Mother's Little Helper

As I get older

I don't look like anyone

But for my mother.

Kind of Blue

What kind of blue are you
a cerulean, a turquoise, a cobalt
of a Grecian sea or Venetian sky
I don't understand the feeling "I'm blue"
because blue is beautiful

Listen

Listen

Listen to the walls around us

Raindrops and voices

From between the cracks

Look

Look to the skies that drown us

The devil and God

Two sides of us

Think

Think about the songs that reveal us

Films and Sundays

Spent w/ you

All I need from you is a little more fortitude

All I need from you is a little less change

Maybe that's something you could arrange

The Sound of Walls

Half Hour, Maybe More

Do you know where she goes

when she kisses you on the cheek

Does she walk out the door

saying she'll be back

Do you know who she knows

passin' love notes under the table

Maybe under a door

You'll wait for a knock

Half hour maybe more goes by

You'll save her, then you'll cry

You'll save her, then you'll cry

Do you know where she goes

when she has nothin' to lose

thru an empty door

maybe she'll come back

She's not w/ you

She's not w/ me

She's not w/ him

She's not w/ her

She's not w/ them

She's not w/ us

She's not w/ you

The Sound of Walls

Cemetery

What one needs at a cemetery:

1. creepiness
2. quiet paranoia
3. headstones w/ psalms etched on crosses
4. epithets which may not have been entirely true
5. gravediggers' shovels
6. religious monuments
7. solid terra firma
8. hallelujahs and amens sung from neighboring church bells
9. a potpourri of pine needles, leaves and debris underfoot
10. a Bresson black 'n' white moon
11. rusty crosses and dates w/ no names

I went into a cemetery, darkly dark and alive, w/ spirits of people I've known and blowing reeds. I was really wanting to find my mother among magnolias & dogwoods. I passed a boy holding flowers. I noted my apology as something old and new. I think it was my brother, a younger version of the man he was, serious and stalwart at times but a charming mischievous cad at others. I was walking faster than him, but it was nice to see he was taking her flowers. In the end I found my mother.

I found my mother
On the day she gave me life
I lost her later.

For Kathryn
9.9.44 - 8.13.93

Hopeless Cause

I'm making excuses
I'm breaking all the rules
But you've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

I have no explanations
I know no reasons why
But you've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

You may think I never listen
But I listen I don't learn
Maybe tomorrow I'll try harder
Maybe a new leaf will turn

1000 times I've said I'm sorry
And I'll say it a million more
You've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

The Sound of Walls

Dionysus

Under a warm progress of the sun, I went to Paris in search of the Lizard King, of Dionysus, of Mr. Mojo Risin', of James D. Morrison, of the man w/ the sultry stash of sex appeal. I wish I could say that me and my mojo were busking in a Parisian tunnel, but no. Well, truthfully it was dank and dim and smelled of drunks who peed against the slippery walls, when they should've been petitioning in a catacomb for a porcelain God or should've been with their drunken heads in the curves of robust brothel queens.

I almost got pick-pocketed in the Metro, some dude was pushing into me trying to get thru a turnstile and was trying to get in my coat pocket. I turned and pushed him and called him an asshole in French; I probably called him a sweet cabbage instead. And I almost got kicked out of Pere Lachaise cemetery, I was leaning on Jim Morrison's sepia-toned grave. Pardon moi. He wasn't there anyway, because I saw him in a moonlit window, running his hands thru his charismatic mane of hair, prodigiously naked, reading Baudelaire or Rimbaud. He was in a dark jubilee, lamenting baritone, riding storms, hauntingly a statue of Michelangelo's, a garden feature in a Parisian bath-tub. I left an epigram at the door for him, under a mat, next to a peace frog that said, "I'm afraid, at this time, on this vespertine eve, I have to cancel my subscription."