Everything happens for a reason.
And though I can’t yet fathom
Why my stars have left me now,
I know that there is a lesson in this.
There is something bigger out there,
Something beyond the now,
Something calling from the deep,
Shining, darkness of temporality itself.
And so the distance has come to me
Over sweeping valleys of moments passing,
And tracks of trees and fields of fixed events,
And the wave has moved through them all
To tell me:
“You are this. You are now.
Yet also what we know you shall be.
Take this bloodied bludgeon that was hope
And find in it the gift that shall forge you.
It is a steel monument, washed in crimson,
Standing to honor what is,
And what is yet to come.”

Tiptoe timidly,
oh my tongue.
Speak not the words
That toe on your tip.
Swallow the surplus,
you swift little thing,
And mind that these slivers
Are given to slip.
Forget your fidgeting,
Fingers of mine.
Flee from the keystrokes
You’re fighting to flip.
Quiet your queries,
Your qualms, and questions.
Kith care not for clinging,
Nor for your quips.

Don’t question the words
That are murmured in whispers
For they are the truest
Words to be heard.
The truth is in silence
And silence alone
But a whisper is closest
To what we can know.
And all of the atoms
That shake on their own
All carry a pitch
And carry a tone.
These too are whispers,
Though harder to hear
For no single atom
Will startle your ear.
So all that I’ve whispered
Just next to your head?
Don’t question those
Wild remarks that I’ve said.
You may have your doubts
In the noise of the day
But watch for my silence
Then whisper away.

On old mainstreet, sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.

Rednecks and faux-necks and used-to-be-loggers,
Crafters and rafters, and activist bloggers,
And poets and hippies and mystics and fools,
And outcasts from the secondary schools,
And gypsies too: you’ll find them here,
Drowning in local, hand-crafted beer.

At night, locals sip organic tea,
And turn up the menagerie
Of lights and mics from another age,
Pieced together to make a stage.
And there, the guitarists waste their breath
Beating the Same. Four. Chords. To. Death.

There are some new lyrics, there and here,
But all of them memories of yester-year:
A year spent in the same **** space,
With others who’ve never left this place.
They sing of their dear loves and pasts,
And how much longer the wandering lasts.

And on they wail, and on they moan,
And twang the antique, rustic tone,
But their faces show they like it here,
This breaking haunt of yester-year,
And after the set, they carouse with cheer,
And smile contentedly to their beer.

On old mainstreet sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.