound of our voices- sounding in the train yard off flipped off passenger ghosts - set the costs of loving you pretty clear and hollow

I close my eyes and see a quiet morning and you with a gun in your hand

You shoot me and then shoot yourself.

Under clean linen motel sheets and against your father’s explicit instructions I eat you out- side my house you shock me by arriving unannounced carrying folded, withdrawn, frightened arms, -your arms touched mine so many times when we were too awkward to admit that we touched on purpose-fully I pick up the phone and the glass is- clear that warning signs should have gone off when you said I was the only reason you didn’t kill yourself- centered humor bites like roadkill coming back to life- is so good, for two months I’ve been so happy to be alive- when I’m with you-

I close my eyes and see a quiet morning and you with a gun in your hand

You shoot me and then shoot yourself.

Under normal circumstances this is where I would describe pooling blood.

I’d describe it in exquisite detail and dwell on us gasping for breath

I’d secretly mix pleasure in with the gravity of the situation,

Really tell the story

I’m not doing that

Because for once I’m not playing games,

I close my eyes and see a quiet morning and you with a gun in your hand

You shoot me and then shoot yourself

Does the fact that this hasn’t happened make you innocent?

Who after all put these thoughts in my head?

Was it me or was it you?

Betrayal betrayal betrayal

Every angle you look at it from it’s nothing but one big fucking betrayal. 

(to be inserted wherever the hell you feel it) FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU NO HOW DARE YOU

A Soothing State Of Mind

I had a dream that I was a newspaper clipping

Every word that I said was true

I wasn’t so smart

I wasn’t so high

I printed black and white pictures

Of the blue sky

Most of your friends will be just a nervous hobby

Picked up just to distract from some greater pain

They’ll laugh at your jokes

They’ll love you with time

You’ll repay their kindness

With a thousand goodbyes

Most of life is flat as the central valley

As broken and easy to walk as those blasted plains

I plant myself down

I plow myself up

I lay down my head

And can't get back up

It’s the easiest way to fall

To say “I just give up on it all man.”

It’s a soothing state of mind...

A soothing state of mind

I awoke carefree as an airplane falling

Silent with grace through the crimson sky

Engines go numb

Passengers quiet

I never saw the ground

Just the crimson sky