Ride a Pony

Here come his old friends
In suits they never wear, with whiskey
    on their breath
Carrying a box of bones
This is death
Take a long look
Take a deep breath
You're still too young
You won't remember this


Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here
You have to rich to ride a pony 'round here

The hidden one says only the broken heart is whole
Yet on the life of the living each death takes its toll
Pay no attention to words of purpose and of a life beyond
Your father was a good, good man, and he had a beautiful soul


Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here

There was a woman at the ford
Washing bloody clothes in the river
Good woman, asked I,
    whose are those
These, my son, as the garments
     you chose
We'll all meet again, we don't have 
     to ask why
So don't you cry, little girl, little girl
     don't you cry




Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
You have to be rich to ride a pony
    'round here
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here

So check it out, God does shoot craps
It turns out he's the dice
You might even catch a glimpse of him in the alley
    over there
But you'd have to look twice
To the five hundredth power
And in an infinite number of places
Cause most of what he makes is all the dark stuff
And empty spaces


Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here
You have to be rich to ride a pony 'round here

So try not to be too very sad
You see the past lights our days
The brilliance of the stars you see
Comes from so very far away
Sometimes you don't even have 
    to move
Just let the rain wear you
    right down
Slowly it washes it all away
And you flow right out into 
    the ground
God don't let even stones vanish
Everything everywhere becomes 
    something else
You can find all the pieces of a soul
In the dust upon your shelf

Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
Maybe you could ride a pony
You have to be rich to ride a pony
    'round here
You have to be rich to ride a pony
    'round here

Brokenheart: For Elisa Izquierdo

You know, there's nothing I can do for you either
And this would be true even if it were not
    already too late
You've already known so much more than I have
Been kissed by a prince, and burned with cigarettes
Adorned with rings, and smashed against
    a cement surface
Taken for the devil, created an angel
Found that simple human kindness is not so
    simple a thing, after all
Broken beyond touch, beyond repair: How dare I tell
    you that this world is better than those things?
What kind of apology could I make?
Such intentions are obscene, less overtly cruel but
   no manifestly kinder: Why draw you any nearer
    now that you are safely gone?
Would I tell you that your mother really loved you,
Or tried to, or might have, had things been different
Had she encountered more luck or kindness along
     her own way?
Oh, but you already know the answer to this: Did you ever call her anything but Mommy, and warm
          to her embrace?
There is terror, but Satan is the belief
But why should I speak?  You are the proof that we are made for better things
Why should there be any more beauty in the world than than what we put in it?
Still, our life is better than its meaning
Rain ain't memory, and it ain't heroin, either; it ain't no one's tears
It don't need to be anything else

Kerouac (Beyond This Old Honesty There Can Be Only Thieves)

Dizzy was the first to understand, he
 named a piece for
That strange handsome drunken
  college kid at the foot
   of the bandstand
   in Minton's
Or was he a sailor some murderous
  accomplice after the fact
   football star smalltown has-been
   Buddhist Catholic
  polymorphous junkie
Who was the first to understand
   I guess he must have thought
That it must take
Une negre blanc (please pardon my joual) or some
      philosopher
 To understand that when the mode of music changes,
    the walls of the city shake
(That's Plato, paraphrased probably, see there's nothing
   new under the sun) there's nothing now under the sun
      there's now nothing under the sun
                                                       DIg that
   To understand that America is but a dream
       Has always been but a dream
So rushing in his sleep to the points of that skewed flawed diamond
At immigrant New England the first conquered capital
        lonesome foghorn city the mount of shame and reckoning
        and all the graveyards eternal Larimer Streets and
        little mother's houses in between
To see them all before he is awakened . . . . by
So often the dreamer mistakes the cause of his disturbance
Awakes and assigns to the first noise heard the reason
For what vanished with the dream
So many sounds thereby unrecognized
What keeps you awake is not always what woke you
When there's no more territory to light out for, then the real
          restlessness begins
And I saw that afternoon on the train (just a paying passenger
          two stops past yours)
That the judgment had come to pass
This is the way we will live now
Arming ourselves against imaginary foes lending to others
          so they may put up a fight, who can dream when
               you got to work
The diamonds were empty the landfills converted to green
          rolling hills the parking garages filled to closing
                    the schools starved and abandoned to immigrants' kids
          invisible airplanes flying where the music used to rise
Above it all satellites in the heavens reading the newspapers
           wherein mothers are condemned as whores for the miracle
                     of their nature wayfarers are hounded from their paths
Wherego the poor in spirit in the global marketplace?
Camps are good but a bomb is quicker
Who could have compassion on it now?

Will you deny your daughter in heaven?

Lessons of the Game

Be quick, but don't hurry, taught the old coach

For when you hurry, you make mistakes

There is always much more time than you think

Which does not mean at the end you won't regret

Most of those seconds you wasted

Arrogance: The Method

Our exercise for group today, announced the
     acting master
Is to portray the henhouse
Upon learning that armageddon is nigh
The orders have been given, the
     overrides countermanded
The missiles are flying
The holocaust is come
So the feathers flew as the actors flurried
     from their roosts
Clucked about excitedly, pecked each
     other to shreds
Hailed Chicken Little as a prophet, and
    wished they'd listened
Only Brando remained motionless, sitting
    stock still,saying nothing
Concentrating on the task of hatching eggs
"What the fuck do chickens know about
    nuclear war?" reasoned he