Confidence

You built me up with your fine art,
Restored my heart and my ability to connect;
I came to you so many times:
No promises made to protect.

I shared with you in confidence
The naked evidences of my tainted soul;
You hold them still and yet don’t see
The place they used to fill remains a hole.

You made your mark when I made my play,
Contrasting stark the heated dark from icy days.

Confidence…confidence
A long distance
From what I heard to what you meant.

Is the heat of fire worth all the burn?
When will I learn not to be shamed
To be taken in your confidence game?

You tore it down, had to reject
What I gave you said infected your new heart.

In retrospect you slipped away
Before I let you go (my way)
And darkened our initial spark.

Confidence…confidence:
A long distance
from our last words to eloquence.

Is the heat of fire worth all the burn?
When will I learn not to be ashamed
To take my turn in your confidence game?

So our new turn still makes me smile.
I’ll wait your while and yes, I’ll yearn, and age,
In the dark until your curtain’s raised,
You’ll hit your mark I’ll make my play.

Confidence…confidence:
A long distance
between what dreams may come
And all the ones we’ve spent.

But the heat of your fire is worth the burn,
Because I have learned not to be shamed
To be taken in your confidence game.


2007

Notes From the Field

Did I see you there among the bones?
Did you stalk me through the mummy’s hatch?
I wandered for an hour past cross-sections of the world,
Where all of humankind turns our last minute on the midnight watch.

Did you see me passing right in front of you?
Or did you let me slip out of your sight?
Or did that present chance to meet
Lose the meaning you once thought it might?

I read the bone scholars’ words
And like the fate of all the lizard emperors
This love I feel I should rethink
I must believe it’s not really extinct…
Just changing shape…and taking flight

Are we cultures in conflict? Are we lovers or rivals?
Trapped behind walls erected for our sheer survival?
What is worth preserving of the trust we built together?
Can I raise a monument to us that lasts forever?
Or are we bound to decompose to other states of matter?
The curator arranges lifeless artifacts to speak
Their long significance to anyone;
I want us to matter in the long run.

Though you’ve clearly conquered me
Please don’t burn the library --
Stay…see
Please, remember me.


2007

Spiral Dance

So many waking dreams of us,
Last night's the first while I still slept.
I didn’t recognize your voice at once
But on the phone you said I’d "passed the test."

So we retest the past, and now I qualify to play this fool?
Well here I am with my best bell-shoes on;
The eggshell shards are stuck between my toes
I dance in place while you chase and run.

Another turn in our spiral dance:
The distance grows with each passing chance
As close to the center as I’ll ever be,
It shrinks down to infinity.

You stay away until it suits you not
To build such distant fortress walls around
Your heart; but therein lies the art of lies,
Because the old foundations still remain.

So I stand upon this ever-rising wall,
Down there the place you keep I see below;
And perish though I might I still would fall
Into the deep Once, a long time ago…


2007

As If to Say

Of all her pretty, sober faces my favorite feigned a strange concern
Stronger fuels dripped off her tongue than all her heartfires ever burned
Love-empty eyes look through me with about an ounce of pretense
She’s laid her clothes out on the bed,
I know she’s chosen to walk out instead of hearing
My last lines of defense

As if to say, “You’re doin’ fine? Then so am I.”
As if today were any other blowing by
As if to say, “You’re doin’ fine? Then so am I.”
As if to say “I’m leaving before you say goodbye.”

She left her magazines of fashion with everything else she outdated
With all the fools who loved a girl whose every jeweled word was jaded
She gave be back my book of poems, never even turned a page
Now all those ‘accidental’ lies I meant
I wish she’d give back the time I spent on
All those lines of age

In all my sprawling, empty places my favorite pain remains to learn
That empty hearts yearn to become a home for someone to return
Love-painted eyes look into me and I feel every last ounce of suspense
You’ve broken down my ancient lines
And left me knowing I don’t mind
This time it’s life in present tense


1996

Timepieces

How can I try to explain how I feel, why had to go?
Maybe a song or a metaphor? All I am is standard tunings and simple chords
But I know that I’ve got to get on board this train to Chicago

You said you were looking for a dream, that maybe yours could be mine
When you asked me for a pretty line, baby nothing came to mind
That’s the reason why I’ve got to leave these lies behind

I remember Shakespeare’s garden I recall making love in the rain
I remember sleeping in the parking lot
All these timepieces hardened and fragile and forged in vain
But how they fit together now I can’t seem to remember
Whether I ever knew or somehow I forgot

Lookin’ back now I begin to see more than just empty space
At the edges of a love affair but I can’t retrace the heartbreak that got me here
So I’ll have to take my timepieces where I can stay in one place

1999

DreamQuilting

My friends and I had a dream
One foggy Northern California night hanging around
We made a pact to share our most sacred dreams
I told you mine was that my dream could be found

We conjured heroes in the candlelight
But they all flickered and burned out before the end
So you’d be mine and I would be to you
What I have been for nobody else since then

I don’t know how it all got started
This technicolor quilt of temporary friendships I have sewn
But if I meet you out there in the cold again my friend
I hope you’ll know that you can wear it as it were your own

