Astonished Moment

Poetry Chapbook from December, 1996

(Jim's favorites boldfaced)

So much of us seems left in parks
Here in Prague, there where you live
and in cities we've both left behind
Perhaps there's something too direct
in the closing of ourselves indoors

Places we might face each other
without the intervention of grass
No sun and wind to carry thoughts
aAway to drift like smoke from fires
that scorch my mind when touched

There were things we might have shared
that never made it past the blades of grass
pulled idly and chewed in conversation
Or am I wrong, my words written in shade
that dappled private script of sunshine

The misreading of lives we spend apart
Too little time to rewind, play it back
to hear the sounds, feel something
akin to strings on fingers that know
all the chords and never find the melody

Love is letting go and I've done that
It wasn't mine to capture anyway
all these parklands that we shared
Proper places to watch leaves blow
and still the music haunts my mind

THE STOVE IS ELSEWHERE

Well, to begin with, you can't mix these times
the time to write and the time to cook
I was reminded of the truth of this, allowing
just a moment to alter a paragraph
while eggs were boiling hard, then listening
to soft explosions from the kitchen

Wondering what that was all about

I've put on the coffeepot before and stepped away
for just the smallest moment, thinking later
it was strange this smell of rubber burning, a drift
through my window, something from the street
Must be someone putting on a roof and like a dream
just ending, I began to think of cappuccino

Amazing physics in a pot run dry and glowing

But there's soup on now and soup's forgiving
Lost moments mean not a thing to soup
and I make it thick, not tentatively phrased
paragraphing rough chopped carrots, peppers
Never a dangled participle in the pot
three squirts of olive oil, two heads of garlic

Knowing what I'm doing at the stove

Metaphoric spices, onion tears, tomato paste like blood
mushrooms grown in the dark like thoughts
Never could keep up with Julia Childs
or writer's workshops either, too much recipe
and yet somehow the soup is always pretty good
hot and pungent, thrown together it simmers

Forgiving enough to let my mind run elsewhere

UNEVEN DEAL

It takes about a week
for a lazy man to read a book
if he's inattentive
easily laid back and watches
a lot of television in between
Perhaps takes in a movie
on the off nights
Properly cares for wife and kids

Takes about eight months
to write one, presupposing
that the writer kicks out words
like his pants are on fire
Stays with it when he feels
like climbing trees
or climbing the walls
and to hell with winter in Mexico

Turns off the television
leaves his friends with three at bridge
growls at whoever's on the phone
Still it's an uneven deal
Thirty five writers striving
to keep up with one insomniac
If there's an economic rule that applies
please clue me in

REST STOP

Lovers come along
like rest stops
Places to head in
after steady driving
The tank nearly empty
eyes glazed
from too long looking
toward the sun

Easing for a time
the tensions of the road
Too comfortable perhaps
to pull back out
Put off by the agression
of the merge lane
where engines rev
fingers tighten on the wheel

A kinder place here
hidden in the trees
away from smoke and dust
No blown tires
but a rest stop even so
and no one builds a home
in a lazy midpoint
on roads to somewhere else

SCARLETT O'HARA

The brush poised above Prague
descended
and announced
the color of the day
Brown was its verdict
not a graceful umber
but shroudlike, carbon centered
dogshit brown

It drifts across the moors
of Petrin Hill
softening St. Michael
who's grown soft enough
one would suspect, dead these centuries
blown to dust
A watery sun at four o'clock
pouts and burns the skin

This yellow sky, colour du jour
all but weeps
This portion of earth turning under
facing away
Embarrassed at its forecast fate
yearning for the dark
For tomorrow, as Scarlett bravely said
is indeed another day

A SCATTERING OF BIRDS

It's such a tenuous thing
this venturesome experiment
Removed as it is from reality
veiled from all the laws
of common correspondence
The world of words dissolves
along with common sense
An abstraction lost in smoke
Love conquers everything
except its ultimate demise

