With Eyes Closed

There is no quiet from lips with expectations
Plotting ways to speak these parting things
Easier to sing
With eyes closed
To strangers

Nor is there rest for such a mind busy yearning
That anticipates this very day
Warmth beyond a dream
With eyes closed
Of my love

But I'm keeping my eyes open
When I get to kiss you next
When I kiss you with eyes closed
I'm afraid I may forget

It Was Then

Or maybe looking over the snow field
The drifts hiding our paths from last night
I heard that to speak it is to lose it
Just steer us out of the icy street light

Or maybe just a block off the train tracks
The couches and coffee off the alley
Somewhere guessing at it I cried out/sang
That older couple in sweaters watching

Or maybe that her hands were always cold
I don't think she ever showed him that trick
Or who knew of the crimes he'd buried in her
I found them burning through the innocence

Or maybe following under the stairs
When on the last step she hesitated
Before she remembered it and went on
I thought she would wear that skirt and she did

Would I Be For You

It’s always kind of amazing
Seeing you in that room
The murals looking on
Like the annals of some

Separate, shared youth

~

We both tried to misspend it
Writing our own lives and
Selling our stories freer
They want it more now
And I think you’ll cash in

~

We students escaping
We lovers thick in it
The man whose loves eloped
Even that of himself
For any tomorrow

~

You’ve got it, and will
I should scrape mine
In bars and backrooms
Hazy even without smoke
Those too lonesome to notice

~

The students escaping
The lovers thick in it
The men whose loves eloped
Even that of themselves
For any tomorrow

~

Would I be for you
To learn, or to teach
I’ll think of something to give
Someone special

Sometime soon

Ghost River

Time goes by, we cut off our hackamores
Breaking horses for running whiskey
Making merry with the promises
To live wild in our own hearts forever
To marry others, or damn our fathers
And burn brands until they scar
By the fire in man’s soul

And with that fire, warm our hands
So that we may give them to those
Who will soon forget
But they all will be buried, every one
And you will forgive them

Time goes by and we will feel safe too soon
Felling trees for building altars
Where we marry and make promises
To betray our wild hearts for each other
To bury brothers, or forgive our sons
And to make a crystal swan
Of the ice in man’s soul

And with that ice, to go to war
For possessions we’ll plunder
And soon forget
But we all are forgiven, every one
When they bury us

I Wish I Was the Water

Time’s come, it’s thoughtless how I move
At the edge of such a loss, I swoon
Parched lips part to breathe strange elegies
And curses for the tongues that pass over me

Hope falls, cascades in an abyss
For fear of falling under sheer rock walls
The rapids’ white noise, the taste of the mist
Which parts of me will fall in all of this

I wish I was the water
I wish I was cool and calm
I wish all this violence in me
Were more like a water fall

Time’s come, it’s thoughtless how I move
By the weight of such desire, I swoon
A hard-tack heart, my spirit salt-cured
My words by a woman are consumed

Coming in tides like a long, wet kiss
Feet bare to count the grains of sand
The breakers’ white noise, the taste of the mist
Which parts of me will fall in all of this

I wish I was the water
I wish I was cool and calm
I wish all this violence
Were more like a water fall

Same to me, if it’s all the same
Oceans and rivers I’m running to see
Same to me, if it’s all the same
To you, but you look so thirsty

Ice Man

October waking
The air like cold smoke
Burns your lungs
Reach from your bed
For alarm bells that only ring in your head

See her in the frosty windows
Of school buses
Little hands trace little hearts and initials
Little sorrows to start your day
Seems yours melted away
Long time ago

October dreaming
The lies like cold heat
Free your heart
Set your eyes on
A body that only sings in your mind

See her in the speedometer
Try and drive
Fast enough to shake the ice from your tires
Those worn treads
But the past is never dead
Or gone

Catch the next flight
To light me on fire because
I don’t want to be the ice man

Walk Alongside

Walking just to feel the cold today
No one talks like this I guess
Any more, more or less
Walking just to feel the cold today

