Fire Snakes

Mermaids
Shimmer in the waves
Wanted to share a word
Course they only waved
Left me alone
With the blood in my mouth
To paw and to pray
To tear at the fray for a thundercloud

To dress up your wounds
Wash off the salt
Freshen the blooms
At your sea-rusted altar

Caldera’s edge
We’ll hold hands and wait
Mudflows are greyhounds
Exploding from gates
With hot ash and hot rocks
They’ll crash and they’ll mosh
Till the trees are all flat
And we all collapse from the chase

Then I’ll dress up your wounds
Wash off the salt
Freshen the blooms
At your mud-crusted altar…

Galaxies

When you sing, when you sing
The stars fill up my eyes
Galaxies pour down my cheeks
Galaxies…they flood the street
Galaxies

When we dance, when we dance
Eels and sea grass float on by
I’m 10,000 leagues beneath the sea
10,000 leagues…beneath the green
10,000 leagues

When we kiss, when we kiss
Bears and boulders vibrate through the air
Gravity is dead you see
No gravity…all I need is beating red
No gravity…

Secret Someones

I’m climbing up the stairs
I’m circling the waves
The broken ceiling paint
The broken windowpane
O a smile would melt
Me to an asphalt strip
Where all would travel
Where all would tread and trip

Where all the rolling rollers roll
And all the secret someones go
And all the roving rovers ramble
Down my back, down my track…

The horizon disappears
Like a windswept trail
Gone from wind and rain
Blurred like a charcoal stain
Smearing your face
Your shins are skinned again
You can soak up my heat
Sweat your beaded jewels to the street

Where all the rolling rollers roll…

Hey hey hey hey
Tell me, did you make it to the show?
Tell me, what did you make of the drummer’s hair?
Tell me, about the atmosphere
Tell me, about the faces that greeted you there

Where all the rolling rollers roll…

Magnetized

Slain
By your zirconium smile
I was slain
By your olivine eyes
Slain
I was lying in piles
Hoping shovels would cast me
Furnaces burn everlasting
Black tattoos of you onto me
Furnaces burn everlasting
Black tattoos

Burn
Brand my memory
Black
A tattoo of you
Wash
Me with your mouth
Brackish bright water from your eyes
I’ll homing pigeon fly
To hover by your window white and shy
Homing pigeon fly
To hover by

Spill
My ashes to the wind
Ghosts
Can gather what they’ve found
Now
We can struggle in the web
We can struggle
With white spider stars coming down
And night blowing black from the ground…

Parisian Dream

Your painting
Scratched lines of blue and gold
You open me up
Was folding into myself
A deck of cards
Face down empty on the shelf

Your song with
Emphasis on one and two
Then I couldn’t keep time
You took me into a dream
Exploding soundtrack
That I treasure as mine…

I was bent over
My chest and invisible line
Sinking
But then the light
The lamp that I held
In my blistered hands
You the fuel and
Me the fool for not noticing

This Chinese junk we’re on
With strapping strong
You cast free the lines
Let’s float here
Together clearly we better
Slip out to the brine!

Rialto

Check out the skylark
Riding and singing alongside
Salt cool breeze coming from the West
Ships and their lawlessness
Running wild and the waves
Wearing their bright blue summer best

Here come the sailors
Marching two by two by two
They pressed their pants
And shined their shoes
Aren’t they strapping and deranged?
Too long at sea makes your eyes strange
Makes ‘em strain
For the vision of your youth
Dripping castles in the sand

I could still go there
But my mind would be too loud
Sun on water
Bright colors drowning me out…

Now they’re standing on the beach
In a wild colored wind
Sunrays stream
Ah the pretty boys gleam
Watching distant buoys toss
Water rolling on the rocks
Smoothing down the broken things

I could still go there
But my mind would be too loud
Sun on water
Bright colors drowning me out…

Through The Glow

Flat stone skipping the surface sink
Into the golden deep
Crawl inside like a honeybee
Creep into the heart

Give me snow and give me salt
Troubles cracks and creaks
Watch ‘em tumble to the sea
Come back ‘round you see

Can you hear the cliffside’s heart
Bubbling red and deep?
When you’re slow not stop and start
You can burn a memory

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh…

Gather with me like the gathering clouds
Smooth the twisted lines
Float above the quilted plains
Up to the stars we’ll strain

I can hear the sparkling dark
Calling me to swim
Through the sound waves
Through the glow
Into the undertow

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh…

Cool Water

Cool water…

I want to fly like a scroll unfolding
Float to a stone ledge
Wait for a moment ‘fore spilling
Words to a hedge
And going away
Like a poem closed in a dresser drawer
You could say that’s what they’re for

You want to melt like bullion in a golden flow
And roll on down the hills
Back to the cracks
Back to the deep
Where you can harden and get your fill
Of cool water in surround sound…

Oh my mackinaw feels too tight
My frozen jaw begs for the break of night
Songbirds and sounds of dawning light…

Spelunking

The tiny midnight caravan
Made its way across the black hills
As I watched from a distance
The slow-going glow
Their wandering you know
Made me pine
For the lamplight
Where you lie

If I took you darling
To the caverns of my heart
Would you light the lamp dear?
Would you light the lamp dear?
And see fish without eyes
Bats with their heads
Hanging down towards the ground
Would you still come around
Come around?

I believe in you
In your honesty and your eyes
Even when I’m sloshing
In the muck of my demise
A large part of me
Is always and forever tied
To the lamplight
Of your eyes, of your eyes

Black Gold Blues

Bird of prey
Gonna float away
To a feather cloud formation
I’m gonna dig
For pretty and strange
Gonna open me up
A black gold vein

Arrow on fire
Flash the night
Gonna fade away
To the trees and caves
Salt-salt lamp
Romance the spark
And you’ll shine shine shine
Up up the wild deep dark

A sliver, a crack of light
Is all you need to see…

Ten black stars
At my windowpane
That’s ten pretty stars
Circle in my veins
Old barbed wire
Gonna fight and sting
Just ten little stars
Gonna make me sing

A sliver, a crack of light
Is all you need to see…