No need to spell it out
to those who scatter like birds
to settle, take wing and settle
once again on branches
No need to take flight
from my fingers in your hair
Lingering gently there
understanding your need to fly
It's done with mirrors and they say
that mirrors never lie

So stay a while and see yourself
reflected in my eyes
until some startled rush of wings
takes you away
to wheel and flash the colors
meant for someone else
Testing currents that lift you
further than those we knew
I'll see you safely gone
and glory in the flight from here

HERO

Did you ever know that you're my hero
and everything I'd like to be
A line from Willie that stops me in mid stride
like a known face on the street
Smiling, carried in my back pocket, folded
opened when my faith is shaky
Confidence coming undone at the seams

Do you know you get me through from there
and does it matter, the knowing
What is a hero, but a reflection, an image
of ourself as we would like to be
The hidden, drowning parts of me are all
there shining, polished and smoothed out
by the lady who taught me most of what I know

So if there's anything to see in me at all of love
or understanding, some residual value
It's across my shoulder, where a woman stands
who raised the tattered flag that's me
Life's a battle and when the smoke has died away
the bodies are counted and armistices signed
I'll know, they needn't understand how far you carried me

Did you ever know that you're my hero
and everything I'd like to be
Probably not in your nature to see yourself that way
My designation not yours, so live with it
After all, it's only you and I need know the terms
of how we recognize each other in the dark
and that's my vision, so slip it on and feel the warmth

AUSSIE GONE AND BACK

He left a city of wanderers for wandering
half across the world to lay it out
across a more unstructured beach
Respite from the agony of words and women
on the downside of an upside world

Seems the phrasing followed, sharpened
A clearer head perhaps, in lighter air
The smoke and age of Europe given over
Seen as all things best are seen
Distanced from lingerings of self resolve

And yet a half year saw him back again
Tortured and beconed by what was left of him
in twisting narrow streets, cobblestone thought
The things that never leave in flight
carried half a world to carry back

It doesn't work for him here anymore, nor there
If a battle's to be fought, then hunker in
in stinking trenches of what's gone, not lost
Stumbling over the bodies of friends and loves
Turning each to look at faces, smell the blood

Some wars won't end and others will
but no one ever brings an armistace
Sets the tables of negotiated boundaries
steps back, salutes, handing over weapons
Such things are history and history's a lie

THE SONG MIGHT PLAY

A constancy of clinging, finding ways
to get through another day or month
A year, please let it be a year that's all
A lifetime would be bliss, these promises
suck dry all flowers, leave them wilted

I was me and you were you just yesterday
and dawn brought us each another
The moment is the most of us, our history
all past, the future merely hopefulness
of two of us or not, when morning breaks

The only holding on's in letting go
Always difficult, sounds upside down
but true enough when all is said
that can be said and all done as well
The love of two is never up to one
Love is merely watching colors change

If only we would welcome strangers
next to us in morning's rumpled sheets
Know them differently at breakfast coffee
Breathe excitement in their newbornness
The song might play and play and play

WINTERING

I'd November in Madagascar if I could
Hide out the winter in India's blazing sun
Sombrero on the sunny side of Columbian walls
Bare toe my way along a Cancun beach
Anywhere but here, this painted lady's arms
in winter can't begin to hold me down

Ancient distant lands of promise, promising
beginnings that never ended, mysteries
The touch of outstretched longings left behind
for a time in tangled sweat soaked sheets
Remapping this portion of the world in fingered sand
to suit ourselves and no one else, blown over

I've lived a chilled and wintered life, fingers stiff
Too bone cold to see past smoky sun held low
against a horizon driving me to steaming soup
All the edges hazy, time now for clarity and warmth
A dawn that jumps, not drags me from my bed

My batteries may be solar, time to be recharged
An easing back of the throttle, coasting, drenched
in deep blue waters turning green with envy
at unclustered, undressed lying about
All afternoon to watch a spider on a wall

Ceiling fans and windows open to the breeze
of all I ever thought or hoped, the speck of someone
seen on the horizon, shimmering walks my way
Arms stretched and golden, I can wait it out
lying there in the afternoons of endless time