I know a man just passing time
And turning on turn on or off the lights
Depending on the day or night
I know a man just passing time

I know a woman that does the same
Drawing from the well each day
To feed the plants and wash her face
I know a woman that does the same

And this old clock winds off the dust
Each time she calls it rings a little softer
Someday I’ll forget to count the hours
And miss my meals and miss my mom

Walk alongside the heart I stole today
No one lives like this I guess
Any more, more or less
Walk alongside the heart I stole today

There is a man that I’d like to be
He kisses but he never tells
He guarantees all he sells
There is a man that I’d like to be

Somewhere the woman that I knew before
Love don’t thrill her any more
So she paints her face and locks the doors
Somewhere the woman that I knew before

And this old clock winds off the dust
Each time she calls it rings a little softer
Someday I’ll forget to count the hours
And miss my meals and miss my mom

Walk alongside the woman that I love
No one loves like me I guess
Any more, more or less
I walk alongside the woman that I love

Two Lane Highways

Two lane highway, Red Lodge
Killing time around the soda shop
Melting ice cream and chocolate bars

Two lane highway, between bars
Walking two yellow lines like tightropes
Under a full moon down the middle of the road

Oooh, one point to the other
Oooh, on the arm of your lover

Two lane highways, cheap motels
On the California king beneath the bookshelf
Full of Louis L’Amour from before we were born

(Over Me)

Your own damn fault, this falling away
Between the time and the distance, it’s madness
Of the best kind
At the worst times

I don’t blame you for turning away
Between the lies and the whiskey, who would have me
At the best time
But the worst kinds

Seems like your eyes were kinder last time, every time
The holes in your love and the loathing thereof
Let the rains from above wash over me, over me

It’s my fault, for walking away
Seems the time for this distance is passing
Down with the sands
Down to my knees

Don’t blame me for feeling again
Seems the numbness that lies in the whiskey
Is weaker
In the wine

Seems like the bottle was kinder last time, every time
The holes in my soul and the soles of my shoes
Let the smell of the booze wash over me, over me

And who is to see what is left of us now
Between the time and the distance, it’s madness
Of the best kind
At the worst time

And I don’t want to say I know you better
But there was a time you would have sent at least one letter
Just to say
There’s nothing more to say

Seems like the words were kinder last time, every time
The holes in my verse and the curse of my sin
Let the ink from my pen wash over me, over me

Thought You Might Be

One silent night in repose
alone between the bedposts
I caught a glimpse of flesh
in my arms and with my eyes closed
My thoughts they slipped through your hair
my hands just crept through thin air
I thought you might be over there
From that day to the next
there was a sighing in my breast that carried
On through halves of hours
So tired was my chest
I couldn’t bear another breath of you

You shouldn’t cross your own words so
With deeds that come and go and
Pull my heartstrings ‘til they sing
Some heartfelt verse you shouldn’t know
So I keep the verses well-worn
Lock and key, bottom drawer cuz
I thought you might come back for more
From that day to the next
There was a longing so repressed it carried
On these paths for hours
So tired was my chest
I couldn’t bear another singsong tune

The Still Frames

He smiled like a crease in a photograph
When she sat like a child on his knee
They ran to the mill each day, grinding their secret
And she said, “you don’t say it but I know you love me”

That summer she painted the roses
That climbed the wall to her room
The ones that cut his hands as he climbed with them
The ones that to this day still bloom red

He grew to be cold and colorblind
He grew to frame in another life
She grew to remember the still frames
Of the pictures they took in the booth at the fair

The fever she brushed in her youth on a canvas
Is leaning in his attic collecting dust
Aging gracefully in an endless night while he lies
With his family below

That picture she painted has faded
It’s the one with the blooms
And his wife, she hates it
Because she knows the truth

He grew to be cold and colorblind
He grew to frame in another life
She grew to remember the still frames
Of the pictures they took in the booth at the fair

Sometimes he'd fall like the rooftops were walls
Sometimes he'd scream like the doorways were halls
Sometimes he'd whisper, pen in hand, writing one or the other
Saying I never said it then but I loved her

When he passed away, his wife came by
To leave a keepsake she said she’d just found
Saying, “all is forgiven from his lifetime
And anyway, he has no need for this now”

You can see them the roses she thinned out
Still show through the blue of the years, like rust
Glowing red - the summerlong love, the rope swing
The lake and the lust . . . and the lust.

