Gulch
Some People read the rear view mirror
Some read the fuel gauge ticks
Some look into the lights for fun
and drag on the stretch
and some sentences never stick
Are you living in the wastes of a widowed place?
or in the City’s strung out lights?
Are you there in the back, looking at me tonight?
Between the Word
and the totally absurd
is a radio dial of Sin
But prayer is a piece of bread out on a hook
And your Disease don’t bite at those Hymns
The Highways bright, when the Speeds just right
And its hitting like a million bucks tonight
I love the World, but I think its too fucked up to drive
Somewhere out in the Gulf Coast night
A Wind Blew
And that dead dog you dream about
Smiled at you
And into the Hieroglyphic Gulch
You Withdrew
And Broke Down in Texas
Near a One Horse Town
Where Brass Saddles Buckle
And Guitars, Guitars, Guitars Weep
But Some People Can Never Be Found
Point and Shoot
Shot down in the shade of cardboard canyons
They cut the scene and saw blood on the Cameraman
She could see the frame but never the picture
A live round spun and a split second flicker
Broke the depth of field like the neck of the Hangman
You looked to me like a Pie in the window pane
I looked back like a Mule in some Bridle Reins
Layin’ there naked through a Point and Shoot
If you got a secret, don’t keep it too close to
Your chest
Just love me now and forget the rest
Does passion feel stupid when there’s nothing left of me
You laughed and said, “yeah the crime of the century”
But I was lost like a little child
In a wilderness where the West was Way too Wild
And all I can say is
“I don’t mind”
Like the Silphium Branch to the black Bovine
And she could see the frame but never the picture
A live round spun and a split second flicker-
Burn-Over
In the blue frozen morning
Of the Valentines day parade
Twenty striking firemen went walking
out on the engine 85 brigade
After 3 weeks with no contract
Thats 3 weeks with no pay
I saw smoke rise on the horizon
But heard no sirens go that way
—
In the outskirt wooden buildings
The winds only fed the flames
And 3 people died by the evening
And people looked for someone to blame
Sitting in the station barroom
We watched the news of that event
From what i’ve tasted of bitterness
3 dollars is rarely better spent
—
In the burn-over district
I guess some things were won
for some its just something to remember
for most you dont say nothin
And through the psychic silo highways
Or the glacial lakes inside your brain
A dusty brass door-knocker echos
When you hear your lovers name
There’s still a few lonely places
With no patron saints’ assigned
but there’s Ethan Allan of the bedroom
And Joseph smith of the mind
And when that final deal went down
The whole town walked out on the ice
And for the first time that season
You could’ve walked clear across to the other side
Salesman:
Light spent your life wrapping all around you
And always finding your form
And now it drifts like some - blind drunk salesmen
Looking for you door to door
Your clock beat twice
But they sounded just the same
One for every being here
And one closer to going away
Bent down at the bench of your body,
I got confused by the view
Most-men, live-and die by the same rules, baby,
but fate has made itself a story out of you
This life dont quit
You know as well as me
And with one last look at all the bullshit
You two-steped to eternity
Wolf Pine
There’s a Wolf Pine by the river
Thats older than the rest
Designated by city fathers
as some kind of witness
There sent a little boll weevil
To deform the root
You grew up defined as
A reflection of your youth
And in June of of 1816
A volcanic clouds black shadow
Reached New England via Asia
And dropped 3 feet of snow
Every cow silent in pasture
Every crop failed by degrees
As if in some hemisphere reversal
You can read it in the wooden memory.
