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