Silence

These are commonplaces:
No one knows freedom as one in prison
What's most important to the dead
      is that they're dead
There is no love without loss
There is no life without love
So what can I tell you?
Where can the gypsies go?
How free are the guards?

Satori

Hey Dad
I know a lot more now, I think
But it might be too late
I love you more though

Unknown Soldiers

More than this we need not know:
He was too young, no more than a boy, hardly
He was brave and mistaken in defense of an estate
On which his own purchase was too recent
To permit him true realization of its value
Someone somewhere missed him greatly, or would have someday
Left to his own devices he might have found a better way of dying, and
The world was no better for his parting
He has his counterpart on the other side
More than this we need not know
And never have I been to war, and never will I go

1968

                                In 1968, I was just ten years old
                                The world was all ours, or so we’d been told
                                We could have whatever we wanted, it was all ours to hold
                                For fortune favors the free and the bold

                                Yippie-i-io, yippie -i-o-ki-yay
                                I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A
                               Had a flag on my wall, it was red, white, and blue
                               Someone stole it from me, and they sold it to you

                              And all of that time, we were embarked upon war
                              Knew where it was, never knew what it was for
                              My friend’s brother came home, I saw them at the store
                              He said to me, Little buddy, I don’t want to go back there no more





Dad was out back, out there by the fence

I told him they’d killed  him, just like the president
The gunman got away, no one knows where he went
Our neighbor said maybe now those goddamn
            niggers will finally see sense 

The senator had to tell them that their prince

        was dead

It wasn't so much what, as how gently 

        it was said 

He consoled them in the dark with tragic

       words that he'd read

Two months later he took a bullet in his 

       own head

                                                             Yippie-i-o, yippie i-o-ki-yay

I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A

Had a flag on my wall, it was red white and blue

Someone stole it from me and they sold it to you

And he rode in his casket behind the two mules
He’d worked this old earth with just the simplest of tools
Plain words shone in his mouth like the most precious 
            of jewels
Who’d want to make any harder what is already so cruel?

And they carried the senator down on a funeral train
The people waited by the tracks in the sun and the rain
My map of the country was all bloodied and stained
Hello tomorrow, sorrow and pain

Yippie-i-io, yippie -i-o-ki-yay
I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A
Had a flag on my wall, it was red, white, and blue
Someone stole it from me, and they sold it to you
 













Then the sufferers set the ghettos 
        on fire                      
They made of their own homes
        a great funeral pyre
Too many broken promises, 
        thwarted desires
Make hopes and dreams the confidence
        schemes of liars                                               

 

And the whole world was watching those kids in the streets
Of the city with the big shoulders, where the democrats meet
I knew they were righteous if doomed to defeat
And I’ve nevermore trusted the cop on the beat

The swiftest stood with their fists in the air
Their heads were bowed, their feet were bare
In supplication and defiance for the sufferers not there
So the owners stole their gold and silver away from that pair

Yippie-i-io, yippie -i-o-ki-yay
I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A
Had a flag on my wall, it was red, white, and blue
Someone stole it from me, and they sold it to you

Well may you ask me how someone so young
Saw fit to pass judgment on things so long since begun
The fighter spoke like a child, but I saw his purpose was 
                strong
He said I was never called “nigger” by them Viet Cong

The gypsy stepped out and set fire to that song
He said  he thought it was groovy, others said it was 
                wrong
But the flag ain’t the property of the rich and the strong
We’re all native sons, we all belong

Yippie-i-io, yippie -i-o-ki-yay
I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A
Had a flag on my wall, it was red, white, and blue
Someone stole it from me, and they sold it to you

Well, I lack ambition and I cannot keep score

Ever since then I sometimes wonder what all this freedom is for

And I remember what that boy told me was the truth of his war

"Once you fuck up that bad kid, you don't have to live up

                 to nothin' no more

Once you fuck up that bad, kid, you don't have to live up

                to nothin' no more" 
 

Yippie-i-io, yippie -i-o-ki-yay
I am a proud child of the brave U.S. of A
Had a flag on my wall, it was red, white, and blue
Someone stole it from me, and they sold it to you

Rimbaud's Mirror

"He is love, the perfect measure reinvented, logic marvelous and unthinkable, an eternity: an instrument loved for its deadly qualities . . . . His body! The redemption dreamed of, the shattering of grace joined with new violence . . . . His day! The abolition of all noisy and restless suffering in music that is more intense."
                         -- Rimbaud,  Illuminations












Some men use their whole life searching
Others spend their days throwing it all away
What is a man on the road but time?
In the glass I see someone not there
As wood might a guitar, or ashes the fire
Does a sound feel for that which made it, and what?
Do I not love my god, and you yours?
Should we, each of us?
I look for another, the other
Whose face is the same as mine
Had it experience beyond the separation, both of them
If love is a joining, and death is (a)part
What then is birth?
A guess, approximation, a song
The best we can do, like god
Do roses miss the earth?
No, because they are still bound
Greater consciousness means lesser beauty
A cheetah slowed is still as swift
Because his speed is grace
A panther is the kill
So the household cats practice
And contemplate alternative notions of progress
In their dreams there are no lions
My litheness is half, my burden double
First the wasting, then the gain
I sold you contradiction, a two-faced god
What I most feared, the coin of the realm
What goes between: To know that you cannot find it
This side of the grave, and that from the other
You cannot speak it
If I should find him what then would you think of me?
When never have I seen the like rings from all your mouths
Yet I know I am two
I took the clocks off the walls and covered the sun
With tinfoil and every kind of glitter
Brought redemption in inarticulate moans of the heart
        and hosannas of the flesh
Though still we wait for miracles
A dead man owes no debts
A living one no favors
And is entitled to your consideration
How should I be lonely among so many ghosts?
What harvest laments its field?
In the western lands the sun never sets
There they never rest, and long for Africa
Where night is more inhabited
I'm afraid I'll go out like a light, just like I came on
Know what I mean, honey?
Each light comes only for extinction
Never bright enough, it gives others that for which it shines in vain
And is first to the darkness which it knows best
Poets end badly because that is how they begin
As do all who go in search of themselves

Or else why go


"He was like a mirror.  Whatever you were
looking for, you were going to find in him.
It was not in him to lie or say anything
malicious. He had all of the intricacy
of the very simple."
     --Marion Keisker (Sam Phillips'
                secretary at Sun Records)