poem

THIS IS WHEN I SHUT MY EYES

At around three in the morning
there was a halo over everything
and your head was no exception
As the train slowed and released me onto the platform
I laid down my guitar and through the flakes
caught the horse and rider
You smiled at me with hidden hands and white teeth
and there was one of everything
1 street lamp
1 Toyota
1 of you
and
1 of me
but billions upon billions of snowflakes suspended
offered up as alms to a gentle December moon

this is when I close my eyes

I see you playing etudes on an old upright piano
with snow covered pedals
in a field of spent corn stalks
sitting on a bench stuffed with sheet music
Then the fox appears
that half-hunter with it's patchy coat
It stops to smell the small of your back
then cuts a crooked figure directionless
deaf to your music
in search of anything that moves

this is when I open my eyes

You had not moved an inch
a statue made of prairie wind
still waiting, waiting, waiting
to show me the place where I would sleep soundly
near the fire and your dreaming dog
the one full of secrets

lyrics

ROAD TRIP in A FLAT/minor

I was on my way to Texas with the bald-headed Irishman
we tried to re-configure the stars
In my bicentennial pickup with bricks painted on the side
we slipped through Oklahoma under the radar
That is where I found my own Jesus
or at least someone who looked like him
with a wheel on his cross he was pushin our sins
Down the pipeline of I-35 past the flames of ol Waco
oh David! your death was mishandled like many times before

So believe me now cause that was such a long time ago

We woke buried in our fortunes and arose with the good citizens
who were off to work or crawling back home
All the architects and the film makers
and aspiring Senatorial hopes
all seemed to waltz right off the pages of my book
But we found ourselves on the fringes
where the muffler up and bit the dust
it was there that I saw my first Armadillo

So believe me now cause that was such a long time ago

We saw sort of famous people as they watched the buffalo roam
and in the palm of my hand for you I wrote down this poem
But all the words they bled together like some ancient Asian script
It was gone in an instant as I lost my grip
So we packed it up and hit the road
headed to the ol North Pole
all hail the mystery of this rock n' roll