Words

POEMS
Online Publications: 

Abjective: 
"Elegy for the Analog Lore"

No Tell Motel: 
"Thank You For the Sky"
"Yes Lets"
"Bitch Creek"
"Furvert Love Poem"
"Haploid Love Poem"

LYRICS
Wolf Wolf Wolf
1. State Motto
2. The Last Known Whereabouts of Amelia Earhart
3. Godspeed
4. Two Sentinels
5. Sapling
6. The Coal in the Engine
7. Flint
8. Abigail
9. Waltz from Rawlins
10. Lullaby for a Lady Asleep Already
11. Shorebird

Whiskey With Goliath
1. Drugstore Hucksters
2. Idioms
3. Setup
4. Come to Me
5. Used to Have a Mountain
6. Hangtown Hymn
7. Call Your Old Friends

STATE MOTTO

Is it something like an antique rose

Or is it more like a common daisy

Does it rarify your prose

Or does it make your thoughts seem hazy?

What is the state of your heart

What is the state flower of your heart?

Is it something like winter taupe

Or is it more like hot vermillion

Does it make you feel like a dope

Does it make you feel one in a billion?

What is the state of your heart

What is the state color of your heart?

Is it something like the country crow

Or is it more like the city pigeon

Does it clarify what you know

Or does it make you prone to indecision?

What is the state of your heart

What is the state bird of your heart?

Is it something like the knotted oak

Or something more like the great sequoia 

Does it make you feel entirely broke

Or feel like anybody would employ ya?

What is the state of your heart

What is the state tree of your heart?

Is it something like love thyself

Or is it more like love thy brethren

Does it make your home a hell  

Or does it make your home a heaven?

What is the state of your heart

What is the state motto of your heart?

THE LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS OF AMELIA EARHART

Come on come on honey I memorized the train schedule

Every hour on the hour from dusk till dawn

Northbound, southbound

Come on come on honey the streets are paved in nothing

The tar in your boot-soles is all you’re standing on

Facing outbound

Between you and me, the city is a buffer

When the deadlines are tough the lifelines get tougher 

But I’ve had enough; we were not born to suffer

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the east come rhapsodize

I hear the west join the fray

I hear the east come rhapsodize and lead you away.

[+]

Come on come on honey I memorized the birth order

Of every man and woman and infant yet 

Every sir and madam

Come on come on I know the line is unstable

From Cain and Abel to the godparents of regret

Named Eve and Adam

The cream of the crop, the dregs of the barrel

I’ve read all the drivel, I’ve worn the apparel

I’ve seen them be civil, I’ve seen them be feral

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the word come rhapsodize

I hear the world come & ask me to play

I hear the word come rhapsodize and lead you away

[+]

Come on come on honey I memorized the migration patterns

Of every seabeast and landbeast of the realm

All the courting and mating

Come on come on I hear the water table’s rising

My love is an ark but it’s dark and I’m alone at the helm

Honey it’s devastating

The storm was a mess, a forty-day bender

They divide us by dress, class, phylum and gender

Why can’t I be blessed, why can’t you be tender

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the sea come rhapsodize

I hear the waves hammer the bay

I hear the sea come rhapsodize and lead you away

[+]

Come on come on honey I memorized the book of Revelations

So if it ever happens we can hide inside the right monument

Someplace as dry as Petra

Come on come on I’ve got flotation devices 

If it’s really a crisis, I think we’re allowed to repent

Et cetera, et cetera

But I’d rather locate a natural bunker

My animal instinct tells me it’s time to hunker

You be the cavern, I’ll be the spelunker

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the hills come rhapsodize

I hear the valleys demand that I stay

I hear the hills come rhapsodize and lead you away

[+]

Come on come on honey I memorized the last known whereabouts

Of Amelia Earhart and unicorns and Atlantis and Christ

And Dillinger’s surrender

Come on come on there’s a Broadway adaptation

Everyone’s a sellout but everyone’s affordably priced

At your local vendor

We are not outlaws, we’re peripatetics;

It isn’t a sickness, I don’t need your medics

I don’t know what justice has to do with poetics

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the news come rhapsodize

I hear the pulp parade and decay

I hear the news come sermonize and lead you away

[+]

Come on come on honey I memorized the complete works of beloved New 

England poet and former US poet laureate Robert Frost

All of his trochees and iambs

Come on come on I know his life was a train wreck 

He was a fratboy and a dropout

But he knows what to do when you’re lost

And that’s just what I am

There’s no silver bullet, no clairvoyant crystal  

It’s life by the compass or death by the pistol

But if you find the high road, send an epistle 

Come on come on, come on come on

I hear the east come rhapsodize

I hear the west join the fray 

I hear the east come rhapsodize and lead you away

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 a 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

