I woke up on Monday
like a Dog tangled up in barbed wire
And the Voices inside me
Singing like a discordant choir

My Hands gripped the wheel
I drove North with nowhere to run
And a grinding inside me
like bone against steel
And a heart with the weight of a gun

By the whine of the engine
and the rhythm of the highway beneath
I turned Left out of Denver
and Shifted an inch in my seat

The Mountains were heavenly
But did Nothing for the pain in my chest
With the Afternoon fading,
and the Road unpersuading
I Flew down I-70 West

On my Darkened commission,
I Drove till the gas tank was done
turned Off the ignition
And Threw the keys into the sun

I Kicked off my shoes as
The Sand turned from grey into gold
In the Starlight I wandered the
Desert, like a prophet of old

I Stumbled and crumbled and fell
Down in an arroyo to weep
But my eyes wouldn’t water,
so my crying turned softly to sleep

A Vision ran through me
A Dream of my children and wife
And a Beautiful, new world
With the Darkness transformed into light

then a Form blotted out the whole
World, like a total eclipse
as a Rancher knelt down, and brought a
Bottle to my sun-broken lips

As I lay there helpless,
He smiled as he took out his phone, saying
Softly and tenderly
ye who are weary come home

Many years have gone by since
the days of my journey through fire
and I know that the one who
deceived me, is surely a liar

and life like a dancer, is lifted
through rises and falls
And I have my answer, And it’s
everything, or it’s nothing at all

There is moonlight on the mountains on a
cold December night, behind the glass
On my way to Raleigh-Durham like a
bullet, six miles high, and fading fast

I know that in a year or so your
little broken heart will surely mend
Loving you was heavenly but
leaving you will **** me in the end

I can lose myself reflecting on that
moment of the day that we first met
Drinking from a rocks glass full of
bourbon, with a chaser of regret

Tonight I've got raise the strength to
face an empty hotel room alone
The time we spent together was the
sweetest thing that I have ever known

I am trapped within - all that might have been
I know in time your memory will fade
Better bitter tears than all your wasted years
So I'll live with all the choices I have made

Like a teardrop in the ocean,
our love is lost and gone beneath the waves
And our old, romantic notions lie in
pieces, while the memories remain

The pain that lives inside me like a
devil is no more than I deserve
But hearing that you loved me was the
sweetest thing a man has ever heard

There is no fool like an old fool
And when you're in the autumn of your days
I'll be done and gone, and you'll have long moved on
And you will struggle to recall my very name

If I had been a better man, I
never would have kissed you on that day
But the days roll ever onward, and there's
really nothing left for us to say

Baby, I'm afraid that I'm too old
To try to change the way I am
But Loving you may be the only thing
I've ever done that's worth a ****

And when you lie awake in bed
I hope you know I tried to do what's right
and remember how I loved you when
I left you on that cold December night.

Pocketa, pocketa
Christopher B. Behrens
pianist, classical
fell on his assical
shattered his spine

Married his sweetie
Recovered completely
six kids and two keeties
all keep him line

Yacketa, yacketa
Christopher B. Behrens
Loves his Lord Jesus
Who loves us and sees us
Through thick and through thin

Lots sixty pounds of fat
Jumpin' Jehosaphat
Some might think that proves that
he's full of win

Ceteris Paribus
Christopher B. Behrens
Is deeply musical
sometimes confusical
Plays on guitars

To kids at their bedtime
He sings "You're my Sunshine"
And sometimes at nighttime
he smokes a cigar

Hexasyllabically
Christopher B. Behrens
Econ and Business
But software's like Christmas
And work is like play

Deskwise, a Latinist
Cat-In-the-Hatinist
Vobiscum Dominus
Have a nice day.

Standing just a foot away
In leather boots and sequined jeans
Five foot nine, lean and mean
at the Taqueria, El Si Hay

Pink cellphone and cheap sunglasses
Waiting in the order line
A pug-nosed man in chinos passes
and paces round to pass the time.

When it's cold I miss the birds
It's always nice to find
the easy flow of Spanish words
and English mixed in kind

I love my little butterfly
Who flits from room to room
Retrieving toys for little boys
And pushing back her broom

I love my little butterfly
Who works from dawn till night
Untangling curls for little girls
And making boo-boos alright

I love my little butterfly
Who floats on house shoe wings
And tells them stories of ancient glories
Of distant queens and kings

I love my little butterfly
Who works the whole day through
Changing diapers and windshield wipers
And cooking chicken stew

I love my little butterfly
And loved her from the start
Each new sunrise her angel eyes
Captivates my heart

The words come easy,
flow and free
They tumble out
so easily

Like a song inside a dream
Focused like a laser beam
The notes are loose like borrowed *****
They follow any way I choose

With perfect meter,
pitch and rhyme
In harmony
and 4/4 time

Sweet little one, so young and willing
Fill my rusty nail with another round
Cause I am comfortably numb on my way to Southtown
And I am making a killing on these college towns

The refuge that I find these days
Is bad habits and darker skin
But I've grown too inflexible to come back in
And far too old to change my ways

Play another round of Don and Glenn
Close it out with the man in black
Snap the guitar case, I'm headed back
To where I ain't been in in I don't know when

The White City, she ain't what she used to be
And the wind today is dark and cold
My heart is young, but my eyes are old
Grown old from things unsaid and unseen

Hotel bar and hockey on TV Sweet
little blue-eyed wonder
One more draw, and you'll pull me under
For tonight at least, we'll both feel free

I'm comin' to a place
where I don't know If I'll turn left or head right
Because there's not a soul in sight
And I can't figure out which way to go

So I'll take a drag and take a breath
And drive west through the night and snow
It will be warmer in the West, I know
Cause this town just feels like death

Nineteen hours, drove straight through
The desert is dark and cold as hell
The darkness came along, as well
I light a cigarette and think of you

All alone in a crowd
Too tired to sleep,
too hungry to eat
Silence when I'm speaking out loud