Wooden shoulders held by glue…trace Siddhartha…Buddha blues…feel it in the symmetry that navigates the mind…leave it to the consequence of actions to define…shake it off and find another face to hide behind…fill it up with holes and fill each hole with half an eye…anchors bite the ocean floor…holding out for something more…all the former reappears…starting fires in both ears…smoking makes it difficult to recognize the sky…characters they bend to pen but never come to life…colors keep the letters fixed and stale, words hard to find…when day becomes the dream and what is lived becomes the night.

Skin on every picture that illustrates these words…the things I take for granted, same as those I hurt…you speak the brightest yellows, but I hear the darkest blues…don’t recognize the contrast, is it me or is it you…baby I’m just falling behind, yes I’m always falling behind…my heart is well made but I just cannot make up my mind…guess I’m just falling behind…I want to be reborn as something more complete…brave enough to try and be satisfied with me…I want to reignite that fire on your skin…soft enough to love you…start what I begin…baby I’m just falling behind, yes I’m always falling behind…you wait and you wait but I just can’t keep track of the time…guess I’m just falling behind.

Can’t explain the feeling I been feeling think it ultimately feels all right…never gonna say it never gonna do it though it sometimes feels all right…ran into a friend I had not seen in years or spoken with the other night…been battling the cancer been a rollercoaster still he says he feels all right…I keep thinking about the ones who faded out and in…knew where they were going but don’t know where they have been…something keeps me checking on the weather all the time…looking out the window as if guilty of a crime…never seem to shake it getting hard to fake it and it doesn’t feel quite right…lately conversation is a situation where the words don’t come out right…“you’re too anxious” said my friend I said “I know I am, I blame it on my appetite”…and the need to medicate and to authenticate though fuck it man it feels quite right”…let it take you where it will…let it break you how it will…let it fill you til you’ve had your fill…I have got a little bit of milk for you.

Just the other night I got up to change the channel, but stood there and watched it instead…was gonna meditate and maybe shed a little form and shadow, but the silence was distracted by the voices in my head…telling me that maybe I should try to give up smoking, though I just barely bought another pack of cigarettes…cause the last one I bummed to a friend…I was gonna hatch another business plan, I was gonna sell the shit out of my band, was gonna try and level with my mom and dad, I’m trying to take stock of all the things I have, but oh I…just the other day I got the urge to be a father, but was I only feeling that to fill an empty space?...suggested to my girl that we should move out of the city, but realized that moving isn’t all about the place…so then I thought that maybe it’s the way that I am living, not asleep not quite awake…living for living’s sake…try to be well spoken but I’m just well read, try not to be nervous but they know I am, need a little measure and another chance, to separate what’s failure from what’s circumstance, for all I know…staring at a pretty sunset on the beach, made me think of all the things that remain out of reach, need a lifetime maybe two or more to feel complete, there’s a hundred movements swelling up inside of me, that die upon release…I was really starting to get into it, trying to be kinder but then talking shit, accepting every offer but then quick to quit, mistaking my polemics for my politics, pity is the saddest form of love…I was gonna stop and take another pass, instead I took a sip and then I raised a glass, I was gonna genuflect and pray again, but my heart will not embrace what it don’t understand.

Cut it out…you cannot call this sleeping…it’s holding out…for the cold sun I am keeping…I don’t do well with change…the company it brings…the promises it breaks…the time it often takes…take it in…this size no longer suits me…break it in…the body that outgrew me…I don’t know how to feel it…whatever’s disappearing…I don’t intend to save…what cannot be explained…and that which is unspoken remains the thing unbroken…I don’t know how to land this…I guess I’ll leave it floating… cut it out…you cannot call this sleeping…it’s holding out…for the cold sun I am keeping…I don’t do well with change…the company it brings…the promises it breaks…the time it often takes.

Sunday passing go…and the odd is open…and the light is swollen…I am free and I am faking…wild and calibrated…the scale of what I’m making…takes an hour to waste a day…taking time to turn the pages…trying to feel my age kid…but you leave your heart wide open…so careful how you close it.

Have you been hiding underground...does insulation lend itself to a warmer sound...are you still trying to find a way…to harvest energy out of bio decay...have you been playing your guitar...funny how we thought by now you’d be a star…are you still pacing to and fro...acting out the yes though maybe, thinking no…they say, hey man, sing it out…pull your head out of them clouds…we been peeking all around…are we lost or are you found...have you been dreaming of the day…the body’s obsolete and mind can forever stay...as some data, in a cloud…to float more naturally where nature once was found…have you been geeking out on Joy…Charlie Christian, GBV, Django, or Neu...fingerpicking endlessly, planting seeds beneath a Redwood canopy...you were there when I left behind…the who and how of another time…I hear you now like I heard you then…but does this silence ever end...and I’m not sure if you need a friend…Roanoke lost once again.

The situation don’t inspire a changing of the guard…cause nothing seems so easy as the things that seemed so hard…so many ways to make a living, but none of them make any sense…you gotta quantify your efforts and sanctify them in one breath…while the others stress the details, tally hours to keep the score…I’m sweeping up the ceiling that has collapsed upon the floor…worn wires…will start fires…I eye the Flying Dutchman about a day or two offshore…oh he’s leading me through waters that I can navigate no more…as I settle into drifting, direction obsolete…I’m letting go of rope and peeling miles off of my feet…now steeping in the water, they cut through moon and tide…is it an accident this incident has brought them back to life…no higher…gets tired...I’m tired.

