Belief

Lover, I believe the sweat of our labors
Beaded across my brow and bleary eyes
Forming rivulets down your ringlet bangs
Straw-colored and stuck to your lips and mine
Sputtering in our panted whispers
With words threaded from the thin air
Of this room lit like a February hotel
And falling to my rusted armor
Dripping onto the lust beneath
Flushing out vulgarity and fear
Leaving a pure soul in disbelief

I don't know how to say
That I don't know how to do this
Has this part of me atrophied?

They tell you in the movies that love overcomes adversity, and they say it so loudly that you start to believe adversity is a requirement. It is not.

I left it on that beach, I left it in the sand

It's Going to Take

Lord when you take the grain from the field
Take the fruit off the vine, and the shine from the still
Because it's going to take a man stronger than I
Not to drink what is rotten and fall from the light

Lord don't forsake me, ain't done her right
I've been walking the orchard, in the dead of the night
It's going to take someone bolder than she
To shake out the sadness and devil from me

Fond

We remember simpler days, softer afternoons
In lovely backyard gardens and dusk-lit rooms
We stop short of future things, like

I'm in town

or

here's my number, let's grab a drink

or

I wonder if when I kiss you
I'll remember how much you hurt me

Candlestick Maker

The baker starts at four o'clock
Dusting two hands and the counter tops
Steals the flour and peel

At six the butcher wipes down the block
In a storefront astride the docks
Steals a gleaming knife and steel

At midnight, the chandler's at the pot
Skimming the paraffin for flies it has caught
Steals the matches and the wicks

All three in their tubs, sailing alone
Downriver and paddling home

And the butcher carves the wheel
And the baker shouts at the mill
And the chandler burns up inside
Yeah, the chandler just burns up inside

The tools that we own and the skills that we hone
Won't help us down the river we're sailing alone
There is nothing to learn that just one of us knows
We all kill, we all yell, we all burn