MOSTLY IN MORNINGS

Days spent at windows
guessing life
Expecting tiles to fly
Knowing they will

Solitude and no regret
It's needed
mostly in mornings
Not always

I'm a good man
when I'm alone
But a better man
in someone's arms

ASTONISHED MOMENT

Death is the flag around which
no one rallies
A closed circle, once a man
and twice a child
Life is after all a fatal disease
with no cure in sight
Some just getting on with it
quicker than others

It's a reasonable expectation
this dimming of lights
A time in one's eighties or nineties
to turn in a passport
Hoping the switch will not be pulled
in mid step on the stair
surprising ourselves and others
at the sudden darkness

So if I'm caught a continent away
in an astonished moment
Then know how much I loved you
each of you, all of you
That another letter lies half written
meant for the morning mail
And there probably is postage due
along with so much more

CONCEPT

Love is a concept
into which we fall
Shimmering as long
as it's withheld
from the sand and grit
of confrontation
Leafiness and dappled shade
and peace
Reality jumps
from branch to branch
Illusive until it comes home
to feed

You are a woman
made for love
As long as reality
stays safely in the trees
Seeing behind my eyes
through misty lights
Building dreams
of what is there
You'll find my strength of purpose
often fled
Revealing flesh and bone
and little else

SOFT LANDING

When mankind outgrows its need of things
Forsaking stuff to move in simpler directions
Remembering from our ancient cultures
the sanctity of leaving not a trace
Leaving space for sun and wind and rain
Someone will have to give up the Calvin Klein's

Sunny in San Diego, but half a world away
Europe's smoky dark and growing darker
A billion Chinese wanting cars and not to blame
for acquiring our taste, no one ever made
a fast getaway in a rickshaw at least not now
that Bonnie and Clyde have a three car garage

It's a civil right to have it all and set the pace
of homelessness and bank accounts
Clear cutting with clear consciences
Pointing a finger at someone else's rainforest
Expecting profit and getting it, a record quarter
expanding markets and contracting legacies

Looking for a soft landing in the last best place

A QUIET SMOKE

Poetry, the real stuff the serious thing
kindles in the mind, internal heat that builds
finally to burst its flame upon the page
An Instantaneous combustion of thought
as might raze a loft of new green hay

My work is verse at best, a struck match
that flares momentarily, then blown out
A blaze to light my cigarette, hands cupped
My words will never burn a building down
but then a quiet smoke is all I'm really after

AND NOW A BRIEF MESSAGE

I am the hunter, you are the gatherer
Are you comfortable with that, thought not
Genetic destiny turned on its ass
Trouble at the OK Corral
Not necessarily my idea

Two hundred centuries abandoned
for a plastic badge at IBM
Which may not be abandonment at all
Just a different tribal chief, no feathers
Pinstriped Ice Age, ruled comfortably from the top

A little confusion's to be expected
in this cultural eyewink since we left the cave
Excuse my Pierre Cardin all to hell
It's new, still trying to get the feel of it
Tight across the shoulders chasing elk

This stew's been on the stove a while
Seems it's not only the plot that thickens
Urbanity used to be a simpler noun
You still with me, eyebrow raised?
Okay you hunt, I'll gather a while

Gather my strength for the long pull
my wits for a sustaining view
my senses so I'll know your touc
my assets for Master Card
and get a grip, I always need to get a grip

Back in just a moment, don't go away
Another eyewink of twenty generations
to see how we've marked these times
from there, from caves again or understanding
And now, a brief message from our sponsor

STEPS ALONG THE WAY

Illusion makes a mockery of reality
and we have thrown in with it
Suspending lives in hopes and dreams
as etherial as disappearing mist

Hungering for there instead of here
Thirst that turns away from inward wells
The hunt for a light that never flickers
Forgetting the romance of wavering candles

The chase its own game, never ending
No pause at the top of darkened hills
to gaze at waves of grass that roll away
toward a horizon of self discovery