She suggests that you stay calm and let gravity navigate

The world is a carnival, the heavens are a carousel

Dreams are always circular but the days are always parallel

And if they stone you and kick you in the face

You 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

TWO SENTINELS

At the top of the hill

Two sentinels stood

Gathering wood 

To lay on their fire

When supper was done

They lay on their pallets

And dreamed of a palace

Where they ranked higher

Their post was remote

And the work was thankless

Their tired old blankets

Were thinner than gingham

When winter crept in

It beat their endurance

They turned into turrets

Overlooking that kingdom

And they wish you well

Anyway, anyway

But they could get well

Any day, any day

The night that they froze

They’d been back to back

Awaiting attack

The same way god did

In the wide frontier 

The space made them nervous

They enlisted for service

And the country praised them

They’d volunteered

When the country was wild

Heroes reviled

And villains applauded 

They stood for a year

They stood for a decade

They watched the good light fade

From the land that raised them

And they wish you well

Anyway, anyway

But they could get well

Any day, any day

The one facing west

Said humans are peons

I’ve been here for eons

So I know what life is

The one facing east

Said look where you stand, rock

They may be landlocked

But you are lifeless

The one facing west

Said the sun wanes palely 

People watched die daily

And yet it amazed them

The one facing east

Said I await the rebirthing

Of every earthling

And the land that raised them

And they wish you well

Anyway, anyway

But they could get well

Any day, any day

SAPLING

Your seed did land in stone

But you did not care

You were young and strong

And knew that you could sprout there

You were like a hopeful hand

Reaching into the air

It’s good to be a sapling

It’s good to grow into something

There was not much soil

For you to live off

There were only needles

Decayed bark and pine slough

There was hardly anything

And still it was enough

There were hymns

In your limbs

Through your fingers delicate and slim

Like a hand whistle played by the wind

When I had to leave,

I could not defend you

But there is no accounting

For the things that men do

When I was a-traveling

They chose to chop and upend you

It’s hard to be a sapling

It’s hard to grow into anything

The world is even harder

Than the granite promised

Your stump sticks from the stone

Like a severed wrist

It’s hard to be a sapling

And friend, you will be missed

It’s hard to grow in a world like this

But in the dreams I dream

You are a tall pine

Your song is in my hands

Your strength is my spine

Your melody is in my hands

Your memory’s on my mind

There were hymns

In your limbs

Through your fingers delicate and slim

            Like a hand whistle played by the wind

It’s good to be a sapling

It’s hard to be a sapling

But you’ve got to grow into something

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

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 don’t know what dancing builds, but it is not a boundary

& 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

FLINT

Tell me how the big bang felt

Was it your spark at the center of the asteroid belt?

Before there was a fire

Before there was a thing for us to burn

Nothing’s where we came from

And nothing is where we will return

But I am here to learn

Tell me how it felt to be birthed

Could you tell from the outset that your planet was curved?

This metal table’s flatter

Than any other matter I’ve seen

I looked to you, protector

Your face was a projector screen

But I’m here to find out what you mean

Tell me how you first learned to speak

Because language is the landscape that gets left to the meek

Since then it’s been a mission

To find the definition of strong

Either it’s to flare bright

Or to smolder all night long

Anytime I guess I get it wrong

Before there was a fire

Before there was a thing for us to burn

Nothing’s where we came from

And nothing is where we will return

But I am here to learn

Tell me how your first love began

What’s your inspiration for woman and man?

When you cast them in your image

Did you hold a scrimmage within?

In preliminary thinking

Did you have an inkling who would win?

What a way for love to begin

Tell me how your first love split

With hot apple cider sweetening their spit

Their bodies getting wetter

Ignoring every letter of the law

If everybody’s fallen

Then is that what we’re calling a draw?

What about that one, pa?

Tell me how it feels to be divine.

If all of this is yours, then is any of it mine?

The lilies on the nightstand

The woman holding my hand before?

The tension in my shoulders

The peace-dreams of the soldiers at war?

I am here to be sure

Tell me how it’s going to feel to die

Will it mean as little as the days passing by?

Or is it like the cavemen

Who drill holes and trepan out their skulls?

Drain the evil humors

And the rumors that cluttered their souls?

