When you spend all your money
And people crowd around
And pull your phone
Girls night out
And your best friend is talking to her boyfriend
And you're standing alone
Seems to be the only thing you've known
Roxy Cabaret  Sundays
Holding your bottle and facing these demons
As you're friends forget you're home
The country beat drops and
You still feel too drunk to be this alone

Another empty bar room
Playing songs for empty chairs
A deaf dog and his blind master
Are in the crowd and no one cares
The singer tells his stories
No one really wants to know
They're trying to watch the tv
No one cares about his show

A break comes and he's sitting
Talking to the tender of the bar
On a torn and worn out bar stool
Eating pickled eggs out of a jar
Complaining of his station
How he is just playing, making rhymes
When a voice out of the corner asks
"Can we talk...if you've time"

I've been around for ever
Since time began for sure
I can help you if you'll let me
I can open up the doors
I'm known by many titles
Silver tongued, though I may be
I can help you if you'll let me
But, my help....is not for free

I've helped singers before you
Wives, and mothers, fathers, sons
I've helped with politics and warfare
I've been at both ends of the gun
In your case, it is simple
I'll talk of music and of muse
And I'll give you some advice boy,
Some advice, I think you'll use

I was there back in the fifties
When Hank Williams died en route
Who'd you think was driving?
I helped him pick his suit
I made deals with Elvis Presley
One too many so it seems
I help many climb the mountain
They deal with me to reach their dreams

I've been around for ever
Since time began for sure
I can help you if you'll let me
I can open up the doors
I'm known by many titles
Silver tongued, though I may be
I can help you if you'll let me
But, my help....is not for free


Talent is a godsend,
****, I hate that word
But, it only gets you started
You don't move on, if you're not heard
I was there with Jimi Hendrix
I sat and watched him die
He was only one of many
Who could look me in the eye

I've crashed cars and downed airplanes
I've watched so many play the fool
I was there back in the sixties
Pushing Brian Jones into his pool
Keith Moon and countless others
Have sought my help to move along
They gave their souls for ever
For the small price of just a song

I've been around for ever
Since time began for sure
I can help you if you'll let me
I can open up the doors
I'm known by many titles
Silver tongued, though I may be
I can help you if you'll let me
But, my help....is not for free




I helped a man named Chapman
Buy a gun and change his time
He wanted to be famous
And I wanted his soul to be mine
I helped Belushi load his needle
I was there with music ******
I remember how Jim Morrison
Shut his eyes, and closed the Doors

I can help you if you'd let me
Take you far from clubs like these
Put you far up on a mountain
Where people come crawling on their knees
The man looked at the stranger
The barkeep couldn't see
Don't worry said the stranger
Right now, it's you and me

I've been around for ever
Since time began for sure
I can help you if you'll let me
I can open up the doors
I'm known by many titles
Silver tongued, though I may be
I can help you if you'll let me
But, my help....is not for free


There's a deal upon the table
It might be vague, but trust me son
No one else in life will help you
I'm the only one
As there's a god in heaven
He doesn't care if you get rich
And face it, aren't these taverns
Just enough to be a *****
I can have you playing big shows
Selling out, folks know your name
You can be the one controlling
Not just playing in the game

A handshake, all I need right now
The contract, I'll work on
Just tell me that you'll do it
And from now on, I'll be gone
I was Allen Klein to many
Colonel Tom to others too
I've been Beelzebub and Faustus
I've been many names to you

I've been around for ever
Since time began for sure
I can help you if you'll let me
I can open up the doors
I'm known by many titles
Silver tongued, though I may be
I can help you if you'll let me
But, my help....is not for free


The offer is a good one
Just look around and make a choice
You came here on a greyhound
You'll leave in a Rolls Royce
Time will be your ally
You will have all the time you need
To reach the music high ground
To have the fame, to succeed

The barkeep broke the silence
The singer went back to the stage
But, somehow he was different
It seemed the singer turned the page
What answer did he give him
Did he take the Devil's deal
Was this just a drunken vision
Or was this devil's offer real

We may never know the answer
For talent only goes so far
And for now the singer's singing
To a deaf dog in this old bar
The silver tongued kibitzer
Disappeared into the night
Did our singer sell his soul or
Did our singer do what's right?

stare up at the sky
like theres some place
youd rather be

"why isn't it enough to be here
with just me"

look down because its plain to see
that i love a little too much
but today i am not me

lost in the bar crowd
look for the bathroom
sound of the bar band
look around the room

ex girl is sitting there
i think its understood

I made a friend
as I drank alone.
I watched him
and he watched me.
I pitied him
and I know he pitied me.
he's barely a life
yet I am the lowlife.
They say the flies
go to ****,
I guess I know
what that makes me.

Praised by a drunkard,

Just when my craving for respect,
From Oprah, Obama or

The Queen,

Seems to be all the appreciation I need,
She,

Walks in,
Demanding demurely, hand

Held out, just
Two sticks.

Her praise almost makes me cry –

she is so dignified
tight dress not too
tight, just so –

Fabulous shades she says, glasses I reply.