Human doings, disguised as human beings
Flashing false credentials at the borders
Searching continents with outdated maps
Forward, always forward, damn the side roads

A destination finally achieved, left wondering
why the streets are empty, no friendly face
at the end of all that troubled journey
The miles winding down to spaces emptied

Never savoring the steps along the way

CELEBRITY

Celebrity seems a hungry mouth to feed
A demanding child that wails, stamps its foot
and screams for fifteen minutes at the top
We were promised that, expect it now
even if Lennons and Kennedys must fall

A mirror image would bring it all back down
A comforting deconstruction, car bombs to candlelight
the supermodel barefoot in a faded robe
Pulitzer Prize for guys who walk the dog
An understandable order, once more from the top

Agreement to settle for five good friends
to mourn a death or celebrate a birth
No helicoptered headlines, just drop by
A conversation sitting on the floor, don't call
Your hug is all the celebrity I need

SNAPSHOTS FILED

These streets I walk and walk again, each time
more deeply lost in constant unveiling of my days
And half the time I'm purposeless and wandering
Wondering as well, lenses all set at infinity, finding
imagery in stranger's faces, shot quickly in repose
Their unknown, complicated lives all lived to now
to serve as background to the camera of my mind

And me to theirs, together we're an endless stream
Washing across dark glass, exposing pebbles
of our human grace, the stories written there
in lines on faces, the swifit moment of held eyes
Then gone and passed, forclosing the exposure
Freeze frame one another's lives, the smiles and tears
that brought us here split seconded away

Young and old and short and tall reflected in the glass
of shops and passing trams, a time lapse photography
of shutter speeds that push the capability of film, click
Sifting bits of language, catching but a half a phrase
Mutual unknown lives developed in scattered images
that need to sit a while, over a quiet smoke and coffee
Until the print is made, defined, comes clear at last

Any face at random, yes the bent woman with a cane
Tell me your story, the child gone who never writes
The husband you bring flowers, his rough hands stilled
I know you somehow, have known you both before
You'd recognize me too, if we could spread the album
on our knees, the images that streamed across our lives
Somewhere among them the same faded photo holds us all

Another yeah, introduce that young guy with the attitude
I've lived bits of his life, he may yet live scraps of mine
There's boldness in him, overcoming the hidden fear
he'll miss it all before he's twenty two and life's used up
We oughtta have a beer and talk about his girl, the one
who drives him nuts and makes him sweat and grin
But the moment's gone, another snapshot's filed away

RESTORATION

Each of us harboring perceptions
of how we're doing
Seen dimly across the light
that won't chase shadows
Washing those faint outlines
of desire in colors faded
Our lives a Cistine Chapel ceiling
waiting to be cleaned

NEWFOUND LOOT

Leaned against an afternoon Antiguan wall
Sombrero pulled just low enough to shade
a surrepticious glance at passing tawny legs
or
Hammocked in a Thai bamboo cottage
The shimmering Gulf at jungle edge
Her lean brown body bends to serve the tea
unless
Australian bonfires grace some lonely beach
Casting dancing shadows across her smile
until we turn to embers, she and I
providing
Someone comes through with newfound loot

PAUL

Martia at Beef Stew
The known beat of verse
A voice I know, words
slanging off the page
Once more among us
often and much missed
His writing holds a deeper ring
of time spent away
The tone of Cairo calling
Muslims to prayer rugs
The Chalk Desert in his gaze
squinting purpled afternoons
A city rat at heart, between cities
eyes still glowing
Off to settle affairs
before settling in or down
Then back again
to touch this ancient city

LIMERICK

There was an old guy who had chose
An expatriot life writing prose
His verbs had the flair
Of quiet dispair
But the publishers turned up their nose

THE GLOW FROM EITHER END

Two events came together for me tonight
and I can't get the juxtaposition
out of my mind
It's been circling there gaining altitude
in swirling updrafts, fighting my resolve
to bring it closer, make it land
I should be a little drunk for this
it's really smoky barroom conversation
blurry as the third drink
But we'll try to make the best of it you and I
because we're friends
and we'll pass the bottle back and forth