We laughed and cried, and drank on through the night
Looked each other so deeply in the eye
Huddled near and feared to fall asleep
And if we did that our dream may die

At last the fire passed out, the night heaved up a sigh
Maybe I dreamt and maybe I was only stoned
When the morning took us by surprise
I awoke to find I was alone


1998

Martyr's Cross

Oh Muse, I could use a healthy dose of your wisdom
Find me a good line and I’ll try to rhyme it with this one
Please make 'em think that I might be the next Bobby Dylan
Or at least as good as the last next one

I got all the answers right here written down in my book
To all of their questions but I just can’t yet let ‘em look
They’ll see when I’m along an' gone that the life I forsook
To get ‘em all down was worth all the time it took

The martyr’s cross teases me to shut my eyes
‘Cause I can’t be famous, immortal and alive
Speakin' truths that only my death will make you realize
I’m livin’ life by my own sentence, waitin' to die

I’m set on the title, I’m callin' it “The Big Joke”
Each day and every page I write it I’ll be flat broke
I’d talk your ear off but that wouldn’t make me Van Gogh
It’s worth more when I’m gone than any words I ever spoke

Oh Muse spread the news to my friends that I’m sorry I left
And greatly exaggerate all the reports of my death
Tell 'em I spoke of 'em well with my last breath
Just in case they don’t show up in the final draft

Now I’m due to thank the producers who paid for my song
And please excuse me if a few of the words come out wrong
I’m only a prophet if someone is makin’ a profit
They say all I have to do is play along


1998

The Multitude

When we finally lose our heads, will you wonder why?
Will a single tear be shed, will your banner fly?
When the streets are running red, will you still be standing by?
When the righteous few are dead, will you be afraid to cry

Out across the bloody plain that they can’t have died in vain
Will you stand your ground when you’re pursued
Or will you still depend on the mood of the multitude?

Will you lay a single track on the road to freedom?
Would you give the shirt off your back when mine’s whipped and bleedin’?
Won’t you give the people slack for letting you mislead them?
Would you hang me on the rack if I demand you feed them?

Won’t you ask the same of me? Are you too ashamed to be
Defending me – are you so far removed
That you can’t hear the footsteps of the multitude?

When you hurl the world upside I will set it right again
Was the kingdom that you lied to get worth all the lives you spent?
You turned the language inside out but I know what you meant
You’re the one who’s taking down the office of the president

When the hangman comes for you will you blame it on the Jews
Proclaim it on the evening news, weep for all the camera crews
To give you back your right to choose when you got nothing left to lose

When it’s you who’s standing nude
Before the multitude


1997

Hammer Man

Hammer man comin’ downtown today
To build a tower up to heaven
Gotta aim high, gotta swing away
Gonna blacken the eyes of the world

Tell me Hammer Man, are you less or more for real?
Listen to me Hammer Man, you can’t hold me in your glass and steel

Hammer man standin’ in the sky today
Shakin’ his fist up at heaven
Curses the wind and the rain and the passing of day

Tell me Hammer man, are you feeling more or less
Listen to me Hammer man, I see through your steel and glass

Hammer man’s lyin’ in his grave today
Shut his eyes off from heaven
They laid his hammer down beside him in the ground
Cause’ they seen the eyes of the world
Starin' them down


1996

Mies and You

Look at that skyscraper
Look at all that glass and steel
And tell me master builder,
Is less -- or more -- really how you feel?

Cause the more you build the more you make
The more you give the more you take from me

Drive that superhighway
A cushion of magnetic air
How long can I suspend my disbelief
In all you destroy to hang it there?

Cause the more you build the more you make
The more you give the more you take from me


1993

Subjunction

Underneath a willow tree and wondering what my daydreams meant
Sometimes I find myself inclined to believe all this is just an accident

What keeps it all together?
What keeps my bones from letting go my skin
To dissolve in the wind?

If you believe that we were an illusion
That you no longer see or feel, our time was just a waste
You should know that I still feel the rain pour down my face
And I still hear your voice and see the look in your eyes
There was no confusion
That was pain I can’t deny

If I were unconditional and time were no impediment
I might look at you and say the very thing I meant

You would hear my heart out loud; my final will and testament
My spinal tapping from my head my thoughts before they’d spent
These feelings that I rent
But that chance came and went

If I could fit the fractured pieces of my life together
Even if I couldn’t hide the seams
If I could let my daydreams see the daylight
I’d ask you to stay with me tonight


1993

Atone

Night moves, streetlight scatters through a tiny trickle of a raindrop
Light news, AM chatters crowd out the airwaves and there's no stop
So I drive on without getting to the meaning, believing I’m out here all alone
Where a thousand miles of wide-open highway won’t lead me home

So long have I wandered wondering how it would feel to give an answer
Silence, loud as thunder, her eyes eat through me like a cancer
How can I stand one more day here? How can I stand on my own?
I’m wearing the skin of a man but I haven’t the bones

Who knows who needs healing? This show of emotions closes early
She goes, never believing although I’m kneeling with her rosary
Every last wish has been spoken, every last bird has flown
I’ve sinned against the will of my heart and now I’m bound to atone


1993