Hey there, baby!
I got what you need.
You came into my store -
I got what you need.
You bought a stick of gum -
Do you want a soda with that?

You searched for a pair of shoes -
Don't you think these shoes are nice?
You liked a post about Darwin -
Darwin books: Half-off!
You listened to the Rolling Stones -
Try some Jeff Beck - I'm a Genius, I should know
you better than yourself.

You thought about ****** -
I can sell you seventeen ways to get away with it.
You thought about suicide -
Better buy one last pleasure before you go - you won't be needing
that money anyway,
Have you made your final arrangements?

You thought about *** -
I know you did
You typed "re"(demption)
Did you mean "Redbox"?
Here are the new releases.
I got what you need.

Sometimes I watch
the man in the benign pastel shirt
and the drab khakis
with the receding hairline
and the thick glasses
cross the street
with a package in his arms;

And I think to myself,
"There goes a good dad,
mild mannered, loving -
trying to make his way
in this savage world."

Then, almost instantaneously,
the doubt creeps in:
"Or, he could be a monster,
who beats his kids,
or his wife,
or sets fire to homes,
or has adolescent prisoners in his basement."

From then on I question everyone I see.

That lovable looking old lady
with her sun hat
and disabled parking pass
might shout racist obscenities
from her balcony
at poor black kids
playing in the park across the street.

The clean-cut young man
in the shirt and tie
with the papers in his hands
may spend his weekends
filling envelopes with anthrax spores -
one for each name on his list.

I can no longer see
the father whose arrival from work
is anticipated by a loving family,
or the grandmother who delights in
handing out the most Halloween candy
to every kid in the neighborhood,
or the industrious young professional
striving to make a meaningful contribution
to society.

I wonder if the darkness I see in them
is a magnified reflection
of the darkness I know
that lurks inside of me.

On a long journey across the night of an America
I drove into the desert landscape and beheld
Elvis and Morrison, Hendrix and Dylan
In a ditch to the side of the road, with trash bags in their hands.
They seemed to whistle while they worked,
But the notes just wafted into the night, not nearly fast enough to catch my speeding
Cadillac.

In the morning, I stopped into a diner
With my breakfast and coffee,
I saw a newspaper that was guaranteed by the Andy Warhol himself
to be one hundred percent truthful.
I didn't read it.  Had to get back on the road

The desert went on forever, and in the oil fields
I saw Jackson Pollack, standing by a gusher,
Wearing a cheshire grin.
I smiled back at him, secure in the knowledge that I would have enough gas to get
where I was going.

The announcer's voice blasted through my car's radio.
He said Poe had solved overpopulation,
and that Emerson, Thoreau, Uncle Walt and Miss Em
had got their hands ***** and fed the entire continent of Africa.
I shut him off and bore my eyes down on the asphalt ahead.

I passed a drive in theater on the left side of the road
and caught a glimpse of Scorsese accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Someone told me later that he and DeNiro had stopped genocide.  
I politely nodded and got back in my car.  

Out there was America and I was going to find it.
Out there was industry and capital.
Out there was ingenuity and hard work.
Out there were my own bootstraps waiting for me to pull them up.
Out there was
America,  
and I was going to find it fast.

The giant moon lit up the night.
The early June air cool and crisp.
We drove my mother's car through the woods
Up Forker road to the place she was staying.
The Eagles serenaded us through the static of the radio and
We kissed for the first time, bathed in moonlight.
Her smell, exotic and unknown and wonderful.

The giant moon lit up the night.
The early June air moist and perfect.
Cars raced across the downtown bridge overhead.
The night wind and the sounds of the city, our soundtrack.
Graduation was over and we left our friends behind.
Graduation was over and our tongues were intertwined.
I'd never been touched there before, and have never felt like that since.

The giant moon lit up the night.
The mid-August air warm and still.
We parked my beat-up old Ford truck in the middle of God knows where.
She thought she was going to look at the glimmer of stars,
She found a diamond in her sleeping bag instead.
We cried together in hope and excitement.
Her warmth next to me could have sustained me forever.