you can go back, deeper in that - circumference
before you were even a dream
The Abenaki looked up, gulped and wondered
Weather they had the proper offerings
Go and count the purple rings of Saturn
And of your ringed and wounded heart
But there ain’t no long division
That could ever keep these things apart
Curtain
Your eyes are like a curtain and the sun goes through it
And a crystalline expression questions some kind of fall from grace
Reflecting green shadows through black shutter curls
Cruciform fossils lay excavated from your memory
Like plaster casted lovers whose kiss became the only thing
that ever really mattered to a Vesuvian world
My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, its like burning the furniture to keep the house warm at night, all right
The night is getting late and the horns have all been blown
And the drummers looking cross-eyed on his rusty metal throne
Im somewhere in the distance, ur somewhere at home
And im waiting for the money so I buy another drink
And like a pile of dirty dishes you carry yourself to the sink
The lake is out there freezing but doubly alone
If your hearts not in it, then your hearts not in it, then your hearts not in it
If your heart can’t take it, then your heart can’t take it, then your heart can’t take it
If your heart can’t take it
My thoughts die out slowly on the wind swept panes where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, its like burning the furniture to keep the house warm at night, all right
Rensselaer
He was young, when I came
And smoked like a Vestal flame
With one way mirrored eyes, his windows failed me
Now every time
I see that sun go down
I feel the shadows of this town cut across me
Down in Rensselaer
Nothings’ quite clear
You might cross the plane
But “gone” can mean a lot of things
I might be wrong
But I saw the slow season coming on strong
Waiting for some company man to can me
And like a sponge for the gin
There grew a beard over every chin
From Jesses James to John Henry
All along the coast
Lie the mutinied ghosts
of men recognizable only by the state of their hearts
You’ll break. your own. in time.
Rome, New York
Walking through the parking lot just looking at the
ground
Picking up trash in the extraterrestrial part of this town
Feeling pretty good still, Waiting for the big one to be
found
I looked all night for you and your gold and thorny crown
Standing by some lamp post i though i saw you smile
over at me
Your a crescent moon now but i know you girl, i know
your dark majority
Will drag the sky down into the dirt but only for the
hour in between
The time it takes for light to get from Rome to New
York City
Morning comes too quickly and evenings fall apart
And pine box hills rattle at night with the stake-driven-
hearts
Heaven, like a ditch, will sometimes spill into the streets
at night,
and pacify the muffled dreams of every broken-into car
and pacify the muffled dreams of every broken-into car
To silence the broken dreams of the broken-into cars
Gallic Shrug
The sun set in vain
Because it found us today feeling the same way
Cold and closed to love
And one foot in the past
and with one right in tomorrows grasp
Baby were just pissing on our gloves
You don’t know
Just how hard it is to watch
You go to sleep
And your pain is punching the clock
Maybe were both blue
Or even worse just two people who
Have too many yesterday’s
The silence talks back to you
The window is open just laughing at you
And you watch the words bleed out on the page
Once your on, there’s no way out
Like that cork stabbed into your wine bottles mouth
When I go away, you won’t hear a sound
Like all the bridges burning in your hometown
Your breaking me down
Your breaking me down
You play a game only you can win
My key is bent your lock wont open
And if this aint proof
Man is indiscreet
Why is heartache outside, doing pushups in the street
After one last round,
After one last round
You’re lookin to the sky for love
and all you get is a Gallic shrug
And if this aint proof
Man is indiscreet
Why is heartache outside, doing pushups in the street
After one last round,
After one last round
The bartender just shrugs you off
But I will love you until the cows come home
Sawmill
You split, slicker than a sawmill
I saw you everywhere
One hand on a cigarette
And both knees to take you there
You’re gone, but loving you is real
So’s the moon, and skinny like roadkill
In the shadow of the silver spade
I want to die out on your Shoulder-Blades
You came, quiet in the morning
I let you in my room
Well something in the moth is made up of fire
And something in me is made of you
A Peak In Darien
Last year on new years eve
I looked at you from deep inside the LSD
I saw your light expand so bright it made me nothing
Like a shadow in the sea
At the table in the bar
I saw your devils rubber neck then carry on
Or did they never leave the scene?
I dont know? I dont know?
and from that Barron, rocky height
We saw the lights of Dannemora way across in the night
Like a moth but only to the dark infinite
You went off into the night
Now your a fossil in the sand
I guess some people stick around for the hell of it
And some don’t give a damn
But you never believed in that stuff anyways
Now your the sand in the waves