The first was Esther's slightly blitzed rambling
that really wasn't rambling at all
but a truth she held out shakily
More than that, a power of truths about me at least
and my usually agreeable
sometimes disagreeable isolation
She kept asking is anybody hearing this
is any of it getting through at all
this public display of my life and my art
Yeah Esther, it gets through to me
and maybe others here as well
but who's to say how it fits for each of us

The second, a journalist looking for a twenty minute
fix on Prague, blathering about whether
it's really the Paris of the nineties
Noticed that I didn't fit the pattern, a gray haired guy
among all these young aspiring writers
and how does that feel?
I mumbled indistinctly about just doing the same thing
from the other end of life
but I gotta tell you it's uncomfortable
This question about which end of life I'm living
something I hadn't thought about
brought up by a stranger and I can't shake it

Juxtaposition, that's the point I meant to make
a shock to my system these two sides
of one question all in a night
Esther's is this getting through to anyone
thrown up against why are you doing
this sort of thing at this time in your life
All kinds of flip answers come to mind
from not self aware enough in my twenties
to fuck off stranger, I'm busy
But the question caught me cold, wouldn't go away
and the closest I can come to answering
is because I am you

I am you with gray hair, as good as the best
bad as the worst, wondering if we're right or need to be
or if it matters anyway
I get owly just like you do when I'm not getting laid enough
and spend too much time owly
chasing fractured chips of thought
I get scared just like you do about the money
and sometimes get too isolated, welcoming
the time alone but wondering
If someone will come along in time to shove me anything
that floats, a couple of bucks or a warm smile
or hands across my back

There was a young woman in the park today, exotically beautiful
with a wide brimmed hat, shoulder bag
and a confident striding walk
Came right at me across the grass, holding my eyes
and glad to find me, like a friend she knew
and wasn't it grand to see me there
Passed me and sat down not ten feet away to smoke and read
I expected that direct look to ask me if I knew the author
would like a cigarette
Too shy to start a conversation, I left but there was this pull
not to leave to know her story
that we were lifelong friends, unintroduced

And so like Esther, I wonder if my life gets through
to anyone out there, if shyness is the universal thread
that makes a writer conjure words
So we won't pass each other in the park, but sit
and find the pieces of our lives that fit and bind them
with no more effort than a printed word
To paint and sculpt and craft a life that satisfies
a sense of worthiness from either end
of that burning candle called our lives
The glow is just as soft from this side as from that
and most of the striving is just the search for a match
that's not too damp from sweat

QUIET BREATH

I think of people breathing, as I breathe
Across town, across rooms and continents
Oceans, airwaves, satellites and muddy roads
This singular connection of lives disconnected

The common thread of life, lungs moving
Nostrils flared or slim, dependent on the current
of our metered commonality, loosely strung
Inhaling, binding lives and loves, exhaling loss

His breath comes easily, bending over words
Six time zones west, steel canyons support
a dangling cigarette, smoke tears the eyes
that leap and stutter flame across another page

Hers comes quickly, building to cry out the gasp
of sudden holding, momentary breathlessness
Collapsing into arms that once were mine
I hear her even out like a returning tide, eyes wet

Thought scattered like birds circling, each moment
Of remembrance seen from different wings
when only thoughtlessness comes home to roost
and a quiet breath is all there's left to share

FLIGHT TO SUBURBS

In some ways Prague is just a run
To another suburb, catching the 5:18
Getting out
Getting away
Getting home

A conversation in the Club Car
Over martinis with a fellow commuter
Leaving behind
Looking ahead
Wanting weekends

A few will stay, lay back in hammocks
Trade grass for urban broken glass
Thinking thoughts
Writing lives
Painting dreams

Others shine their shoes and stand again
With folded morning papers, timescheduled
Going back
Picking it up
Sweating it out

It only suits a few and city rats are city rats
Their mountains rise in steel and glass, deadlined
Pumped up
Doing lunch
Making deals

