And there’s still love
For the happiness remains;
Sunshine and my eyes.
Which I hold love.
And the grapevine
Tangling up my heart
Sends circles and circles
Spinning in to love.
And I call home
To happiness by name.
Where I feel love
Which is everything to remain.
Your heart is not a valley away,
Nor a diamond left unbought.
Though time discovers all our pain,
Lifting our sins to meet the eye,
To shatter history spent in plans.
To know is like a misspent truth;
To touch the wings of a butterfly;
To give up on the fight.
Where I’m left standing,
Yelling: “My heart is on my sleeve.”
Which I’m not here to wear,
I am here to give alone.
Where I hear the valley’s echo.
She was a woman who cared for her lovers
The same she cared for beggars and friends.
A little lone heart with a name stuffed with blues;
Hobo’s delight in a $10 Marlborough,
And my love never lasted in that smoke-house saloon.
Love in a little back door room.
My dreams and I was heartache by Tuesday.
Though I swam like a digger, I was surfaced and saved
In my own lonesome song.
She was a heart made up of elastics
And my twangy delivery
Was the Wednesday that I’d never start.
So don’t go treating your lovers
Like left over flipping page books.
It’s a forgotten stack, the dusty pile,
And we’re a never ending love song
With toes getting colder.
A common answer to sufferin we kept inflicting,
Two unspoken lovers on two lost Sundays.
Two out of tune guitars
Waiting to behold warmer mornings,
Just waiting on leftover tea.
She made me get up later
So we could talk of traveling gypsies
And listen to leftover records
We’d forgotten to play with brandy.
I collected your answers in tiny glass jars
For your leftover spells.
I wasn’t branded in passion;
Painted on that old saloon wall
With some unspoken love song
And leftover cigarettes sailing the sea
As I woke up to Wednesday
On a Tuesday afternoon.
I’m a dress rehearsal stranger
Without a fixing for the road.
I’ve been picking up the faggots
That get me kicked out of the bars.
Did you walk away a stranger
Cause you were too caught up in gold?
Or was the ever piercing sidewalk
Grabbin’ tight your leathered soles.
Melting through my summer windscreen
Before the widows shake their brooms.
We were wrestling with officers
Gettin’ some fiction on their tongues.
Laughing without smiling
It’s been a mighty cold balloon.
I haven’t forgotten promises
With cheap hotel hookers
But the minister I never knew
Said, “Man, it’s not right timing after all.”
For there was one forgotten apple
That lay rotting on the ground
Which everybody avoided
Conscious fingers up their nose.
Butler’s on my side
To tell me all he had to say
Which was spoken very dryly
As he fit the classic part.
So I knew at that very moment
All their was ever said to know,
Which took me down to Georgia
To lay down my old guitar.
Because delicate sparks
Flew towards
The sor-cerers pot.
Can you sit
For a while
Just to
Sing me a song
Like there is love
All around
You’re in love
With a sound.
Through my heart
To the ground
Beautiful words
Swing around.
[and the soundtrack to the poem, on repeat if you wish]
I’m the rock
– Chief –
The Chief hip hop
Let be. Be
The 1-2-3
A hibby-hibby
The riggy rig real.
You. Don’t. Get.
You don’t get on.
The game, the play,
A blind Laid-ay.
Stippin, steppin
The nasty flip flop.
Cause I take,
A la boog.
Boogity wuug
Boogity wuug
Boogity shug wuug
LICK
Cause I’m the Chief.
The Master.
The rock-and-roll
Lock.
My lady,
– Get low –
My laid-ay says so.
And if you don’t,
You wont.
So take your talk,
And. Get. Out.