1. |
My River
05:48
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My River
My river’s going back to the ocean, no more bruising on the shore.
The soul’s progression set in motion, yearning at its core.
Fragile river, picking through stone.
Water under water, undertow, over bone.
Cleaned of the word, emptied of light;
Word’s not a net now, the word is the flight.
Kingdom crowned by the ocean,
In its realm, one mother tongue.
Fear, remorse, devotion;
In its sway are one.
Everything turns, change and desire
Everything burning—the secret life of fire.
Take it all, all down to the ocean,
Eternal silence, still and deep.
Rise and fall, eternal motion,
Eternal lung swells and heaves—
Death so slow it looks like life,
So slow it looks like terrific speed.
Form from the search for form,
So full it looks empty.
Rise and swell, heart crest like a humpback whale
Huge and unknown. Be huge and unknown.
The ocean remembers me.
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2. |
Transit of Venus
04:51
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Transit of Venus
The last time we met I know my face seemed unfamiliar—
You hadn’t seen the way your absence broke me.
Nor the way I’d mended, scarred and silvered,
One side pulled blue, stoop of apology.
Grief is an artist with its painter’s eye for detail
And its refusal of outside obligations—
Oh, the details I held onto.
The violinist on the corner by the window
In cowboy boots plays Mozart through an amp.
Movie themes, Claire de Lune and Some Romantic Evening
Brief reprieve from that lion grief
The only way to hurt you would have been to tell you
That I knew you were not a noble man,
But I loved you anyway.
What good is guilt with no mercy?
I have dreamt so strongly of you,
Walked so, talked so,
Loved so your shadow—
Nothing remains of you.
“If he were to die the world would be a room where no one sees her”,
Is a line I read long after you were dead.
Re-enter the story, fall in love with what’s to be here—
How can it be that there is still suspense?
Can I help you now? No.
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3. |
Quiet Rider
04:09
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Quiet Rider
Quiet rider, boots dug in the flank
With reins you guide her, sky so wide and blank.
Ever watchful, but you don’t see anything
Just feel the breath flow and the air around you sing
Quiet rider, your feet don’t touch the ground
You broke the wild ones, felt their heartbeats pound
Horizon’s endless, jackrabbits in the sage
Prairie grasses blow like whispering sisters through the ages
I saw your sunset—you sent it over the line
As you receded, did you shield your eyes at mine
I could sing this song through forever
If it keeps you close at hand
I’m a slow learner, it’s like I
Just can’t understand
Oh, ghost rider, walk me to the end of this season
Dark survivor, oh you know this pain had no reason
You rode as the dust rose, dense clouds around you formed
Rode ever northward into the oncoming storm
Quiet rider, you’ve already come and gone
The ground still holds, though, the echo of your hoofbeats.
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4. |
Ghost Moon
05:18
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Ghost Moon
Ghost, not dead enough to be gone
The morning moon still hanging on
Wan light at the window pane
Ghost, both of us up before dawn
Still I can’t seem to get a move on
Haunt me with your moon face
The sun comes up cold and the sky full of crows
Quiet and iced, can’t I go when you go
Renewing the orbit of your ellipse
Here in the umbra of your eclipse
Ghost, endless shaking your grave
Tending the plot where you lay
Folded in the pages of my mind
Oh, to rest in the cool of your shade
To hide while I watch the parade
Clamor for the night sky
Here while gone. Gone, gone all along.
Or you in the umbra and I the shot light—
High in your field, you don’t put up a fight
Even in death your right of refusal
Even in death seeking your approval
Pull, over and over again
On this ocean in the dark.
Full, your perigee flooding and then
The high tide watermark
Gone so soon. Haunt, haunt me on a blue moon.
Here while gone, gone all along, gone so soon,
Haunt me, oh you blue moon.
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5. |
Soulmaker (That Fire)
04:07
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Soul-maker
for Theodore Roethke
You hear your echo in the echo
You see your shadow in the dark
An empty vessel from the get-go
The arrow somehow sped its mark
Dark your light and dark desire
The dare that wakes you in the dawn
Barely begun the day’s on fire
Barely grasped and then it’s gone
Your mind still a city in the night
The black universe past the rim of light
A sense of need, a student’s dread
The hunt the drive the breaking through
Flash-flood of dazzle hurts your head
The rise and fall and then the truth
The wheel, the call, the scope of it all
The breadth the loss the mute free-fall
The atom the cosmos the ocean the tear
The reckless glow around the fear
The black universe past the rim of light
You chose your sorrow over despair
You have merged like a bird with the bright air
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6. |
The Torch
04:59
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The Torch
I thought I could carry the torch into the night where you were headed.
Fifty years of fire on my mind, cantabile.
I thought by calling you back I could stop the progression, and charge a life force from a spark of recognition. I wanted to carve it in stone and force a confession.
I wanted to carry the torch into the night where you were headed.
What would it take til I believed that you believed me?
I’m below your sky, under your wing.
I thought I could pray to a god and make your body get better, and when that didn’t work, that one day we’d meet up again together. I’d be your daughter there and you would be my teacher, and I’d carry the torch into the night where we were headed.
