Each day could be a whole world It could stay frozen in flow feeding ev’ry other river Keeping me locked up becalming ev’ry quiver Nothing else acknowledged but the skeleton of a thought A pose without clothes An amateur knot It isn’t such a stretch to reach across that divide But when a hungry ghost incarnate pushes hard against the inside it looks like you’re bound it looks like you’re stuck held down by cords that you spun out of bad luck Determined or doomed seem to be mostly equal And an uncertain approach can be delicately lethal So I don’t know who to gather together in my faithless arms with my neglected belief Addicted to my misery A single potent hit Lured in by the song Not knowing when to quit Ev’ry one of these days a chapter in a book with the edges of the pages neatly charred More than sentimental Less than yet alive An interruption born to survive Each day begins inside the next skipping ahead of what’s here breathing into distraction Speaking out of time sanctifying inaction Ev’rything excepted All reason abandoned to want A style without form A cosmological taunt A keening toward the depths An intimation of need The dedication to illusion Killing silences with greed It wouldn’t be so wrong Might hold out some hope If I could just be still and let go of this fraying rope I pushed it to the edge Filled up the field of view Stole all the spaces to think Held on too tightly (to you) So it’s way past dawn but the sun is still climbing swelling into death saturating time To rise above mythology To find a quiet room To inhabit just the now To feel the moment bloom Ev’ry one of those thoughts a leaf pressed between leaves held close by definitions out of date Laid completely open Ready to be still A blank elaboration of will

Standing by the lake of the mystical mind Lapping up the roar of the chemical grind Counting my curses, going to seed Picking up the traces of abandoned need Smoke on the water, dust in the air Coffin on the bed at the top of the stair Sweeping out the sense of a leftover life Dancing directions on the edge of a knife Slaying all the dragons who came to repent Telling all the children God came and went Praising the emptiness, draining the now Splitting the cracks, stealing a bow Breaking the fast of a dreamless night Leaving the earth with a rumbling light Taking the piss, spotting the trace Tamping the sugar in the shape of a face Sitting in the cemetery, watching the trees Waiting to stop, clutching your knees Shoved against the wall by an endothermic rage Reeling from a kiss on the lip of the stage This’ll keep going, this’ll expand This’ll give the lay of a new loamy land Let it keep crying, let it go dark Give it a reason not to miss the mark I can't remember, I never knew Can't ascertain where the monument grew Give it all up, come on down Shove it in the sea where the memories drown Thirty-eight steps to the top of the hill Thirty-eight days in the grip of a chill Add or subtract, take it in stride Tickle the subtext, go for a ride Taking a break, licking your paws Giving up will to natural laws Who to consult, what to entrust How to explain what I currently must Twenty-one times to remember it right Eighty-four halves of a crystalline night Groaning shelves, falling jars Flying roads, tumbling cars Simple rhymes, simple thoughts Towers of rope, blankets of knots All the way out, no way back in The line is dead, the air is thin Meeting on the verge of a moment of peace Gathering growth in a delicate crease Twisting it off, lighting it up Drinking from the bottom of a crumbling cup Violent bells, Mountains in chains, whole civilizations shedding their brains Somebody married the King of the Sea Somebody rang up and paralyzed me I had a wish, I had a dream I emptied it out in a blanket of steam Come to my island, land on my shore Build me a house and kick out the door Pages of love, words of attack Spirits of ash that follow you back Crowds of ascension, rivers of doom Secret transmissions when you enter a room Seasons of atonement, rippled affect Flocks of canaries for you to inspect No more coal, no more train Factory sun, synthesized rain

In the invisible world You are not known and you know nobody Something about you can change But it is not seen and you shiver, unseen Deep in your heart it is cold Where your blood might run it is barely moving All of the world is a hole And you're always falling, barely moving Each of your thoughts is a link in a chain That is tying you down to the rest of your life All of your words have a dull matted edge Pushing dead in slow lumps through the veins of your voice In the invisible world Your love is lost in a mass of curses All of your friends look away In your mind they turn, in the room they're absent Every invisible time When you hear your name, it is only echoes All of the naming is done In a life of breath there is nothing spoken Twist all you want on the axis of when It was all left before what has already been Naught but identity under the bed Nothing lost, nothing loaned, nothing paid up ahead Take an invisible clue When the cord goes slack, it was all a shadow Limit your song to the sand Chew it up, spill it out in a pool of dry air Something is burning and something has burned There's a way that this all makes an ugly sense Bring it up gently with God or your boss Or the man who has murdered your sweet sense of loss In your invisible dreams Take this down while it's still in focus Leave by the back at the end Stranded all alone in heaven.....

