She was a barefoot singer
Her toes sliding
through the fine, cool earth
It was how she drew
from the spring of nature
She never could hit that high C
while wearing shoes
Their soles are blacker than ours
she used to say
Those ugly boots are cutting you off
she used to tell me
You'll never hit a high C

She sang and I played
I wore my shoes
And I let my hair grow long
My savage war paint
Smeared across my chest
under my shirt
Unknown to everyone but me
And her, she saw it too

We only played outside
The earth on her soles
The wind in my hair
The tortured animus of song
How those nights conspired against us
The natural warmth of audience and music
Our blighted bond, tenuous at best
Soared strong on those nights
A wind over the mountains
A wind that promised rain

Her voice was fragile
But also eerie in its gravitas
It commanded the respect
of the dead soldiers and sailors that came out for us
It made her younger
It declawed and dulled her fangs
I would sometimes cry
when she hit that high C

On our very last number
On the very last page
The fire would kick up
and my fingers would dance
And we both believed in the other
She in her naked earth
Me with my jaguar soul
Oh, how those nights
conspired against us

I want you to find my body
Stuffed haphazardly in your drawer
The center drawer on your nightstand
You know the one
I want you,
on a day as sunny and delusional as we,
to come across my bones
Picked bare by carrion
Splintered on a creamy page
There is nothing I want more
Then for your lies, your false bravado
Your citadel of secrets
To erupt in agony
Burn down to the base
Your fallow fields
With just a gust of wind
To scatter my restless ashes
And release the trumpeting pain in your heart
So that it will once again
Be close to mine

The whole of human history
is but a memory
I can't speak for you
But if I've learned anything
It's that nothing is more fickle,
more malleable, more suggestible,
than the fragile tendrils
of human thought

History is an old man
With weak knees and arthritic fingers
Drunk off the non-existent
fumes of long forgotten glories
His cracked and bony cane crashes,
crushes, and disperses,
seemingly indiscriminately
He who grappled with Stalin and Caesar
With kings and commoners
With everybody who cried 'Wait! Wait!
More time! More time!'
(And everybody who didn't)
And this request they were granted
by the old man
For time he has plenty
Understanding he does not

Fly free unwanted conqueror
I detest you
And your haunting illusion
Midnight visage
Encapsulated in wanton peaks
of redemption
You who scorched my fields
and ignited my fears
Laying waste in a furious
dervish of extrapolated ecstasy

It might have been over
But in what I was sure
was my final moment
Your grip became slack,
my conscious lying spluttering
in the destitute mud
that comprises bewilderment ,
and you showed me mercy
Such bravery in the face of chaos!
And now you gladly accept me
Embrace me in cold arms
Wantonly smiling at the distance
almost, almost imperceptive
But my knowledge trumps mere sense
With the certainty of a madman

High above the mountain air
The eye weeps gently on the trees
And every tear that touches down
Could bring the mountain to its knees

I don't recall a face that day
That owned the disembodied eye
What must man do to stem the flow
Damming up the sky who cries

And in the valley far below
Where peaks give way to mossy greens
The sins are all the same and he
Who sows discord fears what he reaps

Deserts occupy the waves
Turning freeman into slaves
And beasts are all
and burdens are not freed

And in the midst of such a strife
The universe returns to life
And balance please do right the wrongs
Perpetuated underneath the sun

Every single word I say
Will haunt me again someday
Take your fill
I will

All the letters that I write
Will return just out of spite
Like a kid I left at someones door
They'll knock on mine
Be wanting more
Take your fill
I will

Every time I close my eyes
I know they're up there in the skies
Waiting for things to go south
So they can crawl back in my mouth
Take your fill
I will

Goodbye
Gnarled and sickly
She strokes my hands
This shell, this cornhusk
It's going to be okay, she says
Are you sure? I ask, scared
This shell, this hospital
Will be the death of me

Outside my door
Beneath the hum of the spinning machinery of the night
The mechanized whirl of the star crusted mammoth
She waters her blouse with a stranger's lament
Grievously mourning the separation of what is
and what could never be
Carried away pell mell by the picking magpies
of lowered expectation
And beneath the bluster of the ancient whorl
Cars hiss past my window to remind me I'm alive
Sunken beneath the levels of minimum expectation

At least the hollow men
Stuffed with straws and petty blows
Had a space with which to be empty
Their petrified corpses litter the books
Mammoth mausoleums of man
Does the moon not pale at their description?

But these monuments are cold and skeletal
They do not burn with youthful fury
They do not wipe her tears
They do not whitewash her fears
And neither do I
Locked away in the isolation of my own discontent
The lighter flicks helplessly in hand
The bones of those hollow
will not catch

And on each side of my door
The other half shudders
Broken by the weight
Of lowered expectation

A light on the road
Call sign of the weary desert traveler
Cursing the altitude and the bone dry air
Mouthfuls of sand with every breathe
Gasping with sand in every breathe
The lamp of the poor hangs helplessly
Begging him on just a little further
Just a little further

I was young and they was old
When they hung Daddy
by the swimming hole

They came with dogs and guns and fire
And used the rope that held the tire
My mother wouldn't let me see
The night my Daddy climbed the tree

And now I'm old and they are young
The times have changed but hate is strong
It's like a **** or pestilence
That leaves you beaten on a fence

And when your life is finally thinned
Your only company is the wind
The violators in their beds
Not one regret lives in their heads

And even now when I am old
There still swings Daddy
by the swimming hole

I want to see the lion's den
I want to see that site
of immaculate salvation
And sit where Daniel sat
And breathe the putrid air of stone
and bone and moisture and blood
I want to see the ovens of Nebuchadnezzar
And, wrapping myself in an onion skin
shield of veiled promises and condemnations,
throw myself in
Take me to the killing fields
And, casting off my clothes,
let me wade through the blood of decent men
Slain to appease their Savior

But take me away from Allah's bomb tinkerers
Away from the hate groups
born from Christ's love
Away from the stone throwing rabbis
of the Old City
For I have seen these things
and know they exist
No, take me to the lion's den
Take me to the king's ovens
And lock the door