State Line

I forgot how to make moments anew
Find my own time to smile
So I daydream a love long overdue
While I burn up in flames all the while

Working two shifts won’t bat my eyes
But I been working this season straight through
So I daydream, my love, into the night
While clutching the air that was you

And oh! the lives I would give
Just to make the bed in the house where you live
And oh! the time stood still
I swear you were blind to cross that state line
To leave me here, to die

Oh, that my love could make you full
Fill you the same each day
Like petals of flowers filling the table
Hiding the spill from his coffee

Your phone yet warm with the sound of my voice
Passed on from tower to tower
If it were so, our love might still grow
Relayed by the cold, hard steel

Fixtures

My fixations haven’t been healthy
Living by restlessness or anxiousness
You’ve been a poor keeper
Of my emotions

Because you didn’t call, or write at all
Three days busy brewing new lies
Honey, it’s all right I wasn’t gonna sleep tonight anyway.

The morning I woke up
From that second sleepless night
I sent the letter that said,
Honey, let’s stop the lies.

Among other things, it rambled
But as I recall it forgave us both
Our failures and weakness through all these trials

We can take it back, like with bandanas and steel eyes
Like Rosie the Riveter or Bonnie and Clyde
Say hey mister bring her boy home
Give this man back to the woman that loves him most

And save our ship, it’s the same old shit
Tales of lies, loss, destruction,
Sabotage and dysfunction
Loose lips sink ships, and they have

Because you didn’t call, or write at all
Three days busy brewing new lies
“Honey it’s all right, I wasn’t gonna sleep this week anyway.”

We can take it back, like with bandanas and steel eyes
Like Rosie the Riveter or Bonnie and Clyde
Say hey mister bring her boy home
Give this man back to the woman that loves him most

There’s love in me for both of us
But if we want love, or at least trust
Let’s stop fucking around

Ulcers

Do they have sports bars where you are?
Like Jackson's, like the first date
When she answered, your classmate, for you

Do they have payphones where you are?
There's one in your purse, and I hope it's not far
From your hands . . . is he near them?

While I swim in this doubt
And I think I would drown
But even water won't stay down

While you float through your town
My flowers all around you

Making

I wish it all would change
Between fickle hearts and ball and chains
It's all just chasing windmills
Meanwhile treading on the tulips
Like how I never bought you flowers
I planted them in you, they just never grew

Until today, the softest of suns on your face
You and me, behind a tree off the highway to Crater Lake
Making, mmmhmm

I wish you could have it
The tenderness I've torn and split
To hold it in your hands
And fastened to your sleeve, you could
Pretend that you'd thought of me
In Seattle, or otherwise

Hold in your eyes, the countenance culled from surprise
It's strange as such, a stranger's touch alight in a plane through the sky
Making, mmhmm

I knew where you were last time
But only the loneliness moves you
To measures beyond, beyond . . .

