I'm getting old and I am falling to bits
think I'll give up the ghost
and just call it quits.

It's alright for you,
You're all so young
and so very vibrant
but I am reliant on doctors and pills
and every day I go on just brings me more ills.

The Priest Calls...

..and tells me,
'that life is but a distraction
and afterwards the real action begins
Repent of your sins'
Oh Christ
I don't want to hear that no more
I show him the door.

I try to shuffle around
but I admit it at last I am almost bedbound.

The Lady Calls...

..I let her in
another repentable sin?
but she just looks and she laughs
and says,
'the only thing you'll get in that bed is bedbaths'
I don't need to show her the door
she's there before
I even know it.

Yes,
getting old is the pits
are you also thinking of calling it quits?

Life is a fight
nature fights for the light
we are all blind in the night
and none more than me.
I can see I'll go on 'til the day's finally gone
but nothing tastes good any more
I wonder who let my taste buds out the door.

The Devil Knocks..

..and that shocks me awake
but I never really sleep
got to keep my eye on the green line.
Beep.Beep.Beep
the monitor doesn't allow me to sleep
but 'Old Nick makes me sick
he's even older than me
why would I want to be one of his acolytes?
they're just little shites.
I show him the door
and he roars into flames
feckin showoff.

Down in the Glen at the end of the day
when the night's on the move
are the pixies at play.
I have seen them
dancing when
they thought nobody saw
I have seen them
and the clothes that they wore
were so bright
against the onset of night and the Queen
I have seen her sweet and demure
I have seen her
of that I am sure.

When the grass lays still aside the base of the hill
and the chill in the air
has a certain cool charm
take my arm.
Let us not tarry
let us not slide
for we must away to hide
stay silent and bide with me
we will assuredly see
the procession of lights.

And the Pixies set seal
between the true and unreal
and appeared as the Sun hid away
I watched as they ate
until the evening was late and the magic was high.
When you've got to ask why
because you don't really know
if what you see isn't part of some elaborate show
and you think it's a hoax
the joke's on you.
Pixies are true to belief
and believe it or not
Pixies have got their own world that very few see.

I have seen them
when down in the glen
when the day's slipped away
and often I pray that I'll see them again.
But silently see, that the Pixies will be
timid and shy.
I don't know how
don't know why
but this understanding that stands under his sky
is my joy.

when the wolves stop licking at my marrow then
i'd hope to find your face there -
but i'm alone there in the wood
and i'm alone here in this wood.
and you are a shadow
and i am a pain-emptied husk,
whistling and
melting into the branches and the leaves.
i am broken bones.
i am a thousand lost things.
i am breathing, i am barely,
and i am alive,
but i wouldn't know it.

no one told them it was the place
that we watched the water go by -
sat, for hours,
and watched the water go by.

nobody said it was the spot where i started to move on from the boy i loved
and where you stopped caring what your father thinks.

it's the spot where we sat in the roots of trees
and smoothed sand off of purple river stones.
it's the spot where the old lumber mill had been decaying,
and where the kids would go when they were too old for the playground.
it was where the stray dogs poked around in the rubble and the lumber scraps
and where the stray cats fought and made love.

no one told them it was where we sat
and planned out our lives together -
a pair of girls with too-long legs and our hair askew
whose clothes were covered in paint
and whose hands where used to climbing the tree behind the bakery.
no one told them it was our spot,
our best-friend soul-speaking spot.
nobody said that it was spots like these
that hold the heart of our little town,
our artistic-afterthought town
with its peeling-paint coffee shops and friendly passersby.

they built concrete trees over our spot on the river,
an ugly corporate jungle.
they put grey bricks in the sand and shoveled away the purple river stones
and dug up the roots of our trees,
and now we'll have nowhere to watch the water tumble by.

no one told them it was the spot, our spot,
and no one will remember it but us.

girls like me, we can't make ourselves stay.
i wish i could, i do.
i can't shake the itchy-skin feeling of being here
and i can't help but want to get away.