Lay them in the tinder

And strike down a cinder of flint

After a fire

Does anyone inquire where it went?

Is this all that my life meant?

After the fire

After there’s nothing left to burn

Nothing’s where we came from

And nothing is where we will return

But I am here to learn

ABIGAIL

I clutched you to my side like a broken wing

You shivered when you cried like a little nerve

I thought I was in love, until I broke the thing

That gave me so much more than I deserve

Sweet Abigail, soft and frail, Abigail I’ve done you wrong.

I turned away from you like a calendar page

Overnight I knew your time was done

You hunted for my reasons, but none of them were decent

I’m sorry, open season has begun

Sweet Abigail, soft and frail, Abigail I’ve done you wrong.

I deserve to be hunted down, hunted down and killed

The stove is on, the water’s hot, the pot’s already filled

Abigail is on the trail; I deserve to be gutted and flayed—

Pluck my skin, put me in, and cook me on the flames

Sweet Abigail, soft and frail, I’ve done you wrong.

You reduced me to writing songs about injured birds

Introduced me to the beast that I’ve become

You hunted for my reasons, but none of them were decent

I’m sorry, open season has begun

WALTZ FROM RAWLINS

Before we became so adult

We were happily roaming

Followed the Andreas fault

East to Wyoming

The ghost towns were calling

We pulled off in Rawlings

With beaches of rust

And tarantulas crawling

We learned about trust

From timberframes falling

Down into the dust

Of the ghost town of Rawlings

But the homestead will stand fast

While many a sandblast

Will polish your face

To a red, ruddy shine

In Rawlings, my darling

Your crosscountry kindness

Did just the same for mine

We followed the frontage road east

Deeper into the valley

Where an ancient mechanical beast

Was beached in an alley

Some homesteader’s treasure

Both precious and hostile

Reared in the gesture

Of a plaintive apostle

The dinosaur thresher

Has turned to a fossil

A century’s pressure

Makes the fiercest gears docile

But the homestead will stand fast

While many a sandblast

Will polish your face

To a red, ruddy shine

In Rawlings my darling

Your crosscountry kindness

Did just the same for mine.

We paused for a moment and kissed

By the railway platform

The horizon a gathering fist

Of a glorious dust-storm

By the rail for supplies

And goods from the salt mine

That split the west lengthwise

Like a manifest fault-line

Dry tufts of crabgrass

And tumbleweed beasts

Can’t suffer the sandblasts 

Of the continent’s crease

So it’s three days straight

With the sun setting straight

At our backs, heading straight

For the east, for the east

It’s three days straight

With the sun setting straight

At our backs in the rearview

A red, ruddy shine

In Rawlings my darling

Your crosscountry kindness

Did just the same for mine.

LULLABY FOR A LADY ASLEEP ALREADY

You know it was a shame and a pain

I came home on the late night train

The darkness slowed me down, stuck to my soft shoe

In the station, waiting to get home to you

Meanwhile at home you were breathing heavily

This is a lullaby for a lady asleep already

Now I’m keeping to myself at 4 a.m.,

While who don’t know who I am

Are on their way to homes I have never seen

But we’re sitting, shaking on the same machine

They move towards home and I move towards you steadily

With a lullaby for a lady asleep already

The fast moving skyline says I’m on the B line

But I don’t know what bridge I just crossed.

I know where you are, but I’m lost.

The engine is a shepherd whose feet are unsteady

And I’m a shepherd for a lamb asleep already.

You are way down south by Coney Island

On a carousel whose animals are silent

I wish my train were quieter; I wish my train were faster

As it took me towards your dreamland pasture

To the tune of its hum I hum a mostly-human melody

A lullaby for a lady asleep already

The fast moving skyline says I missed the deadline

And I don’t know this borough or town.

The subway keeps burrowing down.

The engine is animal whose hunger is deadly

I am a shepherd for a lamb asleep already

When I get home I’ll call and wake you up

You’ll come down half-asleep and take me up

Tomorrow I doubt you’ll remember my arrival

But for me it was a question of survival

Still it’s a sweet, sweet dream to think that you need me

Or my lullaby for a lady asleep already

And to the tune of your hum I hum a mostly human melody

A lullaby for a lady asleep already

SHOREBIRD

My first home was paradise

Halfway between the sea and Eden

I never needed your advice

Just the words that I was reading

That’s the lift that leisure gives

With a thousand bullets in the breech

You can live and can let live

You can sleep on an ash-white beach

My first friend was a shorebird

I’m gonna pay it forward

I’m gonna pay it forward sometime

So I drew a bead on imagined gulls

Drew the blood meridian

Drew in charcoal crossbone skulls

Drew the life quotidian.