Thinking of the other side of this

Cervantes, like that painting I made when she was away

Each of us has windmills

And I my De La Mancha

To take her fill and slip me a pill

And taunt my little Panza

Just one of her sighs or sleepless nights

Would fill me overflowing

‘Ere these faults of mine or even the wine

Turned up the seeds for sowing

So fetch me my steed

And hand me my lance

For lifetimes hide in chance yet

A Dispatch from Oregon

Dropping like a fly
In a prop plane, into the valley
Where you live and work
And struggle without me

Skipping like a stone
Between the waves of grain
I reel in the forgiveness
Numb from the pain

Bending the sun
Like a cracked windshield
In light of all I've sung
That can never be undone

_______________

The moments we can't have back are no worse
Than those I dreamed up and rehearsed
That never have come

That sigh was a softer than I could have imagined
To hear you lungs cast off what your hands did
Saying he never came

I know 400 miles isn't a thousand, to one of our doors
But don't make the miles we've crossed together more
Than those to come

Arts and Music Fest at the Oriental

I want to give a huge thanks to everyone that came out and watched Kendra, Scotty and me (that is totally the correct usage of me) play at the Oriental Theater on Saturday. My parents came along, requests for Johnny Cash were fulfilled, my parents and some random couple danced . . . it was more than I could have ever hoped for.

I'm going to be doing a phone interview on a college radio station in Pennsylvania this week about the indie scene in Denver - which I think is hilarious, considering I've been a part of Denver's "scene" for about . . . one gig now. Haha.

I don't think I'm going to play Avo's tonight, as I'm still reeling and smiling from Saturday . . . this week and next are going to be writing weeks as I dust off my Teles, old amps and pedals and try to write some more "upbeat" tunes. I'm just feeling a little more rootsy-rock since seeing the Black Keys and My Morning Jacket at Red Rocks last Thursday.

I'll post lyrics when I have them :)

B

Avo's Tonight

I'll be hosting at Avogadro's Number tonight, but I don't think I'll play. I played every week for a long while, right after all that writing . . . and I feel another streak of material sort of coming on. Also, I hate mixing myself on suc a sweet sound system because in the middle of the set I hear something wrong with the mix and it should be perfect on a setup like at Avo's.

Kendra will be playing, so I'll be able to mix her live for the first time in like four or five YEARS, and it will be nice to be a part of making her a recording. She has always asked me the best way to get some tracks down and I should have always said to play at Avo's rather than being proud and saying I'd help her out with recording. We never seem to find time to hang out much less set up an afternoon or day-long recording session, and it's so easy with that tasty sound system.



I don't know how I feel about that last post. I need to edit two or three lines and double the verses, add something really . . . something really good. About grain, walking across water or an island. Charts or an island; no man is an island if it isn't this guy. Or seeing the same sun under different skies and what her hands must look like, folded in prayer watching the harbor. I should have my new friend in Austin write a few verses from her perspective. Anyway, another time. I'm going to drive home to Fort Collins now, back into the fray at work and getting ready for school next week. Yikes.

Brian

Peace Made

Hit us at the starboard
A gale to prove a harsh world
Cutting sails I cut by hand

On timbers felled on my own land
Worn by weather, salt and sand
A vagabond of faith, I drift

I see my hands, still black with pitch
That clutch this wreck by fingertips
They held her once, and never will again

And now, in this fray
Peace will make its own way
Not for her, and not for me
But for a jealous sky and this damned sea

First Post.

So here's my first post on what will become something between a lyrics pad and just stream of consciousness check-ups with Dr. Me. I considered a tumblr for such a thing, but they get so confusing because they allow a lot of stream, too much. I'm not as saavy as I pretend to be with such things and tumblrs get me all crossed up chronologically. Take the Cardinals', for example. Alas.

Here's something I started tonight. Praise Jeebus for editions.

~

May need a little strum to breathe
To get sleep, to take it with me
From the other-other room, your sigh
From lungs where the melodies rise

To sing, to bring you your dreams
By train tracks, flowers to the knee

Rail ties lie under memories
Dust in the cuffs, in your jeans
From the running in pockets, a start
From the day with the music apart

To sing, to sing you your dreams
Wisdom, two stitches on seams

For modesty as Maginot lines
Dear prudence there, keeping time
From us the lonewolf blitzers
From lust the Pyrrhic victor

To sing, to sing you your dreams
Pride, artillery and me

~