The giant moon lights up the night.
The early June air cool and restless.
I drive the same beat-up old Ford through the same corners and the same woods
Up Forker Road, thinking about them all.
Not about all of the things that would eventually go wrong
Or the nights when my very soul would ache like no other pain in life,
But of the nights when that same summer moonlight
Poured mercy out on our hearts;
In those moments, life was new and sublime.

The nights not like this one, when the moonlight guides me home to emptiness
And that curious mixture of longing and trepidation
That pours out from a freshly broken heart
And a giant summer moon.

Awake.
Rise to meet
The day that greets you.
Do not rise to meet
The day you hope for
Or the day you fear.
The world is millions of
Quarks and neutrinos
Passing through our bodies each day.
The world is protons and electrons
Spinning in perpetuity and decaying.
The world is atoms and valance bands
Bonding into molecules and cells
Building organs and tissue.
The world is people and plants and animals
Feeding on each other to survive another day
In city streets and freeways
And states and nations
And continents and oceans
Under an atmosphere
By a moon
In one solar system
Of one galaxy
Of a universe that has hundreds of billions of them.
And space.
Most of all space.  
Empty and marvelous.
Relax.
There is time.
Time to greet the day.
Not the day you hope for
Or the day you fear
But the day that is.

We buy them in colors we like
Because we drive them for years.
My black pickup is shadowy and morose,
But decidedly so - and I am unashamed.

A few are Marlboro Red, Canary Yellow,
Lake Placid Blue, and Classic White.
Some built for speed, or for comfort.
Some built for utility, or for economy.

Most are silver.
They make up a buzzing hive of polite,
Tame, courteous, ordinary, bland worker-bees
Who would never pass out on their neighbors' lawn,
and who would defend her majesty, Queen Normalcy,
With unmatched ferocity.
They seat five to seven people,
With plenty of room in the trunk for the American Dream.

Mine is black, old and faded,
But decidedly so - and I am unashamed;
With only enough room in the cab
For one other person,
And its towing capacity is the mass of the observable Universe.

I do not know you.
I have a name
But no sight
No sounds
No odors to go on.
No memories whatsoever.

She has told me your name
But that is meaningless to me.
She has told me the stories
But they are meaningless, too -
Like Genesis and Exodus
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It was a man who raised me
Who took me in and loved me
As his own
And it is for his sake
I do not ask questions
I do not seek you out.

Yet it does not quell my curiosity.
I do not act like them.
I do not think like them -
The ones I know I belong to.
So I wonder
Where do I come from?

Who gave me my music?
Who gave me my short stature?
Who gave me my thinning hair?
As much as I try to fight it off
I cannot help but wonder
Am I a coward like you?

The heat of day fades as the sun slips west,
Foreshadowing the path that leaves me longing.
My eyes are fixed and watch her sink away
to lands but told in myths and legend's jest.

I've heard the tales, oh yes, I've heard them all.
A path toward a future, gold and bright,
mapped out by lazy currents and good tides.
But still elusive, efforts ever stall.

And, in a dream I saw them sail before,
Columbus, Lewis, Clark, and even Cook,
in search of passage to the Orient.
But I set out for what the heart wants more.

All dreamers, forging on with naught for sense,
obsessed with glory's promise, riches, gold.
And though they did not find just what they sought,
the discoveries they made should recompense.

A new world full of riches not foretold
Prairies, mountains, friends among the tribes,
New ferns here, and bison everywhere.  
And oceans full of islands to behold.

What new world is out beyond,
waiting, waiting, should I respond?
Keep your silver.  Keep your gold.
A different beauty I behold.

Their descendants killed the bison
and the tribes on each horizon.
Could I succeed where they have failed?
Preserving beauty where I sailed?

And so I worry, always wanting -
for the task is ever daunting -
to keep the treasure in the beauty.
That should be a wanderer's duty.

But later men have proved it so
in countless tests, from high to low,
we change a thing by simply seeing.
We altar its beautiful being.

So 'haps its best to keep away
and be contented with our gray.
Just let the flowers bloom alone
without a reason to be sown.

