February 2016 Archives

Heaving myself to the top of the hill
I already know what I’ll see
Beautify, simplify, tell the truth or deny
Nobody leaves this world free.

Look all around me, the clouds that surround me
No one can doubt that God’s demons have found me
Swallow me up in their stomach so blue
Death waits for me as it’s waiting for you.

Hand me that anise now, hand me that tonka bean
Hand me that red root that’s wrapped in a golden string
Hand me that iron kettle, hand me that copper stir
Hand me the fish that we smoked with the balsam fir…

Why? Why?
God I Trusted You
Can you deny that
You left me here, here all alone?
Add a crumble of myrrh and a chip of the ankle bone.

Bitterly I cry
My dreams were buried alive.

Sleep under stars as confining as iron bars
Nobody knows what I see
So many people beneath the same steeple
Not one of us ever breaks free.

Cry cry
All you babies
I can only despise the way
You beg down on your knees
A big smile on your face- won’t you help me, sir, pretty please?

Hand me that bitterness
Hand that thickened blood
Hand me that finger that washed away in the flood
Hand me that acid bile
Hand me that molded cheese
Hand the sperm of the man with the skin disease.

My belt I untie
My dreams were buried alive.

Walk down the hill with a weight off my shoulders
Giving high fives to the trees and the boulders
Soon I will reach the road, soon we will meet again
Carry your satchel and smile like a long lost friend.

Hi Hi
Friend, it’s been so long
Glad to see you again
Look- a beetle crawls there on your shoe
Let me kneel on the earth; let me crush it for you.

Dust on your shoelaces
Dust on your fingerprints
Sprinkle some more on your pocket that’s filled with mints
Sprinkle some more on your hood and your hairy do
Stare in your eyes as the stars come alive in you…

Open your mouth wide
My dreams were buried alive.

Download MP3: Crumbles of Myrrh

I met her on a Thursday when the clouds were so high,
and the mountains reached up like a perch for the sky.
She wore feathers the color of air;
I was crusted in callouses left by despair.

Though she chirruped soft sounds I could not understand,
she smelled blue as the wind and I was just a man;
so I offered her my finger as a wrinkly perch
and I carried her like sweet bride right to my church.

I felt joy descend on my cheek like a wing…
All my life I’d been searching for a woman with the blue eyes of spring!

You know, most women are so heavy always clumping their brooms
as they glare from the side of an eye filled with gloom.
I don’t like them, I don’t need them, I don’t want to say why;
but I did love this sweet bird that fell like an egg from the sky.

But gossip grew after only one week
when the maid saw me lower my lips to her beak.
I won’t deny that my mind was impure;
I fingered her soft head and I would have done more.

But I can’t have my life ending in ignominy
Though I’m old I have gold and I’ve earned every penny.
In a perfect world, she’d be my bride and help me to spend it;
instead I carried my bird inside where I knew I must end it.

Standing in the shadow of a chandelier I told her
that I would not be the man to hold her.

She looked at me through lacy eyes marbled with pain
then she flew away, my little bird, I stood there and leaned on my cane.

And it’s true that it haunts me that look on her face;
shadows flow through my heart- yes, I made a mistake.
But I’m a man, just a man- what else more can I be?
I can’t butcher myself in the press so a bird can be free!

Fly away birds, fly away; you know the spring is long gone…
there’s no seeds for you here on my manicured lawn.

Let me rest in my evening chair in the sun’s pinky glow.
Life ends in regret, that’s our world, and its always been so.

Download MP3: Man & Bird