Elegy

Is Harry Dean Stanton dead?
I don't know, I can't remember
Anyway, that's what I heard someone said
He got shot by a man with a grudge in a motel
In a warm, dry climate sometime 
            around Christmas
Or maybe it was in late September


Where is Robert Johnson's grave
And how come he ain't buried there?
When you think of all the lives he's saved
Couldn't someone have took a little more care?
Jealous lovers get to pick their poison
Hellhounds never lose a trail
Life ain't fair, and the devil plays a bone fiddle
Sometimes dyin' must feel like bustin' out of jail


David Thompson never said goodbye
Don't you wonder where he went?
The only man who could ever truly fly
The money gone, the talent spent
You pay a price to go so high
One day he just kept on going, all the way up, into the sky


I got a letter this morning
What do you think it said?
I got an e-mail this morning
How do you think it read?
It said, Better hurry, hurry
One you love is dead


There was this man I used to see
He begged coins and dollars outside the little grocery store
It was hard to really tell but he looked pretty old to me
He was weatherbeaten and a long time ago he'd stopped keeping score
Even so if you looked at him strange or didn't speak to him right
He'd want to know why you went and did that for
Sometimes he was drunk, sometimes he was crazy
I never see him anymore
And his people out there called him the Spanish nigger
Go figure


Are there ditches where you are, Billy Martin?
Do you still need a run, more middle relief
Someone to drive 
And a safe place to drink?
They all said you were a miserable son-of-a-bitch
I never did care what they think

Old Pine Box (Sorrow Song)

When I'm gone, don't you cry
Please remember me with a smile
When I'm gone, don't you ask why
I just needed to rest a while
And this old pine box
Feels just like home to me


If you saw death coming 
        down the road
Arrayed so fine
If you saw death coming
         down the road
Why then you'd have to be blind
Not to know why this old pine box
Feels just like home to me

There's a magpie on the gallows
And an emptiness on the line
She's going to get to heaven before us
Without even hardly trying
I wonder if they lay her down in the ground
In a box made out of pine

For all the poetry of the placenames on this land
There's no place left for me here where I can stand
These words you wrote I once believed
Now I think they're just practiced to deceive
And I don't know anymore what it means to be free
This old pine box feels just like home to be

If just once you saw those plastic bags at night
Blowing through the trees like haints
You'd know why it feels all right
To lie here with all the dead and the saints
Seeing things with second sight
This old pine box feels just like home to me

Yes, the ice on the trees can leave you to shiver
But the stars in the sky can make a soul quiver
If you came out here just once
Then you would see
Why this old pine box 
Feels just like home to me

Each night at twelve, Jesus 
            comes walking
Then all these last souls to him 
            come flocking
And he forgives them for dying
Three by three
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me






It's been so long now I just can't remember
What year it was death stole my child from me
And whether it was the Spanish influenza
Or just that old TB
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

Build a cross out of sticks, plant it in the ground
Come raise it again when the cold wind blows it down
Write her name on the marker
Or carve it on a tree
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

And the people are kindly
Kindlier than you thought they'd be
Some of them leave red roses
And some of them leave tea
Some of them leave tears
And some of them leave whiskey
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

For you don't have to walk in 
            this lonesome graveyard
For to hear this singing
Don't have to go to church
To hear them bells a -ringin'
Don't have to ask for whom 
            they're tolling
They toll for we
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

I don't need no more of hope
I don't need no more of glory
The nightbirds serenade me
And the wildflowers they adorn me
And there's nothing so very special
About any of this history
That's why this old pine box
Feels just like home to me 




 

A Rose in Winter

I've been looking around for grace
But all that's coming down is rain
For a minute I thought I found it
      in your face
Guess I better start again, again
Getting real tired of this chase
Just can't settle for something plain
Running around from place to place
Like a rider on a downbound train
I've always been searching above
Then it hits me from below
Always wanted something holy to love
But the body is all that we know


Sometimes I feel just like a rose in winter
Holding back the snow

 Come real close, not too near
Yeah, I want you, but I can't stay here
Time out of season, I'm the last one around
When it gets too cold, I'll go down in the ground

I'm not saying you're a saint
I've still never found one of those
It could be you're an angel
That's something only you and God would know
To me you're like the sunlight
That holds the bloom in the rose
The radiance in the garden
That holds off the wind when it blows
Cause always the seasons will change
And always the ages will roll
And always that time will come
When you have to go
Sometimes I feel just like a rose in winter
Holding back the snow


Come real close, not too near
Yeah, I want you, but I can't stay here
Time out of season, I'm the last one around
When it gets too cold, I'll go down in the ground


So what is the essence of a rose
The flower or the thorn?
What is the essence of living
The dying or the being born?
My petals might be fading
And my coat it might be torn
That doesn't mean I won't make it
To see another new morn
So you get a little older
Time to help the younger ones grow
Teach them not to be so afraid
Of the scars where they show
Sometimes I feel just like a rose in winter
Holding back the snow


Come real close, not too near
Yeah, I want you, but I can't stay here
Time out of season, I'm the last one around
When it gets too cold, I'll go down in the ground

Relativity

Humanity's greatness is measured
By the extent of its capacity for evil
No shoah diminishes a third
The thickness of the smoke makes the cry of the horns
That much more extraordinary, as the numbers of the dead
Attest to the significance of a single word
Basin Street speaks as surely to the honor of the middle passage
As do all the unmarked graves and forgotten names
Would you not speak for me if you could?
Between famine and poetry there is so much, a world, the world
Made with so much space in which to place your belief
Wherein acts of kindness between strangers go uncharted
Yet are not lesser than that which is remembered
If god dies each time we do, how much greater is your faith
That which dies so often must be immortal; for each fire, there must be a song
I've heard the hymns of poor people, and they are beautiful
You've seen murals painted on walls, and forgiveness in the eyes of the wronged
      We are forgiven each day, this is salvation
      A tale is told of a condemned man who spent every one
      Of his last days chipping his name into stone
      With a spoon; such is our time on this earth
      Would you have stand for you that inscription
      Or the prison; I tell you that man was saved
      Brighter shine the sufferers than each honorable man in the street
A word, music, laughter, the touch of love -- you have this yet desire more?
Leave greatness for the ambitious; no bird apprehends the sky
You may have what you need; all else is theft
To a beggar, give money, not advice
To the tired, a bed
To the sad, a smile
To the lonesome, a friend
To Hamlet, sympathy
To the sleepless, a blanket
To children, devotion
Would you ask for more: You are more deserving than the others
Do only that workd for which you would ask no recompense
Anything to which a price is attached is defiled
Defend your own, and leave others to do the same
Without giving cause; each is permitted to dream in their own way
You are entitled to your share
You can save no one else, but give help when asked
As you will be; no one escapes
Believe in spite of, not because
All the evidence to the contrary
And you will not miss this chance to be distinguished
Any more than daylight can be extinguished
By the coming of night, which reigns only in opposition
Each man's death becomes his station
There is no safer place for captains and kings
Ten thousand were drowned that never were born;
A peasant wrote that
Music is the sounds between the silence, and
You can play it on your porch, sitting down
That which is greatest is not inevitable

Puzzlement

The little marshes of desolation make one wonder           
How did a soccer ball get so far downstream
In water not even deep enough to float a dream?
And what does the green ribbon mean?