The Storm

r edgar

I had a dream sketched in charcoal night.
The morning light scattered across chips of water
Palmetto bugs fled into a fallen tree’s breach
Sand clouds dragged along a wind blown beach
There was a heron that cried.

A stray dog startled birds into flight.
Storms west of Tampa sent their winds through alleyways
They blew up your dress and revealed your disguise
Rain covered the walls and soaked our supplies
It was the breeze that sighed.

A capacitor melts and your voice sounds nearer
My face stares back from an oxidized mirror
Tea creeps ‘round the base of your thin china cup
You lean in a corner, you prop yourself up.

I lower the ceiling light.
Stars are sewn in your black wool cape
Sugar swirls warmly ‘round my periwinkle spoon
Your keys crucified on your kitchen cartoon,
About the death of Popeye.

I’m sailing a dream tonight.
I yam what I yam what I yam.
I tack my pram against the wind
As these waves fossilize.

I have a dream sketched in charcoal night.

Lifelines

r edgar

The sun was peach, the water blue
They both eased their way into this evening's charcoal dusk.
I speak, and ship horns interrupt
bass clarinets with their wood throats cut
This day is dying darlin'
Here, floating off your shore.

A path was here, but's now defaced
The waves erased conquistador footprints long ago.
Hearts and doors have opened and shut
fresh homes built with their front yards cut
My thoughts are skippin' darlin'
Shells tossing from your shore.

What would it be to know what Mother Earth feels
With her centuries of blood and tragic appeals
Bleached from concrete and sky,
Leached from soil and shivering Loreli.
The opaque truth that for we who are alive
Life's measures can be found after sensing that we die.

The sky is red, the water black
The rising lights force widening cracks into morning.
A wing descends to kiss a mutt
Boats are drifting with their lifelines cut
A new day is comin', darlin',
As light creeps, up this sandy shore.

Lullabye for Stardust

music: r edgar lyrics: ethan place

You rose up on a vapor trail
Then seven years you flew
On solar wings, the why of things we wish we knew…
So off you went to catch a comet's tail.

You blinked at storms as big as worlds
Volcanoes breathing ice
Inertia's course back to the source of carbon's splice…
Where flecks of stars gave birth to helix curls.

Prowling through the stellar winds
An orbit now you'll keep
With lullaby ones and zeros
We'll sing you sound to sleep, to sleep…

Gravity's fools, we thrash and turn
Insomniacs with clocks
So slow, so fast weighed down at last by ticks and tocks
We close our eyes and see the rocket's burn.

Prowling through the stellar winds
An orbit now you'll keep
With lullaby ones and zeros
We'll sing you sound to sleep, to sleep…

Sends You Love

r edgar

Her cabin's shrouded with a store of clocks
And her tics overtook her tocs
The storms and roiling dreams won't stay outside.
Her lovers have all sailed across the sea,
The pirates don't get who she's supposed to be
She puts a ten on the bar, slides it to the other side.
Al Hamilton sends his love...

She sways to a life withdrawn and drained
She's been bled white, but can't feel her pain
Lifted eyes to heaven but found a rusty sky.
Well her aspiration's down to fumes
Her love is floating in another's ruins
Tips her Japanese Sombraro, starts to cry.
Arthur Lee sends his love.

Her falls are heavier than they used to be
And the wind cuts its way to her heart
Her clothes are lighter than they need to be
She sips another whiskey in the quiet and the dark.

Now a a slipstream melody floats her keel,
Floating away from her Catherine wheel,
Pumps her ashtray heart with a breath of salty spray.
Now she rides the stool beneath her.
Swallows fire enough to heat her
Sails a napkin from her lap into a wake that disappears.
Her dreams all send their love.

Daydreams

t goering

It's a cold wet windy raw ragged dirty hungry morning
Stranded in the wild about a million miles from home
Thank God I still got my sense of humor
Or I could never get to where I'm going.

I spent last summer looking for a dream to steal
But the ways of the prophets seemed never to be revealed,
to me

So good-bye Mary I'm leaving you behind.
I finally figured out you were just a picture in my mind
And I don't need you to try to keep on believing
And daydreams don't cry just because of changing seasons.

Lured by the singing from a distant desert isle
Drawn by some fantastic siren song
Wrecked upon the shoals of desolation
Before I even knew something was wrong.

I spent my money on a ticket down at the station
For the railroad ties that bind the entire nation together

So good-bye Mary I'm leaving you behind
I finally figured out you were just a picture in my mind
And I don't need you to try to keep on believing
And daydreams don't cry just because the train is leaving.

I guess I better get going let me get my shoes on
So many roads, I guess I better choose one
Don't mind the dogs all barking as I pass by
They'll be curled up sleeping in a little while

All you hungry hobos have to roam
Hanging you hat on any hook you call home, where it's warm.

So good-bye Mary I'm leaving you behind
I finally figured out you were just a picture in my mind.
And I don't need you to try to keep on believing
And daydreams don't cry just because they got a good reason.