Since I was too young to walk for myself I left the business up to someone else who was close to me But here I'm shelving memories, and lo, there comes a car with a man, says the land isn't mine anymore I thwart him with my charging words and he recoils hard In the yard the townspeople are gathering and noise Someone raises energy suggesting toward the grave for the man who will die for the profits he saved They told him not that the Midwest holds an arm with a finger in the charming nose of lots of secret senators The congregation has ordained me as its latest member I am sad, but I see that the corn looks good Don't know why there's no sun in my broken morning coffee cup The Lord is splayed across the states to where I've never been So in time, so in time I'll be flatter than a blank-faced farce The charity I have withdrawn has stunk me like a sore There's ice on your tongue, maybe slip your toes into some salsa Coal is easy found and not that hard to suck it up Think of falling glass from a broken window on the moon with a man tangled up in the boardroom down the hall Don't think twice, have a look; listen for a flower blooming shut I am wise, so I am, kick me through to baggage claim Be a good one and arrest a quota of the finest sky Love is easy to explain, to explain, to explain Since I am too young to talk with authority Since I am too old to have ever been a child Since I am an interstate and oddly short and roundly wide Send the gods to bless me when I'm two years old Painted eyes and reflected in the shingles of a soundless roof Let him in to stay but knock his knees off at the door Styrofoam of ancient times enumerates the missing mind Close the door to keep away the clumsy country heat Crying now, hope is good, left alone to age and spoil Get it while it's going, gotten, more for me and you too Samples of a downer called tomorrow play on HBO Love is easy to explain, burn your brain Godly women of miscounted penalty for tired eyes Relapse into sanctifying everything with school colors Don't think twice, leave it up to me, my little poundcake Yellow air can still the best from overactive blood If I were a train or I was a mudslide on your face I would not feel shame for my ill-begotten line of work For in time, you should know that snow can burn as well as light Light from Chicago, light from Ohio Sentence comes in heavy drops off Empire State refineries Deromanticizing dirt and wearing suede headgear Thrown out floating on the ocean waving to the angelnauts who remind me with a finger pointing at their feet Keeps a-raining all the time, shake me up and go to hell again Carpet suits you nicely like sunglasses on a sheep Haven't thought of a shower in at least a half a day or more Growing season's over now and I can go to sleep Howard is the father's name of someone who was my best friend when I was in second grade and thought I was from outer space Once we buried jewelry in my backyard and we never found it My neighbor's ear rings painfully alive

You can't fake it You can't bake it You can't buy it for a million pounds You can't fall into it Or build up to it Or find it buried in the ground It doesn't grow on you It doesn't suddenly inhere You can't achieve it with any effort of will On an analyst's couch Or in a lover's bed Or in the molecules of an engineered pill You can't give it to Jesus He's not there to receive it even if you could Everybody wants it They ask for it by name They demand it of you for the public good Deep within Under the pain Underneath the childish love and hate That animate your brain All wrapped up In a lifetime of fear The hope and the loss and the cynical thoughts that keep your head clear Something is speaking In an incoherent tongue It's making you old And keeping you young A vision of a dark land An unquenchable lust The hollow lament Of a soul without trust Well I was waiting For a train that never came I was keeping company with my woes I didn't see how You crept up to me I didn't see how you turned to go I thought a long time I stayed up twenty straight nights I looked my pitiful self straight in the face I saw a child I saw a corpse I saw a runner dropping out of the race I stopped trusting my body I left it wasting by the edge of the road Nobody said anything I just went down to the bottom To watch it silently explode High above Way off the earth In between the worlds Where we die and give birth Ripped and torn Over and again Fed to the dogs and stood up on its end Somebody's calling Hoarse with sincerity Splitting the air with a surgical sort of parity An image of a dead man A world built out of rust The fossilized howl of despair Of a soul without trust Nothing much in the way of getting Permanently in your own way Alienate your friends and go down Smoking But you better keep in mind that what you Leave off to the end Is never gonna be as bittersweet As what was actually left unspoken I can't tell you I can't hide it I can't give you any better than a clue I can't spell it out Or push it down I can't promise what I'm not going to do You brought it out in me You challenged it hard You showed me where it failed and where it lacked When I came back with it It didn't look right It was uncool, unkempt, and unpacked You’re chasing after your killer I saw that little cap in your clutch You don’t begrudge me distractions I might get through it or not I might forget how to touch you Far away Long ago I met somebody that I never got to know Giving up Isn't hard Just cut it off quick and photograph the scars Nothing is advertised Nothing is known All that's lost Is left all alone The concrete incantation The magic flaked into dust The unarguable cold logic Of a soul without trust

