Wednesday, May 25, 2011

"Meet Me in T-Town Tonight"

I spent my whole life hoping and praying with everything I had to get out of Alabama. I was born in Birmingham, then lived in Pelham, Jasper, then grew up in Tuscaloosa. I never felt like I belonged, and like many people who don't belong I left as soon as I could and vowed to never come back. Obviously, that was another plan that hasn't come to fruition.
In Boulder I met a golden-haired boy and unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately...someday...)fell in love. He was a friend of mine, and then he wasn't. Mistakes were made on both sides, but the point is two people lost a friend.

On April 27 a tornado destroyed my home town. A few weeks later, I came back for the summer.


silky rays of light find their way to land
and soon rest upon the ruins of man
trails of glass, boarded windows, rust and sand
are all that's left of the place where I made my stand

Your memory comes to me on an evening wind
and I dream of holding you in my arms again
as I walk these paths of innocence and sin
I unbutton my shirt and let it break my skin

chorus: is this goodbye my darling I don't know
but the love we gave still gives me life
if there's anything left to say before I let you go
meet me in T Town tonight

dark clouds rose and fell to the earth
and left their mark on the street of my birth
lights of small towns that i once cursed
flicker off and on a thousand miles from where we were

lonely nights give way to a summer's dawn
I rise witout a sound and then press on
well they tell me you can't save what don't belong
that's what's done is done and what's gone is gone

chorus

twisted metal and crosses cover the horizon line
as I think and dream of your strong blue eyes
I whisper my prayer to the unrelenting skies,
taste your name and into the cool muddy river I dive.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

another song about the same person

"Firefly"

Well I'm riding south with these walkin blues
that I used to know before I fell for you
and I pray that they carry me somewhere soon
cause one cloudy night in our mountain town
you looked in my eyes and ran from what you found
I guess it's best that I stoped coming around

chorus: cause you see yourself in everybody
and I don't see me in anybody
I guess it's just me and the moon tonight
i guess it's just me and the fireflies
dancin a dance taht I learned a long time ago
and even tho i want you so badly
I know I got to let you go
I'm just a firefly dancin on his own

Maybe we ran outta time or got caught up
in everything that was never enough
you learn a lot about people when times get rough
so take your secrets and toss them aside
I have no use for what you'd rather hide
you have my love but my soul is still mine

chorus

like a river without any name
or a broken heart with no one to blame
I'm standing here waitin for the rain
and ocne I thought I was nothing without you
but i can make it without you
though it hurts so much without you

chorus

It's just a stormy night and I'm gonna face it alone
I'm just a firefly and i gotta find my home

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I added to an earlier poem

still about the same person.

Speak to me
I see
i see the grass and the herb
I see the ink and sun on the page
I feel the black naked trees sleeping
I hear the creek laughing below me and my friends
I hear you singing thru the white walls covered in obscenities
I hear my nails scratching at your door
I feel the bars of iron growing cold
I saw a stray cat and I thought of me
I saw the ring around the moon and I thought of my longing for you
I see the rocks where we stood open in just our skin
I felt chest pains and hunger pangs and I wanted to climb up your hair
I saw me break before you
I heard you whisper
I heard you suffer
I heard your footsteps drifting up the stairs the night you walked away
I felt the dry skin of your open palm
and the chambers and the bones in your chest
I saw you sititng breathing still with your back straight against the frigid bark
I fel thte wet earth under me when I fell and bruised my legs and arms
I saw you staring into me
I saw the hair on your shoulders
I heard the tears in your throat
you never heard me pray
but I prayed for your touch and I'm still waiting

I've watched you dissapear
I've watched you undrape
I've bowed my head and I've cursed your name
I've staye dup all night listening to Janis and wailing 'you don't know, no you don't know what it's like to love anybody the way I love you babe'
I was cruel to you because you made me feel like being cruel to you then I begged to come inside
I told you a lie
you didn't tell me everything you knew

I embraced the pounding of the desolate sea where martyrs are drowned until I needed a home
I sat at your feet but you still felt alone
I've watche dyou walk down the same streets I did and the same streets I didn't
I saw arms of light through the fiery trees before the smoke and the air took them away
I tried to leave you and I saw the cracks in the sidewalk and the faces in the cars
and the weeds and the wood and the dust on the street signs
I spat and lit another cigarette and ran
til I purged by a white picket fence
I kicked at the broken glass
when I came back you were gone
it was dawn
you were tired, I was burning
I was burning
I was burning

but I know I was dancing in that small cafe
and your shirt was open as the band played a rhythm I'd never known before
were we drowning, I don't know
sometimes I was flying
sometimes I wonder if you can feel me trying

I felt the bricks of the columns
I felt the heat and the winds from last summer's storm
I felt the thorns and saw the blood of 98 wounds running from our veins
I felt a goodbye that never really came
I felt the night and I watned to share it with you but only if you wanted to
I wanna hold you if you want me to, only if you want me to
please say you want me to
I'd do anything, but I don't wanna do just anything
Why do I follow you?