The soul is a useful thing, bright and lonely.
I’m below your sky, under your wing.
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7. |
Cautionary Tale
06:03
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Cautionary Tale
I won’t—with your girdles and hose, and your men slow as bears—
I’ll be your cautionary tale
Blank space, white noise, go til the paint runs dry
When it doesn’t work sometimes you know but you don’t know why
Yellow jumping, blue going, it comes together then it’s there
It takes time, it’s not fast, no you don’t get a hit fast on that
And i’m thinking, “So you fail—why don’t you have a good time?”
I don’t know, the paining rests, won’t end til it stops asking questions.
“Fine sweets,
You’re a spoiled girl.
You want it all ways.”
But I won’t…
How annoying, I keep saying things are like other things
There seems no help for it, the light work of a poet
Do you have many defenses—ha!—can you ever have enough
Observing from my high cliff, the wind is fierce the coast is rough
And memories of loneliness, the loneliness of being born,
Trial and error, watchful sight, the years it took to get it right—
And I drank
Til my face was blue
Wouldn’t you?
You think you can? It’s a tough life, not for the faint of heart.
What you look at hard looks hard back at you
With judgement and pity—can your soul bear such scrutiny?
Everything seemed like something else, bits of the world slipped into place.
One has fight but it full of fear, one has none but is brave.
Who would you rather sit beside, which one will take you by the hand?
What can’t but must I recognize, everywhere my thoughts grow wild and
What of these others, these serious ones? Listen, we did our best—
Acts of failure and of trust, stars without light hold the others up
Still I sat
At the feet of men
Fair witness
But I won’t, with your girdles and hose and your men full of air
I’ll be your cautionary tale.
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8. |
The Hawk
04:39
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The Hawk
Oh, I don’t want to let it go back to this sorrow.
Love took me up like a hawk, now I’m frozen in flight.
Ah, don’t look down at the drop, don’t look up at the night.
Is that the old frontier? What is this fierce loss?
I can see it from here, I can’t feel what it costs.
It’s a long walk down the echoing hallway
A sharp shoulder-push and the exit door gives way
To a frozen mute hush lit from the snow below
And in the intimate hush you can hear how the stars glow.
Tonight it’s cold as fuck, the wind an incessant whine.
I feel down on my luck, feel the crawling of time
But dust into dust, we head back where we came
And we get off the bus and we hand in our names.
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9. |
Son of a Gun
06:03
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Son of a Gun
Nothing is worth doing, you seemed to say
Gin and ice and ash, above the fray
Still you planted your rose gardens
Green-eyed boy, tiny town in wartime.
Smoking in the onion patch, petty crimes but say
You got away.
Your whole life you got away with it—
Love affairs and gutless lies
Gambling debts and alibis
You were wronged
Your whole life you were wrong.
Whatever drove you, forever silent—
Rage and wonder, wit and violence.
Oh but she was cold, a puppeteer,
You should see her now.
Life is long,
ain’t it long.
Found a penny, tossed it, put it in your pocket,
Oh, you son of a gun.
Your sharp eye-teeth under yellow eyes
Tendoned body like a tree, petrified,
You held on.
Heart of a daughter, final days.
We are so alike, you don’t need to say it.
Your cheap watch and your wedding ring
Your two suits at the Sally Ann by morning
You were gone
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10. |
Received Wisdom
05:32
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Received Wisdom
Sing to few in small rooms
warm to your task.
Grasp kindness and violence
your work may come to nothing after all.
Stay ahead of your ghosts,
Evading the specter of joyless urgency.
Your tragic here, he under-understands
Emperor of one idea.
What to leave, what to take, what to fight.
The opposite of anarchy
Telstar, ancient satellite.
When you say “I know”,
Make sure there’s touch in it.
Be there, do not invade,
Leave it where you found it.
Will, oh, kindness and hunger,
Silence and silence—
‘Cause there will never be words
There’ll not be words for this.
What to leave, what to take, what to fight.
The opposite of certainty—
Telstar, ancient satellite.
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11. |
Firefly
03:40
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Firefly
Who were you really? Maddening mystery, your absence fills the room.
The minute our eyes met, you knew you had your audience—
Now the curtain falls and it’s dark as a tomb.
Tough, fearless and girlish and vain, you could drink any man under the table. Not restless, not drawn to it, you were the flame—could it seem anything other than fatal?
All there, not there, all seeing, all blind. I’m searching the dark or you’re burning my eyes. Speaker of truth, shot through with lies. Flickering, flickering firefly.
Not one for straight answers, you loved with such candor, your eyes searched the words for the form.
Feeling your meaning, carving your dreaming, your brush searched the calm for the storm.
So hard to leave you there, so hard to go—panic pinned you to the gurney. You said am I dying now? I said maybe? I don’t know. But you have what you need for the journey.
Feast and famine, outside of time. I’m sorry I’m mad that you left me behind. I still want to hear what you had on your mind. Flickering, gone dark, firefly.
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