Pay it all forward farther

I’m gonna be a father

I’m gonna be a father sometime

Pay it all forward smarter

I’m gonna be a martyr

I’m gonna be a martyr sometime

Of all the children I beget

I expect them to be great

Now we’ve got the internet 

So we don’t need the interstate

And although I am my father’s son

I never fired his six-shooter

I learned the workings of a gun

From a diagram on the computer 

Where is the Wild West now boy

You should have been a cowboy 

You should have been a cowboy sometime

But the coast was sold to a wealthy buyer

The demolition staked with Dayglo

The sun is hot as pistol fire

And it can’t tell a target from a halo

I could wear a Kevlar vest

But it wouldn’t make me a better fighter

Or I could build a barbed wire nest

And sit in there and be a writer

We’re headed for disaster

Somebody call the pastor

Somebody call the pastor sometime

Pay it all forward faster 

We’re headed for disaster

We’re headed for disaster sometime

So I came along and staked my share

But I’m nothing more than a short-term squatter

It’s getting crowded everywhere  

We’re running short on food and water

My faucet starts to sputter

I’m gonna die in a gutter  

I’m gonna die in a gutter sometime 

It’s not that I’m a pessimist

Or that I’ve lost faith in god

But all the elders kids have kissed  

Are an inadvertent firing squad

They burnt down the old cliché

The hallmark image of the phoenix

But its counterpart in the present day

Is the letterpress of the double helix

You’re gonna bring your matches

We’re gonna turn to ashes  

We’re gonna turn into ashes sometime

Lift up the safety latches

We’re gonna turn into ashes 

We’re gonna turn into ashes sometime

They said it’s not the smartest

I’m gonna be an artist

I’m gonna be an artist sometime

My first friend was a shorebird

I’m gonna pay it forward

I’m gonna pay it forward sometime

DRUGSTORE HUCKSTERS

Sell me a red bandanna

I’ll take it on the chin again

I’m shipping my love to Montana

Through Iowa and Michigan

Look like I have two shiners

In my aviator shades

Meditate in gas station diners

In the badlands and everglades

Here come the midnight truckers

Here come the drugstore hucksters

Here come the late night lovers

And they have an offer for you

Here come the midnight tricksters

Here come the neon fixtures 

They want to put you in pictures

And it sounds too good to be true

Aspirin two in a packet,

coffee that’s watered down

bald eagle governor’s jacket

from your quiet border town.

I could have been called a maverick

If I hadn’t been so shy

But I can still cause some havoc

Before the day I die

(to chorus)

I’ve got gift of foresight,

a parcel to deliver

it’s a song that lasts fortnight

it’s the Mississippi river

it’s the world’s most precious cargo

it’s the west’s immortal valley

it’s all the snow in Fargo

it’s all the sun in Cali

it’s the moonscape that holds the geyser,

a lip balm that makes you thinner,

it’s a cocktail that makes you wiser,

it’s a ticket that makes you a winner

(to chorus)

IDIOMS

You can lead me to water

and you can buy my drink.

When I don’t sing for my supper,

I don’t get to think.

I’ve got a grip on your shoulder,

but I’ve no axe to grind.

If I can’t change your course,

then I won’t change your mind.

If this is ours to save,

teach me to behave.

If this is not to share,

teach me to take care

I know you’re the one that feeds me,

so I won’t bite your hand,

and when the paths part in a yellow thicket,

I will understand.

I will put my heart

right before your horse.

If I can’t change your mind,

then I can’t change your course.

If this is ours to save,

teach me to behave.

If this is not to share,

teach me to take care

Though I’m asleep in wolf’s clothing,

everybody runs.

They know, hell or high water

I sleep by my guns.

But we’re all in the same sinking carriage,

so I won’t beat your horse.

If I can’t change your mind,

Then I can’t change your course.

And if I can’t solve this with words,           

I won’t resort to force.

SETUP

We were driving down to Austin with nothing left to talk about

We hadn’t seen a restaurant in eight hundred miles

I needed coffee and you gave a monologue

You talked my ear off and I tried to smile.

