Born inside the gates of the family
Hardened by a roman machinery
Cast among the building sites,
The coiling wires, the shots collected
Called out in the wake of a lottery
Held inside the family gathering
Mirrored beams and dog-like strength
The wandering association
Murmurs in the dark confessional
And it rides along the road, ephemeral
As in animal life
Rusting in the shade of the batteries
Hanging from a rope in the gallery
Pacing down the balance beam
Of half-remembered holidays
No rush of light or watery longing
No joy in building, love in the finishing
Reaching for an anodyne
And half-reflected radiance
To hide below the ancient barricade
In chambers like the rooms a swallow made
For an animal life
Charging down the maw of the ocean
I want to come close, I want to come closer
I held your name inside my mouth
Through all the days out wandering
But called out from the mouth of oblivion
Cast away like dogs from the shelter
I shed the dulling armor plates
That once collected radiance
And surging at the blood’s perimeter
The half-remembered wild interior
Of an animal life
A change
The river is blocked
The road is hot
The sky is blazing
Black smoke on the rise
The weather holds
Until it’s on you
And then suddenly breaks
I curl right back into the sound
I take one breath and spiral down
And you’re not watching the road
Or watching the flood stage rise
We are yearlings
Now watching a tide run out
Till what the daylight hides
Is known
Yearlings
Not watching the tide run out
We are yearlings
Feeling the blood break down
Yearlings
Not watching the tide run out
Yearlings
Feeling the blood break down
Maybe I’m lost
Maybe I’m not ready
Maybe I was not
Properly socialized
But when you drag me under
When you pull me over the line
That’s when you really reach me
I know the night drives
I know the afterglow
I know I look
Quieter than I feel.
And I want to fight like lovers
I want to pull you over the line
Dread sovereign
I know the white flag waving
When you were drowning under the lights
In the ebb of the black tide
Dread sovereign
Dread sovereign
When you fell on the rocks
At a bend in the river
With the blood from your nose
Running hard on your fingers
And through the rest of your life
The electric charge
Of a change in the weather
You were touching my arm:
You were holding a feather
And then I opened my eyes
And the world goes racing
Suddenly changed
As the shock of the exit
Leaves you trembling
Like a bursting shell
In the small of your back,
Or a jaw bites hard
On a cast of your little line-
And an animal life pulls, surging, away
And you were back on the road
Through the worst of the winter
Through the valley of light
Passing through like an arrow
With your vision collapsed
And a stone from the river
Like a golden medallion
Clutching tight in your fingers
But on the slope, at the edge
Will you recover your life?
You could stand on the back
Of a shuddering beam
With a pistol, firing
Shots into the air
You could run in the blood
Of the sun’s hard rays
You could drive the mountains
Down into the bay
Or go back to the east,
(Where it’s all so civilized)
Where I was born to the life
But I am leaving the life
I am leaving the life
I am leaving the life
I am leaving the life
I am leaving the life
I am leaving
Sometimes I think I welcome in
what you are frightened of
When my thoughts become undisciplined
And then I slip away
It is effortless, effortless
In the glow along the barren road
I see you shivering
And my heart begins to separate
From a silence that would bury our lives
With an insolence
Insolence!
It is effortless, ranging and diving,
Effortless as fire!
Oh, child.
Where were you?
Where were you,
All your life?
Inside a chrysalis, writhing!
Johnny, get a hold of your life
Wherever I go
Your face is in front of me
(you aren’t breathing)
Holding up the end of the line
If there ever was a crack in the ice
You don’t believe in it.
You are a diamond, set
On an immaculate height
Belly up and under the wire
Lying awake in the hours and the emptiness
Only to run from the days we are living in
You only get a look at your life
when you’re leaving it
And in the silences
When you’re arrested in flight
When you lie on your back
With your eyes on the firmament
Your burning mouth, your blazing eyes
Come on!
If you believe in it
It’s a respectable life.
Go police all the beats
You’ll find nothing is innocent.
Johnny, get a hold of your life.
Stop on the edge til the animus drains away.
Or follow the loneliest road
And run in the dark
Till the light comes screaming in
Through the silences
When you’re alone on the ice
And you stand on the brakes
To find nothing is happening.
I was still life
I was pinned inside of a photograph
When I realized
You had slipped outside of the scenery
With only what you need to survive
So why did you come to me?
If you are looking for the enemy,
Open up, open up, open up,
Open your houses
I was waiting
I was reconstructing the memory
Unbelieving
In the changes looming inside of me
The pulse of an irregular life
But why did you turn away
Before the horn sounds
Over the dark terrain
And the weapons of the enemy?
Open up
Open up
Open up
Open your houses
And let in the night
Come into the night
Run the banner down
And hide in the broken palms
Till out of the blackness comes
A point of starry light
And the mountain moves
And the pressure drops
Snow on your open palms
Under a northern star
Leave the tape unwound
And the film unthreaded
Of a summer rain
Where your image is frozen
And thrown into the lake
Where your words rebound,
With the way laid out
And your hands on my shoulders;
Open your mouth
Close your eyes
Open your mouth
I could see by the way you were living
You had gone to the other side
You were the flashing wings of a swallow
You were the light in the lion’s eye
And you were standing there alone in the river:
Where do you go when the well is dry?
Like you could summon up another religion
Like you could summon another life
And if you survive
Then will you see me now?
And can you see me now?
Oh, let’s go back again to the water
I want to swim to the other side
I could see by the way you were suffering
What you were really like
I’m not talking about a wade in the shallows
I’m not living there anymore
You could spend your life fighting the river
Or you could look me right in the eyes
But you have to decide
Can you see me now?
Now that we have pulled away
Is it better on the inside?
And did you like the offerings
On the counter, under black lights?
While the stars have aligned
With a light that irradiates all of us
In the parallel
Let the temperature rise
Till the urge to relieve it is perilous.
Let the silences make it easy.
Driving through the border range
Did we pass along the same road?
We are ashes in the polar rays
We are blooming at the same time
Is it heart attack and burial?
Is it evening on the west side?
Now that we are coming down
Are you bracing for the next wave?
The return of the life
the return of the colors of everyone
To the gallery
I believe in the rush
I believe in the gathering radiance
I could walk alive
Through a burning wall
Believing makes it easy
While the sun slips away
from the crest of the barricade
Radiant
In the winter light
If a tenth of the law is the urge to invalidate
Starry-eyed
And inveterate
And invincible
You make it easy
When you are lost
You climb to the firing range
Without a lantern in your life
But the star of the age
And in the bright flash
An emptiness burns away
You trade the darkness of your mind
For the star of the age
Surging away from the tower’s embrace
You race like a tiger
Relentlessly lashing the days
And leave, in the wake of our wandering lives
The signs we are aging
The houses we drowned in the lake
While a shining world
Believes that, inside of days
All the darkness of our lives
will meet the star of the age
While the buildings fall
In silence and reverie
Among the islands of our minds
Among the stars of the age
Oh shining world!
Where nothing is happening
But what is in our minds:
The swelling stars of the age
But still, my love
The only relieving light
In the spinning darkness of our lives
Is when I see you again
In the moonlight
In the starlight
In the sunlight
And I believe it again