Everybody needs words of encouragement sometime,
And she wrangles,

A full pack of cigarettes from me,
Between my shopping list, a burgundy coloured,

Brandy glass and,

An Orange Juice,
Placed just so,

Always good practise to keep a spare,
Packet of cigarettes in the car.

I am still laughing.

You could feel it in the atmosphere
Things were set to change
The girl from the Midwest was here
And things got mighty strange

She came from Kansas, the mid west
She was country through and through
But when she came in wearing that red vest
You never knew what she would do

She's a Kansas sized tornado
coming back from Kansas way
You couldn't click your heels
to get back home
This girl, she came to play
Like the storm that dropped
Upon the witch
This girl, she was a force
No red shoes there to help you out
You'd best get on your horse

Not a big girl..full of fight
You'd best stay back a bit
She was wound up really tight
And she knew just how to hit

Leaving damage in her wake
Seemed to be what she did best
Just leave her be when she comes in
And she's wearing that **** vest


She's a Kansas sized tornado
coming back from Kansas way
You couldn't click your heels
to get back home
This girl, she came to play
Like the storm that dropped
Upon the witch
This girl, she was a force
No red shoes there to help you out
You'd best get on your horse

Flying monkees in the sky
couldn't stop the storm she brought
She was nasty trouble, by and by
Like a devil can't be caught

You'd kick your heels and wish she'd leave
Back with the wicked witch
Cause when she showed up in our bar
That night would be a *****

She's a Kansas sized tornado
coming back from Kansas way
You couldn't click your heels
to get back home
This girl, she came to play
Like the storm that dropped
Upon the witch
This girl, she was a force
No red shoes there to help you out
You'd best get on your horse

I was in a ****** bar,
Or public house,
Being threatened,
For something I’d done.
Darting furiously…
Through city streets,
Running, running,
For something I’d done.
My companion hailed,
And stopped a bus,
Its metal doors flew open,
For something I’d done.
Had to get to them,
Had to get through them,
Under furious pursuance,
For something I’d done.

Hey kid, I woke up buzzing, here
In the future ruins of ancient America. 
Staring, after the imperial sunrise,
Listening to Los Angeles on repeat.
Insistent and purple, only 
Sediment left in the
Bottles of night. 

This third-world way
Causes Third World War
So I'm drinking at a 
Tavern on the End.
The bus goes by, and
"Baseball's the worst sport."

Alliteration, allusion,
Colors, characters,
And metaphors.
Sobriety sending me 
Searching for smoke. 
Rehash, re-up, and "read the ****** thing." My world-view,
Out-maneuvering your
Upbringing.

(The memories I have are white and yellow.
Fogged, not angry, if even confused.
You'd call me, after finishing your nightly readings, to cry about the characters you'd loved, and castigate my inability to care.
Remember when you used "undermined" to describe the adaptation?
You meant that it was "assuming too much.")

"Brenda and Eddie," over here,
"Couldn't go back to the greasers" so they
Wound up at your family's tavern. 
"You look like the fat kid,
On whom the popular girl was 
Forced to settle."

Dear Man,
Woman's found you out. Or 
Are we, justly, doomed to be 
More juvenile?

Worn sole, soul-open, "so long,
Kid, I don't know you, but,
I can't help myself from
Destroying you."
(My upbringing: out-maneuvering
Your world-view.)

"You've always been the caretaker, Flagstaff."
The bait's in your brain. 
You've simply been 
Overlooking the barkeep.

(Dear Diary, could I just die already?
The Price is Life, and purgatory's a game show.
Anger, the color of your mother.
Skin, the shade of yard-work.
Staring at road maps of Virginia, stoic.
Trying to divine the diners we'd die in.)

The girl with purple hair is sitting at my bar again.
I think she is beautiful. And not in a way that I wanna have awesome *** with her but in a way that I want to drink chocolate martinis with her
and go shopping for christmas vests that have tinkly bells and possibly polar bears with hats on them.
She is having a full-body cry. I am the worst bartender, simply
because I don't know how to counsel people without crying back at them.
She is crying about the state of women.

I know that we come from the same rotting wood, so all I do is nod.

"How is it that three quarters of the women I know have been ***** or molested?
What does that say about the men that I know?
**** is not a man behind a bush with a knife, she laughs
It's kissing you on the mouth like whiskey at a nice bar."
The girl with purple hair and I are holding hands now,
"I only wanted an apology,
an acknowledgement of what occurred."
Grappling as artists, as girls, as ships in bottles,
how do we change any of it?
I tell her I am going to write a poem.
She says no one wants to hear a **** poem.

And I know she's right.

Have you ever seen a stampede of horses?
Do you wonder what the hooves look like from underneath?
Have you ever tasted the blood from biting your own lips because you couldn't say no loud enough?
"I never fought back. I kept my thighs tight and
closed, but once he's inside you, you wish you were the streetlamp, the
store clerk, a street lamp, a bed of calla lilies-

anything but a woman.

In that moment, our eyes glaze over, and they stay that way for years.
That's when you've lost.