"What doesn't kill you"

I won’t make a promise I’d be ashamed to keep

but I’ll still try anything twice: because 

when you wish on the stars outside, up there,

they won’t hear you for a million years.

You shake the good man’s dirty hand

because it’s just the right thing to do.

Still, I guess in the end what doesn’t kill you

is usually backed-up by what will.

–So is it a better world we all live in now?

At least nothing’s ”white of” anyone anymore.

–And it was during my birthday party when those

punks kicked the shit outta that Berlin Wall…

But then, out in the township spare pallet piles

are making every backyard bonfire go;

and Merit’s CF-194 pumps some days, 

but some others seems that it don’t…

And now I’m renting a room in my own town

because the empty house needs its time alone.

–And the light at the end is only a bulb,

and life ain’t proof of anything more…

"Grapeshot champagne"

I’m deafened by grapeshot champagne corks,
and tonight’s rented tux just can’t commit;
my martini needs a AA battery and three pennies in
– from before ’oh-two if you can swing it...

I drove over a buried bathtub filled with packed snow –
the landscape’s features just aren’t its own anymore.
Was surprised and, so, froze that-then here-and-now,
but it’s still a sad weird world where a picture isn’t even itself.

I've heard that every bullet feels like a bird
'til it tries to pull up – and despairs, and then wants to hurt.
Science lets us make maple syrup from saplings, though
milking sweetness from babies isn’t something folks much want to do.

We must be more gentle – even language gets broken in half:
convictions’re sometimes the very best or worst thing you can have.
We think waterfalls are beautiful from above and below,
but halfway down are often much less-so.

The lately-regretful brain-in-a-vat dries out on the floor
having reached the Libertarian ideal – tipping over its jar.
Folks are like stock off-feed; but on the other hand, my man, okay – now,
let’s not get perfect – because then there’s no sound.

Bartender, I guess I’ll have another…

"Things, how and when"

Hello, old tree – my truest friend 

of this best hour of the day;

hello, old tree – you might recall me,

and might-not is also okay.

A washboard road can’t get you if you weave;

but the police couldn't care less, emphatically —

the machine of problems and solutions

aches for the nearest soft things.

A bit windward of the label “44”

there’s a smiling man’s face down in the road, low,

greeting folks he can’t much hope to see

–they don’t stop, none do, and why would who?

Things are forgotten, lost, and sworn about;

choking to death on applesauce froth —

the scariest things aren’t at all to other things,

but are anyways still scary enough.

Everyone in the world stomps hard at once

and the world breaks apart in-place —

the test scores don’t matter any more and

everything’s just worth as long as it takes.

"Cooking for murderers"

Cooking for murderers and their friends,

but none of the lives they’ve touched; 

I’m living my life upside-down

serving lunch.

I’m away, we won’t see each other again.

I’m sad right now but know come to-morrow

I’ll find myself more and more elsewhere

and later cleared and clean, too.

   Blooded veins and dollar bills —

   they can both burn with fire;

   at least everyone gets nothing

   when they die.

Don’t gnash your teeth on a bumpy road,

gotta take care, little things still show;

black-hat woodpeckers keep coming back,

soon you don’t even have a door.

In another room there’s laughing

but that’s not where you're at..

Bitterness finds you when it wants,

and you’re the inside man, oh

   Blooded veins…

The hawks are giving hell to field mice,

my fuckin fan-belt just won’t shut up

and I’m breathing in splinters –

oh save us, save us.. oh

   Blooded veins…

"Looking past"

    I stopped a wallclock with my heart today –

    a neat trick I

    cannot recommend.

    The “looking past” at what lies beyond

    comes natural,

    but only at the end.

    Makes no difference to the insurgents

    that the government

    makes in my name,

    still I try to make a new friend for each one of them;

    though, of course, I can’t

    but I’m improved all the same.

    I’m sure my team won’t come out ahead in the end,

    but then war’s not

    the way that I like to win –

    you can’t add up losses to find what anything cost when

    you can’t measure

    how much things were meaning…

"Paper takes Rock"

Sometimes Paper takes Rock,
but Rock loves her,
so he is glad to see her win —

plus, she’s sensitive
and listens to him,
and she understands a wound is a thing.

Magic to him they're still
each other’s best adventure,
even just playing the same old game.

It’s not the have, it’s not the want —
it’s just the thank-god-at-last feeling
each time they can finally touch again.

"Telling, untold"

I’ve eaten rope – it helped me get by..
but you can only take so much at a time.
It’s not how you’d have it be,
no, but it helped me keep both feet.

I know that I’m someone who could kill someone,
but I’m less certain I could again..
–well, unless the guy needed me to,
or he surely had it coming.

My beard’s changed color and –
straight – there’s a bull's-eye under my chin;
it probably won’t come as a surprise when
what befalls does for me, done.

You’ll get killed or you’ll die,
the only two ways to run out of time.
–No shining here, it’s private property,
but 300 feet over there'll do fine.

One day entropy will tear up things, and sense, too,
but it’s not angry, it’s gentle.
Until then, flowers and gingers and Ruth’s Chris-es,
or at least the brief cool breezes of thoughts of..