Sun it runs its course through me I rest…head upon the branch born of your breast…wanted to remind you of your breath…you have so much more than what is left…baby I guess I have to go…where nail and skin do not scrape against the bone…somewhere I cannot let you down…take this time to write it…memorize the words…it’s ok to not feel it…it cools before it burns…it coos before it yearns…I will visit you from time to time…and finally see you as more than mine…see you as the world I left behind…thankful you are there and warm with life…alive…the density of morning…when dreams they stain your eyes…will fill you up with something…nobody else will recognize…just you and me between the lines…the universe I left behind.

I was always waiting, for the yellow to begin…for the treble to let in, a little color…patiently expecting, that this world would surely end…that the line drawn in the sand, could hold a river…I was only loving, for the sake of giving in…a couple takes, then pack it in, I was a puzzle then…and though I thought I was doing you a favor...who the hell was I to think I could have saved a…world I never learned how to be a part of…my fortune drawn apart from…the truth is so remarkably true…I was self-defeating, though the first one off to war…thought I’d give a little more, and be a hero…tempestuous and dreaming, found reflection in a sword, pushed an ocean through a door, to find some shelter…I was always worried, by the way it’d make you feel…thought it really no big deal, I was mistaken…take a minute and find it more in keeping…with all the things you once thought you might be needing…cause elevation is often more appealing, it tricks you into feeling, the ground is disappearing, with you…I was always waiting, for the yellow to begin…for the treble to let in, a little color.

I want to be a king and focus on a dream…and touch with my own fingers the things I’ve never seen…I want to write a prayer for those with folded hands…held beneath their chins with giant rubber bands…I want to lead an army of dropout libertines…past the confrontation…gum up their machines…I want to build an altar to rest this heavy head…and sacrifice the part that is already dead…I want to break the silence without too many words…between two generations…between the dirt and earth…do you know your father, he was once a man…he was so distracted by a million plans…do you know your father…amongst the green grass that grows…eyes up…all toes…I see you are up…tall grass grows on the trunk…born like a man that listens to soul…born like a man that listens to snow…he was once a prophet now he’s just a man now he was just a prophet now he’s just a man…I want to be a king and focus on a dream…and touch with my own fingers the things eyes never see…I want to write a prayer for those with folded hands…held beneath their chins with giant rubber bands…I want to lead an army of dropout libertines…past the confrontation…gum up their machines.

I’ve got a faucet and a temperature gauge…immunities and a high median age…a lovely girl who accepts my day to day…a happy hound and a car to get away…a hand to hold when direction disappears…turns out I’ve been lucky all these years…see I’ve got these words and am, often heard…got my, calories, they’re prepared for me…got a, brand new bed and the, means to spend…though not, endlessly, got some, things for free…my autonomy…my anatomy…some experience with serenity…got no wars to wage…got no one to hate…got no, pressing need to be more than me… I’ve got a faucet and a temperature gauge…immunities and a high median age… a hand to hold when direction disappears…turns out I’ve been lucky all these years.

Give me fog and color just enough to give me cover a little bread, a little butter cause this tongue it tends to stutter…maybe an extension on the memory’s retention for the details never mentioned on air…trying to create a sort of anamorphic state enough to try and imitate what’s not there…oh grasshopper, you never caught her, the scurry in the brush is just a phantom to the touch…the movement you needed was, never repeated and the feet now coming down crush the sun into the ground…speaking off the dome I never said I never roam I like the rush of the unknown the jagged lines to which I’m prone…foraging essentials making good on the potential sometimes sort of accidental but the sentiment is gentle…hunting but I’m hunted there are eyes attached to something keen and absolutely not.

I do not remember the way it even feels…don’t recognize the fiction from the parts that weren’t real…did you ever notice the youngest on the line…your husband’s heavy posture…the magic that is mine…you arrive in sudden tiny swells…silence tells me, mother you’re not well…it unnerves me, the thought that you may never find…the luxury of rewind…offering surrender…still I feign retreat…the distance now between us is not worth measuring…so we no longer bother…takes substance to pretend…guilt says call your father…heart says call your dad…you arrive in sudden tiny swells…silence tells me, you might be doing well…sometimes moves me to think you might never find…the means to make up for lost time…limbs that fall asleep with the heaviness of my blood…it remains as color…and nothing more within us…still it draws me closer.

Been accused of a crime without a name…put me away, top of my game…took a break, took a peek around the way…where it never rains, no one complains…without a face I got nothing to explain…so fire away, fire away…look at all these papers, they don’t mean a thing…history is written in invisible ink…sit at home with a screen across my knees…night sews the seed, that morning then weeds…more at home in the spaces in between…measured and clean, sold sight unseen…I know what I’m doing, I don’t know what it means…I believe in something, but it isn’t what it seems…been accused of a crime without a name…put me away, top of my game.

When the clouds pour from your tear ducts…and a lotus blooms on your tongue…and you chew more than you can swallow…know that time bends to the ways we contend and relent…sit down I’ll bring you some water…breathe in I’ll bake us some bread…we’ll eat it in bed…and the forest that grows on my head…is the perfect nest for your eggs…though at times my feet drag know I’ll be ready…when a child swims in your belly…button…home…at last…whenever however it happens…home at last…didn’t it happen so fast…baby...and my elbows get stuck to my toes…and my eyelids get caught on my clothes…and we wander where to, well who the hell knows.