All of his letters ended in goodbye
instead of to be continued

someday we're all going to die
my brother, he would say

now he's got me saying the same
words like the moon and darkness
that only we could hear

he'd listen to the blues and sip whiskey
until morning, then wake me
from my sleep, tell me to go out

and cut the weeds
growing up around the stone
angels in the field.

I have compared my love
to the lazy, the no good
and to crazy girls of the past,
to my first truck, to a spell,
a moth and a bottle, to the hell
bending moon, if you could tell,
and to a Captain - if not a ship,
and to ways you'll come to know
too soon, but I have never, ever
compared my love for you.

When you paint your walls
with nonsense, and the sky outside
reflects your feelings, sensations
tiring, discovering floors and no ceilings.

And the faceless poor man
doesn't want your tips
but your hand, he wants to try
standing, because he's tired of kneeling.

When you insure the beggar's
confidence with a dime, hoping
he will ask you to stay awhile, then
you see he's not the freak, you are.

It is your mind that is on trial,
the beggarman dying, you slowly
take up his cup, and begin the eternal
begging for just one single smile.

You know how you're down and out
on the river, three sheets to the wind,
doing some night casting, a little
moonlighting to pay off the bill,
and you decide, by god I'm tired
of drifting, I think I'll anchor here.

Me, I'm living on beer, boiled eggs,
and ruined mascara. Tonight,
I'll make enough to buy a roll of dimes
so she can play the box, so she can drop
them in the sawdust, on purpose
and lean over, oh me, oh my.

Your family home
has been sold
to the cultured,
the old vultures
feeding on the garden
thick with rabbits
and your father's dead
daughters, you sleep
in a pickup, tired
of work near the water,
fond of the instant,
you travel through
the country you know,
farm long forgotten,
the word free written
in red ******* your arm.

"...a black woman
in a white house
built by slaves..."

Everything is asleep
and in pain, in love
and dreaming
about another life
I say to myself,
it is time I take my own
lookout, unfaithful
sailors know they can't
see a thing but they keep
their place on the prow
out there in the darkness
where boats are colliding,
oh yes, they are blind
or awake feeling the dark
like light, like those levels
of cold and heat underwater,
you know what I mean,
when you are dreaming
or in danger, that place
where fish live and sleep,
sometimes I think I understand
everything,  but I know that
I am wrong, and incredible
as it seems, the shadow I see
when I'm hung, I want to think
of hideouts in the mountains
where a man can go to die there.