And so it goes, this temporary cutting of the grass
A flight to suburbs, maybe staying, maybe not
Loving it
Hating it
Trying it

WINDOW SEAT

Old loves
Old towns
Old friends
revisited with a mind of older memories
Sometimes found fogged in, shut down
As often in full and brilliant sunlight
No way known yet to predict the weather

So I just have to slide on in, take a chance
See if the plane can land, reservations made
on the spur of the moment, no refund
Heart racing
thoughts flying, looking down
to wonder if you'll see me changed
Maybe love me still

RETURN ADDRESS

I wonder which of my letters
are lost to you
Lying this moment
in the dusty confines
of some dead letter office
between here and there
Thoughts that spun in my head
for you
to weave into the fabric
of us

Lost now, plane crashed enroute
Metaphorically gone with no survivors
smouldering wreckage
forgotten before remembrance
Death before birth
The soiled curled corners
of what you need to know
crushed between the misaddressed
others, stamped occupant unknown
Crushed, spindled and mutilated

I'll get a stamp, linger for a moment
before mailing to imprint
the full return address
The need to touch your mind
too strong before
Just a scribbled name and city
More info in the upper left corner
My center centered in your name
'till now
The rest just maintenance, done badly

And anyhow, perhaps I got it wrong
Rushing some transposition
of letter or number
beyond postal comprehension
They comprehend so little
The proof of me undelivered
Something I expected you to know
a detail of my life unexplained
in this separated time zoned existance
Launched Par Avion and lost in orbit

So if you've not yet heard from me
the words lie there
dead lettered, still alive and hopeful
Someone's bound to see the rise and fall
of breath, beating through an envelope
Pick it up, finger it for a pulse
call an ambulance
Sirens may scream down your block
lights flashing, doors thrown open
to deliver me, not dead

Just lacking a return address

PATTERN

If my life is fabric, what's the cloth?
Warp and woof, threads crossing
and mine run lengthwise
from birth to death
The tangle a meaningless pile
a skein without strength
but for the crossthread

Those who wound themselves
around and through my life
Pulling taut what lay in useless form
Mingling colors, the red of envy
enlightened yellow, soft green
that speaks of inner peace
moods pale blue to black

Taking me up and laying me down
reworked and newly shaped
How many? Too many, not enough
Each face that waited patient years
to glance and turn away, walk on
never speaking and even so
their thread knotted in my own

Every banker that turned me down
and child that held me up
in too harsh a light to understand
Drew a thread across mine, a shuttle
cast back or forth, intricacy of pattern
in this ancient, newborn weaver's art
In a lifetime, a tapestry or shroud

There was a time I fooled myself
into forcing patterns, selecting colors
as if such a thing were no more difficult
than a clansman's noble pattern
Will I make of myself a McKenzie
or a Tartan Plaid?
The foolishness of willful years, not yet gone

This may sound as though I've learned
something worth the passing on
If only it were so, something to teach
for god's sake worth learning
Some reason to write these words
that you might take away
To work into the scheme of your design

Because you've brightened mine
even in the darker colors
of misunderstanding
I can't get back to look at it, my face
too pressed against the weaving
Wouldn't recognize it anyway as mine
Whatever final pattern, your strand is there

POSITION OPEN

Wanted: Strong minded individual
with a clear, perceptive point of view
No salary
No benefits.
Hours by negotiation
Must be able to withstand
constant self criticism
unending distraction
geographic isolation
publishers rejection
Without believing any of it

Employer will be the sole judge
of the competence
of the effort
or lack thereof
Applicant may be dismissed
without notice
or compensation
Strong likelihood of the above
Interested parties
Tuesdays and Saturdays
If no answer, ring back

A HARLEY IN MY DREAMS

Wind whistling through
what hair remains
Laying her over on the curves,
expediency
given over to exhileration
and tires whine
Calling she and I back
to places not yet seen

A Harley in my dreams
Something less at the moment
but the feel is there
The winding two wheeled freedom
of life in a sleeping bag
Meals caught like wildlife
wherever they're found
or not found

