Category Archives: Prayer

Night Owl

Prayer, Song

See and Hear in rare live performance!

some nights I hope
some nights I don’t
some nights I’m broke in two
some nights I’m one with you

some nights I’m spent
some nights I’m flying
some nights all I can do is ask:
why?

some nights leave me in rapture or in pain
no two nights are the same
tonight‘s just the same

some nights there’s peace
some nights alarms
some nights I’m crying out
cradle me in your arms

some nights have blankets
some nights you’re cold
some nights all I can do is laugh:
when did I get so old?

some nights will leave me in rapture or in pain
no two nights are the same
tonight’s just the same

hold back the sunrise
hold back the sun’s rise

some nights go by
in the blink of an eye
some nights I dream

When I Was A Billionaire

Family Life, Love, Mourning, Prayer, Youth

When I was a billionaire, the air
Seemed to fold ’round the frame of my name
My soul, soil and skin
Buttressed by the billions

No pain here in these extra folds
Dimpled by the excess
Dimpled by the desire
To make you smile

This is, yes, indeed, another cry for you
My unrequited
My blindsided
Love

We were bound by blood
Blood the billions could not dissolve
I could never resolve the puzzle you presented
The tangled untie-able knots I resented

I was a billionaire
But you never believed
Never conceived
The rarefied air I breathed

And it was a moment only
Only a moment
And don’t I know it
Don’t I know it

You never understood how I could lose the billions
The interest alone, you snarked, would finance a nation
Yeah, a nation of slaves, ruled by
By your master race
I howled to the stone wall,
The stone wall of your terrifying face
You need to feel something like my pain
So wild and wordless, wordless and wild
But true, so vital, agonizingly real
Real and oh so true

I’ve lost the poem
Lost the billions too
There was a time we’d laugh
Me and you

Laughed till the earth stopped spinning
All the good we were winning
We were winning!
We were winning!

I never needed billions
I never did
I never needed you
I did

But it’s been so hard
So hard to admit
To submit and admit
Let me just admit:

I only needed
You I only needed
You to be you
And be proud
Be proud
Of me
I only needed you

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Coping, by the lake

Love, Mourning, Navel Gazing, Prayer

I’ve been pretending
Just like you
Never comprehending
The best of you
And me
And the best of you

The years crept in
While I’ve been pretending
To understand the reckoning
To come

How are we to understand 
This simple but grand 
Grand design 
To which we’re assigned  

I’ve survived by laughing 
All my nervous white-water rafting 
Pulsing forward and mapping
The rapids snapping God’s thin wrapping
Clapping blindly along with the cohort you done trapped me in: 

Confounded corporate colleagues
Desperate despots desperately diseased
Ungrateful lovers gone to snores
Badly maligned hookers and whores
Bratty kids
Career skids
Age defeating us all
Father’s sudden fall
Blot clots dropping
My best buddy shopping
At Target
The ruin of us all
The mall, the goddamned mall 
Tear it all, tear it all
Down

May we just be
In peace
Increase our ease
Ah, consider these wild geese before ye as they float without strain or pain into the main thing, that jet-stream-thing, that thing that’s some god’s invisible dream driving all pollination, all elation, all cosmic fellation, the seedlings going deep, all sharing our
All sharing our caring hearts with one another
Consider these geese
Cease your seizing, your wheezing
And breathe
And breathe
And end
End
Pretending

American River

Making Love As A Sacred Rite

Love, Poetry, Prayer

Remember this:

As you breathlessly scurry place to place
Establishing reputation, name, face
As you find yourself angry with Facebook and TV
Straining to prove you belong
Paying your psychic fee
While you fret your mortgage, your gardener, and the immigrants raising your kids
Your cholesterol scores – egad! – the lipids, the lipids!

Remember this:

Feed the carnal
Rub some skin
Hold your lover overtly
Take your lover in

In a dark and quiet place
Embrace our bewildered moment
Friend,
Relax your wonderful face

Let your lover learn your theistic soul
That rhythm of you
Beating minuscule but whole
Pardoning all past violence
Vibrating this vast silence
Recalling sounds the vacuum stole:
Our prayers, our farts, our tunes,
Our echoes, our burst balloons

(Baboons, baby
We is
We is baboons)

Imagine:

Whole galaxies collide
With nary a whisper
Nor hummed lullaby
Nor funeral dirge
Not even a “harder,”
Nor “I love this,”
Nor “Thank you for satisfying my urge”

Imagine, just do
Fantasize this place that belongs to you:
This thin sliver of atmosphere, perfect pressure, this chemistry
This constant flow of blood, our majestic ministry

Rejoice!

Rejoice and moan
Into your lover’s ear, moan
Moan:
I’ve come.
I’m here.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you, dear.
Come,
Friend,
Come, too
Collide
Elide
Embrace
Your face
Relax
Let go.
Allow it:

Flow

Amen.

