Two Girls With Recent Birthdays

Cowboy Junkies

Gentle And Strange

Hungry for breakfast
a pile of unpaid bills
another holiday to fund
gentle and strange
these first days of
Spring

Gun Street Girl

Spring Moon

Dizzy under the scrutinizing moon
I'm little changed from the last time you
inspected me, learned nothing but
that it hurts to live,
that the steps we take inevitably crush,
that harm is built into the organism.

Look at you there
never blinking
my true love
finger pointed
straight at my eyes

Steve Earle - Invisible

Nutrition

Someone made an offering to the Buddha
two Big Macs still in their boxes

The proprietor is short and lean
his pink children, plump,
first generation Americans
with all the advantages
that come with it.
 

The Suit

Black Tears

Down To Earth

Lower me down
back into my body

I want to stand
on my own two feet
wiggling my toes in my shoes
soles pressed flatly to the Earth

In my head I want to hear me
and nothing else
for once

Spin Cycle

The demons I spoke of are punks
in comparison to the demons of others I have met
wanksters, really.

But they make me see and hear the
faces and voices of my children
when I close my eyes to sleep

There they are stranded, distressed
and I am labeled absent, negligent
disgrace...

I do not know in which direction to
take my next step, but I step anyway
and break things, fall through the ice.

My time is consumed
not really spent
but burned

The Snow Goose

Drowser

There is no continuity between days
yesterday, there was this sense of coming to
and today, my eyelids are weighted with sandbags,
and each thing seems more effort than it's worth.

Come Alive

Help for A Buck

The business of helping
is as disgusting as any other business
I can think of

Pigeons

Expectations will get you hurt
like gun violence never ending
what you report, repeat, report
shapes the future.

You who orchestrate, perpetuate, titillate
this slow burning, slow motion Apocalypse,
can't you see David Bowie is trying to warn us now?

No, because we can no longer pay attention.

Don't look at our dead cities - we don't,
I mean, unless you happen to live there,
and then no one will ever hear what you have to say
anyway...

Today there was a hawk perched up on the roof
outside my workplace window de-feathering its kill,
and those feathers slowly spun to the ground in the most
enchanting way.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Weekend

He lies on the couch
down with the flu
lets me take care of him a little
happy that I've brought popsicles home
and I am grateful for the chance to
do something right.

She sits next to me in the
front seat of the car
stays mostly quiet
doesn't want me to look at her,
but see how tall she's grown?

She doesn't know that just
her sitting there puts
something within me at ease,
and I cannot tell her
without becoming instantly
creepy.

The youngest is
slower than the other kids
at the birthday party
on the razor scooters
but he keeps at it
undaunted.

Later, we two take a walk in town
a sunny afternoon, nearly Spring,
I point up to the bare branches
of a white birch and a church steeple
set against a bright blue sky
checkered with small white clouds

I show him how I'd like to take a photograph
he looks at the scene, then at me,
and for a moment sees what I do.

Boy

Boy with the flu
no longer little
confined to the couch
in the living room
 

Seven and Seven Is

Late Winter

More winter rolls in
wind and snow for the next
day or so, wet and heavy,
with the temperature just
at the freezing mark
steam rises from the sugar houses

 

Uninterrupted

Awakening eight hours later in exactly
the position I laid down is unusual
and disorienting, not sure
how much time has passed,
where I am, where I should be, and then
it feels good to be laying there in my self
for about three minutes, until the first demons
creep in and fling wide the gates.

The First Time I Ran Away

Prayer Life

Jesus is her husband
salad, steak tips and pilaf
she thinks you have a kind heart
and probably helped a lot of people
an hour and a half
thoughts racing, muscle tension
let me fall through
the lady in the glasses
and long wild hair
said she'd pray for you

Boleros

Free

Don't forget that you are free
and all at once doors open
faces emerge and it's not
the tiny cell you believed it was
there is light and air and
trouble

Sudden

Sleep slips suddenly out
and I wake cold, half-shocked and
clear eyed, the requisite heaviness
is gone, stolen now the key to peace,
I'm not afraid of the darkness