Yet if we do, then more the loss
both to us and to the flowers.
For beauty without our beholding
makes a flower not but dross.

I sit next to you every day.

Don't worry,
I'm not under any delusion
That you could ever be interested in me.

I know that you are young,
Carefree and maybe unaware.
I imagine you think about
Sororities and fraternities
And all of the other whimsical things
That I've never been a party to.

I can't imagine any way
For a meaningful conversation
To occur between us.
I think I'm just too jaded (afraid).
I am older, guarded,
And too much in my own head.

Yet I sit beside you every day.
Because you are the most beautiful
Woman I have ever seen.

If I were Adam
And the Lord, God Himself
Plucked the idea of beauty from my thoughts
To create an Eve
She wouldn't be as stunning as you.

And I know that sitting next to you
Is the closest I will ever get to
Beauty like yours.

Beggars always seem to work the holidays
And I guess the wintertime just has a way
Of piling on the pity for shoes that don't block the cold
And the feeling that the change you give will turn your heart to gold

Well, she lost the apple in her eye tonight
To a worm that was only hungry, not digging out of spite
Sometimes god doesn't give a ****, and looks the other way
To make sure the football players kneel down and point and pray

But we keep on asking anyway

These old sad songs I sing
Seem a lot more honest these days
It never sat good with me to try and fake them
And I'm down to one guitar
And one shot left to raise
And another night down, and another line to write in

I've been wandering now for years and didn't know it
You zig and you zag and you lose track every moment
Soon a year becomes five and you look around and see you've lost a friend
But you see yourself more clearly in the end

And you realize there's no way to pretend

These old sad songs I sing
Ring a lot more true these days
And even if I tried I don't think I could fake them
And I'm down to one guitar
And one silly turn of phrase
To try and sum up the memories that are fading

These old sad songs I sing
Know me more than anyone else these days
And if I only knew, I'd have never started to fake them
But I had this old guitar
And my fingers had a way
Of moaning out the notes my heart would soon be making

When we split, I set out
Over a desert landscape
And I started chasing the sun.
Across the widest river,
Leaving your memory on the other side,
Nothing on my mind but to run.

I lost my map.
It was weighing me down,
And I don't need it anyway.
What I need is time
To catch that blazing sun.
So after it, I head west today.

I think I knew the way,
Once upon a time,
Over these wooded mountains.
The dream was so much clearer
Just before I set out after it,
But now all these trees have me surrounded.

The air is cooler now.
My tank is almost empty.
I see the Pacific through the rain,
And it seems the sun has slipped away.
Now I'm as far west as I can go.
Going on means I'll be east again.

There are two kinds
of people in this world.
There is me,
and there is you.  
Everyone I like is me.
Everyone I loathe is you.

I am black
or I am white,
but whichever I am,
you're the other.

All of me grapples
with all of your intentions.
All of me wishes
you'd just go away.

You have no place here
with me.
Your ugliness repels me.
My righteousness makes you shriek.

I see you all around,
with your wretched
nails scraping against
the glass through which I look.

And as I, in a fit of violence,
lash out at your torturous hand,
The mirror breaks
and there is just me.

I feel
Blood boil beneath
The ache, and an absolute
Thunder of a thousand
Frantic, freakish faces
Who have heaved
Up urges unknown,
And though then, they
Would whisper when
The garden'd grown grey,
Tonight, together they
*****, ****, and power
My more mad
& ****** delirious daydreaming:
To soar the sky - sun or shadow,
Fly or fall - Fear
Makes man mean;
And I imagine incredible.

Do not shudder,
Melancholy friend,
For though midnight, blackness,
And forest lonely
Make a spirit howl in bitter worship of
                                                                    What
                                                                 If
                                                              Dawn
                                                         Goes
                                                   Screaming
                                            Down
                                     Through
                                The
                                       Silent
                                                Never!?
Some strange storm of the Death White moon;
You are an enormous echo
Of the heartbeat of all men,
Which, with all the raw pounding of a whisper,
Screams, "NEVERMORE!"
And stills the storm in the shadow.