My Shadow

 As I was out and about with the mail today I wondered what it would sound like if country musicians wrote horror stories.  This was what I came up with:

In my head it sounds like a Willie Nelson song…

At the Airport with No Shoes (a dream)

I’m scrounging for change, picking up quarters in the parking lot of an abandoned video store in this town where the air smells like a smoldering cigar. 

I’m at the airport with no shoes. 

I’m attending a birthday party for dreadlocked children I don’t know. I’m greeted by a woman I never knew. 

You spray me in the face with a can of mace after I apologize. You embrace me and kiss me on the lips, but I know that this, even this, is another of your lies. 

I’m making mistakes- simple mistakes- so I’m retracing my steps to correct what I’ve done. 

I’m at the airport with no shoes. 

Screaming into the Void

 It’s that time again - it’s time to scream into the void. It won’t respond. It won’t change. The void doesn’t care. The void will not be held accountable. But we are compelled to scream because the void is there.  

Too Late

 In those later hours

cloudy with no rain

listen for your missing voice

are you still the same?

Disappearance on the bridge that morning 

Cross the water, it’s too late. 

Trust the vision and the dream

go on down the hill

if I do not see you there

just keep waiting until

electric voices in the air

call to say that it’s too late.

Our Prayers

I wrote the words for this song back in 2015 for a book project that didn’t ultimately come together. I have revisited them again over the last several years. They can also be sung to the hymn tune - St. Columba

Our prayers are rising smoke and dust

Our prayers are ash and cinder

But still we pray 

For mercy more

As we to love surrender.

Our prayers are silenced by the wind 

Our prayers by floods are swallowed 

And still we pray 

For mercy more 

To rise up and to follow.

Our prayers lay bleeding in the street 

Our prayers die without a trace 

Lord, still we pray 

For mercy more 

To extend your hand of grace  

A Strange Neighborhood, This

 When the waking world makes no sense try thinking about it as if it were a dream …

I think I went wrong somewhere- in both time and space. This is the wrong hour. This is the wrong place. A strange neighborhood, this, though I’m sure I’ve been here before. The porches are frozen and the doorbells have been ripped out with all the wires left dangling. 

There was a cat here once, I think. Maybe. A pale and faded fellow, a friendly follower. There are other cats here now - frightened feral things that scamper away as I approach. Unapproachable. Unlovable. 

Cats are everywhere, of course, hiding in our houses and under our cars. Who eats the food left on our porches? Who waits to trip us on the stairs?

There are squirrels leaping from branch to bare branch to yell at me. There are vines without grapes. There are empty milkweed pods and instructions from my supervisor- “make a you-turn at the next intersection.”

The circle has no beginning. The circle has no end. Here I am again and again and again. Make the waking life as irregular as the dream. 

Wake Up Spoiling for a Drunken Fight

 It’s been a while since I did any drawing. I need to do more.