Coldness, I have watched you
in the shadows,
and you have given me mine
from time to time, awake
I slumber down paths
of moss and who knows what all
darkness we can gather
one at a time, but not one soul
can make a bouquet from another
soul, it is too cold to be dreaming
and there is no place for the duelist,
the two of us, lovers of black clothes
and fairly good looking women,
it is almost winter and the wind
is my second, wearing a dark cloak,
breathing in the dead eyes
of my brother, how they shine
and listen to him sing that sad song
will you, while gathering snow
and turning darker than starlight.

Solitude I wear
      like a second skin
my biggest weakness
       my greatest strength
   wading through 
quiet and tired 
    in seclusion
 as dawn draws
    her arms around me 
cold       and damp
    like the sea
           with no oil
for my lamp
       to light my way
through another
      dark    and lonely
November day.

Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.

Let this be an elegy
While he lies there
You know what I mean
Bury his body
Down by the side
Of a crooked highway
His spirit will soon flag
A Greyhound bus
And someday will ride
Right on out of our lives
Back to the dark tower
Where past power and fame
Will be hung like a black flag
Tattered and limp in his shame.

Love,  be gentle and kind,
take that rusty gun from under
my pillow and shoot me twice
in the heart so I can feel the hurt
from the first time and the pain
from the second again;
but don't bury me in the dirt
beneath your bare feet,
just burn me like the memory
of your brown soles I saw
running away, oh, so long
a time ago, I can't even remember.

November comes
with the wild geese
in their V like memories
of an arrow flying
too close to the sun
and their feathers shining
as their wings beat as one
drum in the distance
signaling that winter
is coming, and the cold
days will keep us inside
warmed by the fires we crave
deep in our caves painting
and dreaming away.

In the dark age before reason
warmed his sharp knife,
I took things to heart
that left scars with no wound,
like lightning without thunder
or melody, that barefoot gypsy
I fell in love with, like Night
and her moon, woman with child
sinking below frozen ground,
I learned the loneliness
of cold seasons, and the wood
of the wild cherry will **** you.