In the town where I was born there was an ugly man He lived with seven ugly dogs he brought back from Japan The rumors flew for decades that he dined on little kids But nothing of the truth came out until he hit the skids The fortune that had kept him flush and hidden from our view was one day taken from him by a letter from the blue It came from underneath a pile of parcels long forgot that some disgruntled postman had once rudely stashed away to rot Seven ugly men A deathly ugly dog A wad of dirty yen A house up in the fog In the place I used to work there was a broken door It stood between the toilet and the entrance to our floor We never could quite close it so we had to face the fact that a bodily necessity became a social act We called in firms from near and far to try to mend the latch But no amount of effort could ensure a solid catch In summer it might fasten snug and save us from the smell But winter’d come and Heaven knows we’d suffer as in Hell Fantasies of plumbing A door without a lock You hear your neighbor coming You’ve seen her giant sock La, la, la, life is com- pletely fucking fine; I live inside a marzipan skull and drink Chernobyl wine La, la, la, don’t get your bowels in a roar; the slaver has completed his task and he’s heading for the door So about that ugly man You thought that I forgot It turned out that he’d made his fortune sitting on the pot He was indeed a danger to the children of our town But not exactly in the way we’d spread the word around He made them walk his dogs and sneak them into cars where they’d quietly stash little packages of homemade muesli bars The bars contained a tiny core of ir- radiated glue that stuck inside the stomach of who- ever might happen to chew it A twisted wicked plot A secret recipe A man whom love forgot A dog up in a tree La, la, la, life is com- pletely fucking fine; I live inside a blueberry skull and drink Bikini wine La, la, la, don’t let your buttocks get too sore; the master will release you now un- less you beg for more So the door fell off the jamb The man rolled down the hill The children all escaped and told us tales that made us ill The dogs would howl at sunset and chase delivery trucks But after all that drama we could not give zero fucks A news report came in about a postman sent to jail Our company shut down and sent its slaves back in the mail We all turned up our smartphones and we microwaved our brains We put ourselves in storage and we wrapped our town in chains La, la, la, life is com- pletely fucking fine; I’m trapped inside an artichoke skull with putrid maple wine La, la, la, don’t give me trouble anymore; I’ve got to run and find all my dogs and fix this fucking door

In the back of the garden by the edge of the pond where the reeds are rustling with a blanket-shrouded roar like the sound of the crowd on the street down below your balcony He is lying on his side with his ear in the dirt not breathing lest he miss your footfalls And you tiptoe and you stomp and you prowl along the swamp with your eyes wide open in the moonlight And you fear and you seep and you melt in your sleep and your viciousness is tangled in the trees And the man on the bench sitting next to me is shouting in English and he stinks of sweat and he’s shaking me up and straining my grip on the hand of the man with his head by the water Life treads cold like a melancholic god Choking us with words and throttling simplicity I’d give up my ability to speak if I could just work out the things you need to hear from me Lips on shoulder One year older Shoving through the carnival to get back to the sun that’s burning a hole in the middle of his head with vanity And she kept it under wraps and it ran out of air and she peeked back under the lid A dried-up little bug A dessicated toad and a thick grey layer of disease It’s lonely out in space and it’s loud inside your head and it’s heavy when you wrench it shut And the man on the ground lying next to me is snoring in French and he stinks of booze and he’s freaking me out and turning my stomach with the thought that he might be me Life slams in to your window like a brick thrown by a kid from a bridge that goes to nowhere I’d chase him down and make him give it up if it wasn’t too late for it to matter if you care You only woke up when the spring wound down On a plush blue pillow in the middle of a room in the middle of a mansion in the middle of the road where the traffic is a solid heavy core woven out of your memories She has opened every box, you have taken every chance, we have thought of every wrinkle we could stroke And you mince and you sweat and you blush when you forget and you keep a little catalog of hurt It’s a death-defying story of a cripple on a cross who’s per- suaded everybody to freeze And the woman in my head tells the woman in my arms that the woman in my shoes is a fake pathetic joke that a man made up to cover his tracks when he dumped my body in the black and angry ocean Life rolls in like a conqueror in flames radiating pride that will poison every mind I’d take back every- thing I never did, if it might make up a little bit for being so unkind