Towns fall like leaves in a meandering
never ending autumn
Lowland Bohemia and climbing
Austria, a flower treasure spilled open
Salzburg, Innsbruck, St. Moritz
at a back road pace, between
horseback and the Autobahn
in a long slide to Italy and friends

The return across French Alps
through ancient upheaved
falling land turned sideways
Seven Swiss passes, into cloud
and through, breaking sun
Breaking my heart, breaking down
patching up, catching breath
Wanting home, wanting never home

Knowing this is home, wondering
at the life event
Stunned that whining tires brought me
here from there
will take me back, bring me once again
Maybe next year Spain and maybe not
The plan's the thing and damn the day
when wheels stop rolling

METAPHOR

The magic of life is often nothing more
than bad judgement and mistakes
Taken not quite to extremes, an inside pitch
Remembered in the quiet softer light
of retrospect and rescue, flyballs caught

And the few regrets of a season looking back
are not things done badly, missed plays
Although I've thrown a few bad innings
But the chances that were missed
The reasons all forgotten now

But reasons there were in reasoned times
For letting friendships drift or kids
who meant the world, take a bleacher seat
Horizons had the focus then, leaps forward
But you can't slide a fastball past a kid

And maybe there's some justice in the fact
they'll have their own and see it from the mound
The split fingered, hitching up your pants side
And walk the man at the plate, depending on
believing in a double play to end the inning

But it's a lonely walk to the Clubhouse anyway

REWRITE

I went to see the longtime friends
who kept begging me to come
and found, just like a love remembered
they'd turned to other things and forgot
the arguments of their invitation

So it was dicey on both our parts
and somehow or another, we fought
over the least important things
we had in common, like kids
who won't give up a toy that neither wants

Maybe we care too much, see too little
of the time right now, clouded by before
The days when nothing meant a damn
except the bunch of us, and we're
no longer bunched, but spilled like apples

What pulls us on seems to pull away as well
Sometimes I feel as though I'd forgot my lines
Bumped into furniture and wandered off
confused, leaving stage right instead of left
Someone may yet notice and rewrite my script

A LONG ROAD BENDING

This life is one long lovesong
and I've trouble with the lyrics
Yet you still smile from the piano
when I've forgotten words
then hold me up, never holding on
Allowing me another breath
I'm afraid to look you in the eye
It's easier to glance away
Always hope to find some sense
for me in penning notes
Forever trying to find a name
for the ghosting nameless

Reaching after description, a sense
of times gone, choices made
and lived so long ago
They're foggy now and yet
my heartbeat sometimes quickens
and there's a tight fist
somewhere in the middle
of my self esteem
A swallowing of missed opportunities
Gulping away the fear
So, what is there in looking back
that rings true

Looks right and sounds like
music not too overworked
Manipulated to meet
whatever the current need
Is a hit tune really quite that good
or does the whole thing
depend on rhythm and beat
woofed and tweeted, amplified
Scores written across night skies
in blue black ink
Small wonder it's obscured
lying here, looking up

Maybe I've just not found
the proper key, still humming
and it gets beyond me
stays just out of reach
Play it again Sam, it's got to be
a sort of mirror writing
Clear in the reflection
I'm obviously standing here
looking for the proper shade of green
in a whole damn forest
Sorting through brambled underbrush
for one clear thought

Otherwise I've tricked the truth
and truths have a way
of slithering back when least expected
Jumping up to bite me in the ankle
It's simple enough this mucking about
from day to day
The struggle for a song is mostly
maintenance at several levels
Offering comparative economic choice
on the Mercedes Meter
when any fool should know
that a motorcycle fills the bill

Someone on the back I care about
arms around my waist
The maps all left behind for those
looking for destinations
Running with me in the wind
singing phrasings in my ear
Making time to lay on grassy banks
and let it slide a while
Wandering and wondering along with me
where it all will end and if we'll find
the song we've written
is finally just a long road bending