we have fickle and jealous hearts, girls like me.
we can't trust ourselves to be loved
because we love so changeably.
we're difficult, girls like me.
difficult to love, difficult to fall out of love with.

we're born with anger.
we have all the ghosts and the wisdom our hearts can hold.
i am difficult to please and it's no one's fault but my own
and i get tired of people and i get tired of places
and no matter where i am i always want to leave.

i don't choose to be as restless and as jealous and as jittery as i am,
and i don't choose to feel so old some of the time
and i don't choose to be so guarded, so hypocritical, so abrasive.

girls like me, we are beautiful and strong and ages old -
it has been since the beginning and it will be till the end,
spirits like ours.
we are breakable and irrepressible
afraid and invincible
and we are made to survive things and to know things
and we are made for the wildest of laughter
and we are made for the too-big types of sadness
and we are something to see.

Everything is funny
especially when it's not
sad times they are a-plenty
bad times should be forgot

emotion is a feeling
attitude's a state of mind
confuse the two
as with the shoe
a bad feelings what you'll find

difficulty is to progress
as what's easy is to none
progressing less
brings bitterness
too much takes all the fun

Everything is funny
no laughter is misplaced
living your life for money
can't buy a happy face

Little sparrows show off their agility,
dancing up and down violin necks.
Pecking staccato notes out of the air.
Making tea and dropping ceramics
behaving clumsily and babbling nonsense
even after they've been told
sit down and be quiet.

Imitation ducks sit squat,
quiet, muddy, decoying
singing water stains,
spitting curses from their bills.
Pulling bed sheets up to their chins,
nesting between the covers.
Very anonymous in their colours,
not a deviation among them.

Cold wax and dry glue
flake off creases and folds.
These lovely imitations,
cuckoo plaster cast knuckles
snowflaking to the ground,
useless with fine motor skills.
Peeling off like dead leaves,
parasitic nest components.

All my fingernails are different lengths,
evolving finches’ beaks
on isolated islands
With scratches on the vinyl of my thumb,
sand beneath my cuticles,
scrapbooks between my fingerprints.
Piano keys team up in groups of two,
sharing sharps and flats.


Filed and polished,
pink budgies dispose of portfolios apathetically,
slamming filing cabinets shut.
Cuttle bones rattling,
mirrors cracking.
Irritable thighs complaining,
they hunker with bad posture,
frowning on their perch.
Squat salient warbles
clamoring sharply down corridors
over whistling loudspeakers.

Poster orioles elbow aside crowds,
bright bones flashing
neon signs
keratin streaked or spotted
for biological attention.
Weaponry painted exciting colours,
friendly hues and enthusiastic tints.
Lies dressed in curiosity,
attracting intrigue.

My heron neck in the air
searches for information,
explanation, observation.
Greedy for projections,
living in the tree tops,
reflected in shop windows,
my skinny anisodactyl talons
for walking on mud,
wading through marsh,
boggy water.

My hands are geese
jabbering back and forth
across my chest.
its very distracting
to have these conversations
going on between palms,
arguing the best way to fold paper cranes,
whether chocolate pudding
should be stirred clockwise or counter.

Take a gander at the world you don't touch because your fingers are too flightly

I should navigate
perspiring inspiration along the lonely streets
which are bottled desolation
but I stay here,
where once the candelabra shot sparks up to the chandelier
and that in turn shed tears of light which danced along the the gloomy walls
in palaces where ***** were held.

Spellbound I am shunned
outgunned by the desperate and dissolute
who eye up my shiny suit.
I've got to get away
pass my day among those who have passed away
sat beside the tombstones of yesterday
but I stay here trapped by my fears
and the years slip through my hands.

From the graves come two choices
in loud voices I'm told to take hold
and hang on
then the voices are gone
there's just the fluttering breeze as it whispers through the leaves
and the trees are silent.

I brood acquiescence
nod my head and arise
wipe the dirt from my face and my eyes behold
all that was told
and it's empty
blank space.
I've got to get out of this place
but the candles burn low and then, where is there to go?
and again I am trapped by the years that are wrapped
and draped over my shoulder.