in my mind there is a garden
and a combustion engine in my chest
there's soil beneath my fingernails and
wolves out by the timberline
i'm spinning out into the blackness
i'm dizzy from the searchlights peering in
i'm scared i've wasted the best years of my life
i'm just trying to be honest
in the garden there is a fruit tree
yielding sorrows and sweet things
it's where i go when i am lonely
and i wonder if it can save me
i ask it for the secrets
the hidden treasure of the garden
let me peek behind the curtain
i've been waiting for the harvest
and i want to know for certain
if i was put here for a purpose
is the mess that i am making
really a blessing
i can talk at the stars
from my body on
these sticky southern nights
in the garden in my mind
their light falls down
and breaks open on the leaves
all genteel and kind
and on my calloused palms
and on the bullet in my teeth
and when the wind brings the rain
down from the righteous sky
it soaks the secret compartments
and what's hiding on the inside
the burning pain between my shoulder blades
and the things i tell myself are important
my ***** shirt clings to the engine
and i laugh out loud
from atop this pile of rubble
in the garden in my mind
i'm still searching for to find
what they say cannot be found
but in the pictures it seemed so simple
like a wheel that turns around
it doesn't have an address
and i know you don't believe it
but it's just like joy and sadness
now i'm old enough to see it
the rain stops and the sun
kisses me splendid
bathing like a little white bird
i'm having a golden moment
down in the mole-claw dirt
and what if it never ended
just a quiet kind of singing
at the edges of my dreaming
always repeating the song it sang back then:
there is never anything to fear here