is god speaking to me?
am i the genius of my own topology?
do i have an iceberg in my pocket?
are my insights contagious?
are my revelations fatal?
am i just rearranging legos?
am i flaky in that way?
is there a point?

dreamt about a hermaphrodite
maybe you can teach new tricks
to an old stag

sorry but
you gotta crash every once in a while
or you’re not really riding

summer was sunnier in the 60s
and the 60s were made for kids
my folks had backyard BBQs
with the tijuana brass in constant spin
i don’t know if it was my mom or dad
who put it on, but they both dug it
them and their friends and neighbors
me and my sister too
best part of my short time with them
i grew up, had a family, threw BBQs
merriment with wacky musicians jamming
between burgers, feeding
the most cartoon characters in town
i’m glad my kids have magical family times
to turn back to, as i do
every time i hear those spanish trumpets

once upon a time
i woke up in a garden of dried *****
from a tuinal OD
an uh oh moment
and if i hadn’t woken up
well no one held a gun to my head in union square
(an actual possibility in those days)
now at work in the hospital this morning
we just gave up on a 20-year-old athlete
OD’d on pills, arrested, dead before 8 a.m.
mom, dad and older brother are wild with grief
uh oh

i have my discontents
but when i get to my hospital job
and look in the mirror pre-shift
i think of all the hurting people
in this building i came to help
and all the medicos i’m here to help
help these poor folks
and i think "you’re a useful *******"
and that’s good enough

we convened to play a book of hieroglyphic scores
bought for a buck at the yearly carnegie music library sale
collectively you could say these pieces by various composers
comprise the music of the spheres
we knocked the **** out of them on friday night
with drums, a cheap synth
and a ukulele plugged into a powerbook
playing these scores today
by forgotten or never known primordials
who channeled nature and magnetism
and yoked them to the concept of music
was like breathing life into the dead
reanimating them
i say death to bach and metallica
those greedy pigs
we honor the others
because we are the others