You told a lie when you told me that you’d never die and now I’m just going to dress up all in black and cry You are gone in the ground, and you smell really bad I’ve got to ask my shrink if I am angry or mad How come it’s always me who’s on the losing end? My dog is dead; he was my only friend. You told a story, it was boring, so I got up and left But all that barking beat this silence where I wander bereft You are gone, said the vet, ‘cause you drank gasoline Didn’t I ever tell you what the word “toxic” means? Oh my dog don’t leave me alone I miss your wag and I miss your bone You always licked my toes and nibbled my ear You taught me how to smoke and bought me beer You are gone; now I’ve gotta wait ‘til I’m twenty-one It was a dog’s life, the dog’s dead, ain’t no fun I’m panting in the sun and I’m up a tree The spirit of my dog has suddenly possessed me! Now all of my fun is over and through I’m lying in the grass and I’m thinking of you I’ll probably build a statue to your memory I’ll tie a yellow ribbon ‘round the base of every tree How come it’s always me who’s on the losing end? My dog is dead; he was my only friend. (oh….)

And she doesn't really know her And she might think that she's in love When she folds her arms around her waist and makes that hungry little sound And she wakes up in the middle of a breath and can't tell if her eyes are open or closed She tests the smoothness and the strength She stretches out and starts to glow And finds her huddled in a corner But that's just the dream that's already done She's still here but she's long gone And she says all she needs to know While he pushes him down in the leaves And lightly lifts him back to level And kisses gently every tiny little hair And counts out heartbeats in reverse He finds him every side in sequence And loses track of who he is He wraps him up inside the rain-spattered morning He reaches up to hold the air They'll wait another stretch of slippery time He'll write him letters from the sea He'll follow nightly the trails that he left He'll figure out what not to say And you can watch them through the window The fabric only blurs their shapes You may ask them what they're so intent on But don't expect to hear it clear The story's poured fr-om a pool of molten glass You can sink right in and be totally unborn They'll hold you tightly down between them Their breath is dirty with a florid haste You can't distinguish who is who and who is you And even two is just a joke Push on the floor turn down the bed Say anything that keeps you warm We are the kind that hold the days down We roll intently in the sun We keep a finger on the overlapping corners We are as many as you like We are in thrall to a many-membered absence that is shattering us exquisitely We gather every little atom to our hearts We press and knead and breathe into the dark We are our own most delicious nightmares We lay our bodies on the ground We are becoming what we could never mean to be We live the flash of smitten candor And so you whisper in the shadows And so you lie along the stream And so with one leg leading on the other You spin the night around your head With thin abandon and a disciplined attraction you cut a thousand pathways back into themselves You ride in silence looking out the window You brush between the sounds between the words You roll the dirt between your fingers and your toes You grab the grass to hold you down You lay the argument in hand-tuned hues You are the you you used to know

little white boy findin his fingers reachin for the hem of a robe of chains brother robin hood goin to the delta pickin up the chords and the voices and names hey i'm on the road again my daddy done you wrong my friend three black caskets draped in flags a thousand times more but it's all the same i'm mixed up with confusion gonna pay my penance on a six string box choir echoes in my head man gotta get it down the way he talks you could use some tunin up there tighten your words and knit your brow got an amplifier manager if i make money i don't know how got a call last night from nashville time to go down and roll some heads nursin home needs shaking up now get em on their knees and knock em outta bed hey don't say these was your words i coulda starved but you got heard sweet talkin mama in a shotgun sugar shack i'm in the concert seein red ain't no time to be quibblin over the name of an old train bum i got a hundred thousand memories just like yours in a file cabinet man your ride done come now we got the radio, cast iron ballads, blues that'll blow your WINDOWS out i got no time for politics and i got nothin to shout about it's academic interview bullshit nobody hears what you say anymore purple poser pencil monkeys bark on command how come my fans are such a bore? hey i'm bringin down judgment day i got nothin new to say fête me, love me color me darkly put me in a box and drop it on the floor sixty-two years squintin in the moonlight just got ill and blowed them down ninety-nine years double it, triple it forty-one counts run me outta town hey they heard it comin like rain drunk fools don't feel no pain meanwhile sideways shadow on the mountaintop somethin's open'd up and i'm lookin down these shackles are strippin all the old white flesh off my old white bones somebody pulled a switcheroo, musta had bugs in my phones oh god whatever happened to that blind har monica player who blew for dimes he taught me everything he knowed, guess i lost track of times....