There are sweaters I used to love
Around every worn corner I bump,
Loose photographs falling out of
Grandma’s old favorite books
That wrinkle in my hands
Which don’t look the same
They used to look to me
When I stare back at light blue eyes
From behind sweaters I used to love
And a red geranium in my hand.
Restless wrestling into oblivion
Spiders crossing midnight’s hearth
Locomotives blaring alarms
With an overused burden
Tucked deep inside a minor piano chord
Snapshot time frame over zoned
Freshly unground inside an attitude
Crawling blue veins starving
Window forever fogging
Death knocks at Love’s rusty gate
Salt water streaking pant cuffs
Boot prints trailing off
My legs have left from my mind
Oh Lord, this ain’t my time
I keep counting two by two
Until my sweet eyes turn blue
And fragile lilac leaves shake
In cold palms of my forgotten date
How sweet it once was here
Summer of harmony I’d hear
Spoken through my heart vines
Lost now, song number four’s lines
Without your world
Each passing footstep
Echoes of ghosts
Terrible spiders drifting
Across voids
And I remember this place.
So then it opened
And all blasphemies
And horrors
Were spilled out
Upon sheets and tables
That forevermore
Reeked of lost innocence
Crunched by time’s cloth
From my heart
I pull a seed
Lay it at the door.
Remember how
The water once
Ran across the floor.
I carry only
Two candles for
Our path, nevermore.
How alone can alone be
When tapping at my window comes
A shadow with two fingers saying
Come out with me to sing and play.
Alone these moments of my heart
Listen like an alert lark
Shaken with a little limb
That has one leaf still hanging on.
And ever in my mind, alone,
I find a whisper calmly saying
You’re ok now, you’re home with me,
Alone here as alone can be.
I don’t want to make my way in a barren landscape
The thought overwhelms me, loses my hope.
It loosens my grip and forces me
Into an unforgiving reality
That stops at every stop sign,
Red lights my deepest dreams,
And perpetuates my winter footsteps,
Fading to black.
Would you be a heart that will call out?
Shoes so familiar
Like eyes closed into sunshine,
And memories that float into this blank space –
Too happy to change it –
For we’ve started to understand
That tomorrow never comes,
And all we can hold on to
Is the ball clanging around wildly
Inside what we close our eyes to guard against.
This isn’t a memory,
This is pure unabashed and secret dreaming…
A love that screams to come out,
And I’m walking through the madness
With a hope to one day find my way out.
She was nothing but a distant beggar
Dancing wildly on thin ice,
Rickety chainsaw boots scraping sidewalks
Of spare quarters lodged between pebbles
And ‘Hey Mister.’
But who was watching?
Who counted every slow swagger
That climaxed with her sweet promises
And loud exclamations,
That brought wide eyes school boys
Glaring wildly out big window doors.
Who paid attention to her exploits,
Lude and brazen as she was
With a fanny pack packed with fanny.
She held meaning in some cheapskates heart,
Some rumbling bumbler
Who intoxicated himself with used needles
And flattened cigarette butts.
He was two strings for his six string guitar
And knew better then the wide eyed schoolboys.