Oh how I loved how you talked

(how did I love how you talked)

we were a joke and I was the set up

you liked the buildup but I got fed up;

we were a joke and you were the punchline

your sense of humor is different from mine

Your grandma was friends with world famous outlaws

And your grandpa was a ranch-hand who never saw the sea

Their offspring were drunks and writers and cowards

Who ridiculed anyone who ever tried to leave

They make fun of your uncle, who went to New York City,

and gave birth to your cousin, the lawyer in Boston

I learned about his practice and his puppy and apartment

as we drove from Oklahoma overnight to Austin

Texas is bigger than anyone gives it credit for

and your mouth is bigger than anyone I know—

The words rolled on like the north Texas highway

eight hours behind me and eight left to go.

COME TO ME

I have no boat, no boat to sail

Across the cove or the breadth of the bay

I have no breeze, nor gust nor gale

So you have to come to me (someday)

You have to come to me, you have to come to me

My heart’s not strong; my heart is breaking

You have to come to me, you have to come to me

My roots are long; I can’t be shaken

I have no car, no car to spin down

The lonesome highways or the dusty spurs

I know no roads I’ve ever been down

So you have to come to me (I’m yours)

(to Chorus)

I have no trail, no trail to scamper

Through the limestone quarries or the shellmound shores

The trail is darker, the road is damper

So you have to come to me (I’m yours)

I have no boots, no boots for hiking

Through the maple forest or the northern pine

I have no lover to my liking

So you have to come to me (be mine)

(to Chorus)

USED TO HAVE A MOUNTAIN

I used to have a mountain, baby,

Now all I have is a barren field

I used to have a mountain but my mountain’s been repealed

I used to have a heartbeat baby

Now all I have is a heart that’s broke

I used to have a heartbeat but my heartbeat’s been revoked

Where were you at the hour in question,

Where were you at the hour in question?

I used to have a coastline baby

Now all I have is a frozen lake

I used to have a coastline but my coastline’s been forsaked

I used to have a cabin baby

Now all I got is a compass rose

I used to have a cabin but my cabin’s been foreclosed

*

I used to have a taproot baby

Now all I got is the wandering blues

I used to have a taproot but that taproot’s been refused

I used to have a birthright, baby,

Now all I got is a licensed gun

I used to have a birthright but my birthright’s been undone

*

I used to have a highway baby

Now all I got is badly lost

I used to have a highway but my highway has been crossed

I used to have a guitar baby

Now all I got is a clapping hand

I used to have a guitar but my guitar has been banned

I used to have a nightmare baby

Now all I got is the devil’s word

I used to have a nightmare but that nightmare has recurred

I used to have a soul, o baby 

Now all I got is a hollow chest

I used to have a soul but now my soul’s been repossessed

HANGTOWN HYMN

 

Without picks or shovels in the dry ditch they dug,

Ten thousand dollars two days they drug.

The riches of the riverbed would shock any man

That caught wind on the hot wind of my homeland.

Down on my knees, through the soil I pawed,

And I thought again of the meadowland, and my family and god.

Call upon your angels, your prairie seraphim

And 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 thunder that rumbled would shock any man

That caught wind on the hot wind of my homeland.

Then a man from the mine offered up steady pay,

And I thought again of the meadowland as I signed straightaway.

Call upon your angels, your prairie seraphim

And sing for your lost son a hangtown hymn.

Dust thick as flour filled up my lungs,

It turned into hard tack when it sat on my tongue.

The toil I endured would shock any man

That caught wind on the hot wind of my homeland.

All that I ate was the stone that I carved,

And I thought again of the meadowland as I slowly starved.

Call upon your angels, your prairie seraphim

And sing for your lost son a hangtown hymn.

Now 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

And I thought again of the meadowland as my thin body hanged.

Call upon your angels, your prairie seraphim

And sing for your lost son a hangtown hymn.

CALL YOUR OLD FRIENDS

I think by now you know what youth is:

It’s the time before you know the world is ruthless.

You’re still a windblown little seedling

And you don’t know where you are or what you’re feeling.

Call your old friends, tell them you love them,

Tell them no one knows you like they know you.

Call your old friends, tell them you love them

And you will love them whatever else they go through.

Your surroundings may well worsen

But it takes one to know one good person.

When I met you I was empowered,

You know being shy is not the same as being a coward.

Call your old friends, tell them you love them,

Tell them no one knows you like they know you.

Call your old friends, tell them you love them

And you will love them whatever else they go through.

You know the lone tree is the sorest

So you taught me how to live among the forest

Now find that number you haven’t dialed

Since you were halfway between a grownup and a child

Call your old friends, tell them you love them,

Tell them no one knows you like they know you.

Call your old friends, tell them you love them

And you will love them whatever else they go through.