Contents: Godspeed If I Go Blind Loose End |
Godspeed
I. Godspeed to your frightened little self.
It all felt like a game when you were thrown
off the wooden bridge in the middle of the forest,
borne by the river and raised by its torrents,
but a stick caught in the river's race
is at the mercy of the river's pace
and at the mercy of the course it takes.
II.
Godspeed to your frightened little self.
You worry like a child at the fair And whirl in this eddy like a sickening Ferris wheel Circled starry orbits, but none of them were real. You saw perfection staying in one place, Took stagnation as a form of grace, At the mercy of the river’s pace. Godspeed to your mighty little self. I’d rather be a stick than be a stone, I’d rather be a-drifting than call the bottom home. III. Godspeed to your mighty little self. No deluge, dock, or dam will block the way. The estuary calls with several theories and fates, Suggests you remain calm while gravity navigates. As the world is a carnival, the heavens are a carousel; Dreams are always circular and days are always parallel And if they stone you and kick you in the face, Stick up for the river and its pace. The current rocks you forward into place. Godspeed to your mighty little self. I’d rather be a stick than be a stone, I’d rather be a-drifting than call the bottom home. The Coal in the Engine Underneath a frightening sky a window-light was glowing
as though it were a boiler room with a bright red bed of coal. Somewhere inside a woman worked to keep the fire going, Enabling an engine to export the country cargo of her soul. When she danced her slender bones were like a model train set Whose engine moved with grace between the stations of her hands.
I waited for a chance to board on each occasion they met,Or else a chance to jump across the junctions in between the iron spans.
I don’t know what dancing builds, but it is not a boundary And in the wind the title lines of pastures were obscured. My muscles, skin, and sweaty clothes were falling all around me, But I couldn’t hang the meaning on the famous golden spike of the word. Many counties blew away and we forgot the names of desolate and desperate lots untouched by any human Fences in the dust bowl fell in homesteads without claims But even with the borders gone, it doesn’t make a union. The coal in the engine is not the engine. The light in the tower is not the tower. The man in the woman is not the woman The water in the river is not the river.
I never was a cowboy but I’m sometimes a rambling man
Sleeping on the backroads and traveling through the mountains
and the meadowlands.
I've seen the country is big and the country is good
But I haven’t seen as much of it as I probably should. Still, I’ve learned to be a liar and I bet I could fake it as a ranch hand.
I never was a cowboy but I’m sometimes a singer of songs. Sometimes it feels alright, and sometimes it feels all wrong. When I am doubtful, will you be my relief? I’ll live like a gambler or die like a thief Who bets on you all day, and steals from you all night long.
Chorus: We do not want want, We do not need need, But we sure do love love, We love love indeed. I never was a cowboy but I walked through many a field Waiting for the secrets of the wealthy to be magically revealed. As I trespass in pastures worth millions of dollars I come across mastiffs with brass plated collars And for every wound they’ve caused, there’s another wound that they have healed.
I never was a cowboy but I also never worked a 9 to 5. A man who wears a saddle, they say, is only halfway alive. I won’t put on neckties and I can’t use spreadsheets So I look like a beggar and I act like a deadbeat But it’s noon on a Tuesday and I think I might go for a drive. [to Chorus] I never was a cowboy but I’m sometimes a folk balladeer. That’s as close as anybody gets who lives around here. I could hit the road again, I may in March or April Because the house is always empty and the neighbors are so hateful
But springtime is coming and the green grass is starting to appear.
I never was a cowboy but love is running through my veins Brighter than the sunshine and wider than the great western plains
Please don’t be a drought to me and choke the ground with turpentine
Can’t you be my patroness, will you be my valentine?I’m looking at you the way that flowers look at long-awaited rains [to Chorus] I never was a cowboy but a part of me still loves the lord It’s the part of my body where my hope of salvation is stored With riding and roping I’m only a beginner, And you’re such a beauty, I don’t feel like a sinner But they’re going to string me up by the loop at the end of their cord.
I never was a cowboy but sometimes I live on the run. They act like my sandals are pistols, and my hope is a shotgun Through valleys and canyons, through alleys and avenues, A man needs his lies like a horse needs his shoes, And I never was a cowboy, but sometimes I feel like one. Without picks or shovels in the dry ditch they dug;
Ten thousand dollars in two days they drug.
The riches of the riverbed would shock any man
That caught wind on the hot wind of my homeland.
So down on my knees, in the soil I pawed
And I thought again of the meadowland, and my family, and
god.
Call upon your angels, your prairie seraphim.
Sing for your lost son a Hangtown hymn.
My belly is a cavern, my vision's growing dim.
Sing for your lost son a Hangtown Hymn.
But the riches of the riverbed dried up right quick
So they reroute the river with a dynamite stick
And the sound of the thunder would shock any man
That caught wind on the hot wind in my homeland.
When a man from the mine offered up steady pay
I thought again of the meadowland and signed straightaway.
Now dust thick as flour is filling my lungs;
It turns into hard tack when it sits on my tongue.
The toil I've endured would shock any man
That caught wind on the hot wind in my homeland.
Now all that I eat is the stone that I carve.
I thought again of the meadowland as I slowly starved.
They caught me stealing in the village last night.
A rope like a rattlesnake coiled round me tight.
The growl of my hunger would shock any man
That caught wind on the hot wind of my homeland.
No hymn was sung, no church bells clanged.
I thought again of the meadowland as my body hanged.
Snow Love
I notice the outlined boughs
of the halfway-buried elm; I can count the tips of them now, but soon they’ll be overwhelmed as the ground piles up to the heavens and the heavens fall down through the air; they meet at the skyline horizons like palms pressed together in prayer. I’m in love with the snow because of all the things it doesn’t know It doesn’t know what it’s falling on, whether a meadow or a road, doesn’t know what sunshine is, and doesn’t know it snowed. But it tricks me into feeling adept, how the footprints are fixed at first, the impressions of places I stepped stay in meadows and roads I traversed but the storm pushes on for an hour, erases my bootsoles’ tread, spreading a white sheet of powder on the cities of the living and the dead but when anything is equally imminent in a winter that follows a fall, I praise you for being indiscriminant, I love you for burying us all. Ballad of Jotham
Jotham knelt If I Go Blind: A Campfire Song If I go blind I hope to have fond memories of sight: Loose End Talking to you just makes me feel lonelier |