II
Why did I follow you west in a machine filled with six unfinished souls
where I got sick in the snow of carson city and you couldn’t even hold me up much less let me lie down next to you
where you roamed while I trembled under sweat stained once white cotton sheets in a overcast afternoon cheap hotel room
why did I follow you
all the way to a bus station in Reno where you and all the rest left me with 40 bucks and a thousand tears and went on to your own california I would never see
as i was kicked onto the street jilted and at the point of dehumanization
sneeking into the Sands with strangers then standing at the window staring at the Circus Circus, this time the lights of the city did nothing for me and will never do anything for you
One night on the cold carpet and then a bus alone alone alone back to Boulder where I met you
and in Boulder I was angry
and in Boulder I was unbearably unstable and internally paralyzed
in Boulder my insides shattered and the glass I hurled shattered and my spirit shattered and tenderness for you shattered
so in Boulder I wept
and in Boulder I forced my hand in the fire
and in Boulder I crossed sentences with flesh and shadows of revelations never found
in Boulder where you once saw me cry in a summer soft lamplight hallway of death and brilliant life and goodbye
in Boulder where you once placed your hand on my stomach and told me to breathe when suffocation or hyperventilation seemed to make so much more sense
in Boulder you held me to the sun after a night of stolen whiskey and a seed that made me see fireflies that illuminated the path to you and your silence
in Boulder you pressed my tangled head to your chest and i could exist with you and feel with you the heart in me that in the end only scared you and scarred you and left me sighing into my bended bare knees in my lonely hangover sunrise bathtub
in Boulder you mourned your disposition and neurosis and loss of the want of love while my insides twisted with emptiness and begged for warm milk and a one night surrender
in Boulder I held your hand to no avail
in Boulder I swallowed more visions than you could take
in Boulder and everywhere else I recalled when you were angelic and didn’t mind if I got weary or shakey sometimes
in Boulder oh God I fell for you and yearned for your German torso and shy young hips and your cerulian patient eyes that had seen the cruelty of New York and the openness of me standing naked in the middle of so-and-so’s apartment amongst bootlegged jugs of Carlo Rosi and smoke where I performed a drama that continues to this day
but all I really want is for us to finally have eachother completely
finally earthly beings completely in a field of lightning and rain
in Boulder I ached for the light of your bed while I bled behind dumpsters and woke to find streaks of red across the heart of Dawn that never promised anything but another prophecy of Day
in Boulder I gave you a daisy
in Boulder your smell made me so painfully human
in Boulder I showed you my soul
and in Boulder I wanted you to tear my skin to pieces so I could weep your dreams and see us rise over cities of stone and ruin and dance like madness and make love like madness and fall asleep in eternity by the river where we died
and where I will die once again

Friday, May 13, 2011

Another song about the one who ripped my heart through my ass

"Life Itself"


We met on a ragged trail
of death and brilliant life
under the green groves of summer
you held me to your side
I thought I knew my story
but it carelessly re-wrote itself
darling you were just somebody close
and then you were life itself

you were life itself, you held me with your eyes
and life itself, rushing like the winds
that left me here with wounded arms
so wearily open to the void
that’s been breaking my heart

You had your storybook secrets
and then you had mine
all the lives that I once guarded
soon slipped away in time
I ran through fields of fire
despite my condition and health
with a promise of rain, a promise of virtue
and a promise of life itself

of life itself, cool water to my lips
and life itself, breaking who I used to be
carrying me from the other side of day
but there’s no promise just a phantom
in the home where you can’t stay

I wasn’t one for devotion
i hung my head and made that vow
deep in that canyon of cold harsh stone
but your spirit made it through somehow
tell me can i make it without you
without losing a part of myself
never thought I’d be a stranger to my heart
just searching for life itself

when you were life itself, rushing over me
and life itself, I gave you all of me
so willingly i surrendered my soul
God have mercy on the man
who doubts the only truth he holds

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Been a while

Got kinda crazy in Boulder...got some outstanding memories and some blurry memories from my first year of college now...Anyway I'm back in Alabama and all that's come to a screetching hault until I go back.

I fell in love with someone at Naropa who broke my heart (not going to go into details right now). Hardly a new experience for me, but it still hurts like hell.

I know you don't know what to say
I guess my love just took your certainty away
and left you scared
and left us alone
why couldn't you just wrap your arms around me
and I would've walked you home

Like a sparrow or a hoodlum's son
I'll keep singing long after your gone
this song of you
that left me bare-bones
oh you could've just wrapped yourself around me
and I would've walked you home

Tell me, do you think the angels laughed
on that night you turned down everything I had
oh but hearts beat on
even when they're cold
don't it hurt so much when all the while we know
I could've walked you home
I was ready to walk you home

I wonder if you realize someday
that someone is gonna take your place
someone strong enough
to just let go
and lie next to me under the tall pines
in the place we call our home