Banff Mountains

Betsy? Dolly. Mmm Hmm. We Need To Talk.

Opinion, Politics, Prayer

And still you allow the wild to awake, take fire, and break free
You still listen for the chatter of the ancient trees gossiping secrets of freedoms dreamed
You still believe the hope of these towering hills and blinding plains, the lie of infinite rains
You still swim the chaos of rapid waters forsaking the eddies, the ease, the still pools of disease

And still

And still
You’ve become this bloated butterball baking
Basted brightly in cortisol tattoos
And Schadenfreude shampoos
Laboring place to place
A slower and slower pace
Agony in your face
Cowering against connections
Ignoring local elections
Seeking advantage and protection
To mock and tweak
The others you seek
To re-tweak, re-Tweet,
Fellow-travelers naive as thee, judging them, my phrasing, and me

I worry for your heart
Your literal and figurative heart
America

And still
Here I sit
You remind me
This armchair pundit opining
This internet poet resigning
To soft wrinkles, a stiff spine
A graceless and sad decline
Still overwriting every goddmamn line

True
True, I admit
That’s it, that’s it
I too
I too am
Complicit

And still
I do
I do still worry
I still worry for you
My fattened flailing friend
My family
My blood
My soul
My soil
Coiled to bite
Too spoiled to fight
Happy Birthday goodnight
Happy Birthday goodnight

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Aging Actor Agonizing As Again He Faces His Familiar Face In The Glowing Glass Of An Underground Dressing Room Somewhere Out There Tonight

Free Form, Prayer, Work Life

Nightly I face thee to efface me
My most dear
My most somber sober friend

Hear me now
You
Who only live in light

The self is illusion
Mine, an allusion to an imagined self we collude to enjoy and endure for an hour or more
So many allusions
So many selves
So many concocted lifetimes
So many carefully crafted entanglements, each anxiety endlessly examined and fondled and absorbed and displayed
So. Much. Makeup.

It is a tedious life

The best of us are empty:
Tin barrels played upon by expert hands
Begging for meaning
Begging for another goddamned job
Begging pleas: “oh, please
Let me be seen
again and again”

There is worth, mind you, but only briefly in that moment we momentarily share
In the allusion to the unwieldy illusion we unendingly share
There is worth
Then
But soon we bow and the magic swells and breaks and the breakdown begins anew

Again to seek our mark
Find our light
Call our agent
And hope for the unwritten cue

React and repeat
React and repeat
Reacting, repeating

Tedium

Ah, mon dieu, it’s time,
Yes, the time has come
Places, everyone

Inhale
Lights out
Powder and disappear

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old song for the new

Free Form, Poetry, Prayer, The Future

Yes yes and please more yes
Tell me again how old I am
Whisper wrinkle free how irrelevant my culture has become
Yes yes and please more yes
Join me in this haze of conventional whiz dumb
And allow me to wring my worried hands over your imminent decline
Attending the ascendance of your lost generation
Yes yes and more please yes
Throw up any barriers you can young man
My convalescing mates will gladly dance that most removed of dances
And chant that invocation of phantom castes
Yes yes and more please yes

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I see you, second uncle shrunken drunkard

Family Life, Poetry, Prayer

I see you, second uncle
shrunken drunkard
Can you see me
Uncle, uncle
See me uncle, uncle

Is this the way to channel the glories of our day?
Another morning bed of bottles, yet more cramping bowels
A head of rusty nails announcing their decay
Your slick-tongued whispers now rotten breath howls

Again
You did it again
Forsaken the miracle
Again

And goddamnit you’re fifty-farking-four years old!
Get it together, uncle.
I’m not judging but this shit is getting ridiculous.

I see you, second uncle
shrunken drunkard
Can you see me
Uncle uncle
See me, uncle, uncle

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Can’t Stop The Vanity Insanity

Free Form, Opinion, Poetry, Prayer

No matter how much I meditate on the other
No matter how aware and open I’ve become
No matter all I do
I only see how silly and lost they are
All of them
How much they need me and my innate wisdom
How much they
And you
Require
Me.
And sure I know I’ve earned no degree nor toiled among the ancient stacks late nights into the morn
Sure my insights come from the mirror and the books a middle schooler would find profound
And overpriced seminars I still can’t afford
And no I haven’t allowed myself the vulnerability to suffer the emotional breakdowns and risks I see all around me
But that kind of proves my point, right?
Don’t you think?
The ivory tower of ignorance has a purpose
It protects me so that I may be profound
And speaking of profound, man oh man, the insights I’ve got are good and I know – I just know – like I know I can breathe – that they’re right
My insights -whatever they are – are right!
And I look so good and my voice is so nice and soothing when I share these pearls
How could I be wrong?
I honestly believe in the telegenetic code, I honestly do
Looks represent who you are, what you prioritize in this world
Looks reveal character
You need to know that
And I really, really look good
Like a wise man should.
Like a wise man should. 

 

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