(over the course of several years and a couple continents)

How many years did you spend in that room?
Spinning records, writing letters.
You know I fear the day I lose my voice, but
You don’t have that choice.

I’m looking at the cut and paste
Patchwork body art
That are your scarred arms.
Your skin is clay, and soft to carve.
And soft to carve.

You’re living years in the tornado room
The doctor’s coming soon
With charts and codes and books and bones
He’ll write you right out of ruin.

Guard your insanity at fifteen
In your room; the door off its hinges.
In yellows and greens I scribble and smear
And dream of illnesses.

‘cause I can tell by the lines in your cheek
You’re tattered, you’re just like me.
I know it still, you’ve been locked up for weeks
You’re marked, in sane, you’re free.

Guard your insanity
All the world would steal your humanity
Given one shot
Make meals of your nails and know that normalcy’s a lie
The art of being what you’re not.

July 2005 – Berkeley

All these months I’ve been buried in books
And I barely managed to steal a look at you
But I know you feel the same.

Evening trappings of the trite
Another social gathering
Seemingly light
But it’s not quite

If I could I would believe
In simple dreams and simple speak
I know…
Every year my love grows deep and so does my hate
I’m losing my restraint.

Ties and cocktails, legal briefs
And brief conversations
To not detract from exams
And I do not understand.

I’ll escape the affair for a seat by the fountain
I am an aging ancient man
And it’s so long since I laughed.

But I’ve heard tell you’ve lived harder things
Like death and depth and meaning
We need to connect
While we’ve still a few years left.

In these times we must believe
In simple dreams and simple speak
I know…
I see your anger, undeserved
And you need to talk, but cannot speak a word.

So when I ask you how you are
Please do not
Don’t tell me that you’re fine.
I want to hear more.

All these months I’ve been buried in books
And I barely managed to steal a look at you
But I know you feel the same.

Gaz-guzzlin’
On the shining path to the AMC
These Reston friends are the bestest, yet at best they’re temporary.
You know this sing-along song, it’s a classic, that same old stupid tune
The front porch rock inheritance of an American June.

Leave it on the tip of an American June.

The USA is a tarmac, arrivals and departures in a sea of concrete
Even when I watch my life go by from the window of an old SUV
Even when you’re not ready to take the time for the love that I give you for free
‘Cause even if I just use you
I’ll still have
Me.
And that’s the American dream….

Happy meals we call them
We Stop n’ Shop in just every place
With the Meals-on-Wheels so hidden; wrap our lives in cellophane
Some of us will get ahead, and some will clean up after those who do.
But as long as the Red Sox are playin’
There’ll be no revolution anytime soon.

Leave it on the tip of an American June.
All these things they take up both the far and the soon.

Even when you’re not ready to take the time for the love that I give you for free,
Even when I ask you to marry and a career is your primary need,
Even when I’m old and careful scaring kids off my private property
‘Cause even if I just use you
I’ll still have
Me.
And that’s the American dream.

Give me something to fight for; something to fight for besides me.