The River Part Two

r edgar

We've been talking forever, 'bout what we shared, what we shed.
Our feet don't dangle from the edge of the bed.
One sweet kiss from you I'll taste twenty years.
The wrong word from me can still lead to tears.

I was walking near the border, away from the sun
Shadows were relaxing, and my work was done.
Flowers were all glowing, deep from within.
I felt a moment of grace, felt the evening begin.

Sip your cup of coffee, stare into my eyes,
A bird song lives forever, long after a heart dies.
For all the rivers that you see, there's more to flow by,
And when a breeze is blowing, what I hear is your sigh.

I saw a kid just yesterday, what kind of uniform
Was wrapped around his chest? Such a coercion to conform...
No way his years could comprehend his trade for some gambler's debt.
How does he turn accountable for the tears some torn soul wept?

Oh the songs that we're playing, they've been playin' forever.
The expressions here borrowed, may leave me a beggar.
There's a bus'at stops nearby, leavin' on it's no crime.
If we don't meet again, play our music some time.

Running

r edgar

Running, running, running,
Don't we all enjoy passing the world by?
This is how we stay on our own
This is how we extend our eyes.
This is how we review our days
This is some poor schlep just trying to stay dry.

Running, running, running,
Yeah we've been running o'er the loam.
Run from momma, run from dad,
Run until we don't feel burdened by home,
Run until our partners are memories,
Run until we turn and we're alone.

In outer space, down is where your feet are
I don't know if life is a launch or some pulsing star.
We build our careers, pull books from our shelves,
Read our selves, touch each other's trust,
Sounds strobe around us,
Running, running running

Running, running, running,
All my life I've been running away from myself
Running through jobs that are snake skin hopes,
Running with only a blind man's stealth,
Running through ages that are dreams won and mastered,
Running with a gyroscope's mandala wealth.

Running, running, running,
All my life I've been running toward your face
Breaking through mirrors and skeleton-key gates,
Pushing through dark waves for a sunshine trace,
Rushing sometimes past fallen strangers,
Perhaps I've pushed past understanding and even grace.

I lift my foot defying what all gravity seeks,
Every foot step shared alike by destitutes and sheiks,
Searching for an instance of something so unique
It trips me up, breaks my repeats,
Frees me from this mandala,
There are millions also running,

And I am running, running, running,
Running, running, running.

Moving Day for the Soul

music: r edgar lyrics: ethan place

It's daylight at the loading zone
Time to pack it in
Tape up the box, unhook the phone
End where you begin.

Look at all the things you bought
Each gift they ever gave ya
What to take and what to toss
What keepsake's left to save ya?

Well It's moving day
Moving day for the soul.
Brighter lamps for deeper mines
Wiser fools for weirder times
Moving on.

The van pulls up and opens wide
Emptiness on wheels
Belongings going for a ride
Bound for parts unreal.

Look at all the things you thought
Each faith they ever sold ya
Twisted keys won't fit those locks
You can't take 'em with ya.

Well It's moving day
Moving day for the soul.
Brighter lamps for deeper mines
Wiser fools for weirder times
Moving on.

Blue Tip Match

r edgar

Well she was hot as a blue-tip match
And twice as easy to spark.
On sunny days she’d back out her Rambler,
top down and four on the floor,
she’d drive to the beach and park.

All the kids with their wax-pocket baggies,
wanid’ta scan the skies with her
six-button a.m. stare,
But no one’s sting-ray’s stashed in her back seat,
when she went drivin’,
she’d go over the bridge, over there.

Got a one-and-a-half bath cinderblock house,
Venetian blinds wink and wave.
St. Augustine grass so mean it ate sandspurs, boy
you drop a skeleton key in there
the next thing that opens is your grave.

Walk inside for an iced tea and bring Today in with you
and throw it on the card table like a prayer,
But she’s up and out early, bare feet feeling the pedal push back,
she’s gone over the bridge, over there.

She keeps out the salt with her fiberglass door
She keeps in the cool with her girlwatchers.
Well you can dive down deep in her butterfly chair
But you’re the underdog at the overpass
‘cause before you can come up for air,
She’ll be drivin’, over the bridge, that one over there.

When you’re a twelve-year-old boy you know how far you can throw a rock.
And when you’re racing through the scrub brush
you’re the day-manager of the entire block.

But when those six cylinders pull into that driveway ‘cross the street
you hear the music stop
and that door slam
and the dogs bark all the way ‘till the world stops turnin’,
She’ll leave the front door open
‘cause that little breeze
is the only thing that keeps her from burnin’.

'Cause she was hot as a blue-tip match
and twice as easy to spark.

If Duchamp Drew Beautifully

r edgar

The thing about bridges is...
well, ya know
you’ll descend on
the other side.
The thing about life is…well, ya know…
It’s a bridge.

While the shortest path between
us is a straight line
Only factory workers move from
day to day, that way.

The thing about chance is...ya know
A lifetime of dice rolls
Never produced a single 3-chord blues.
The thing about chance is… well, ya know…
It’s a cage...

And computers can draw both mechanical lines
And lines flowing between thin and thick
Finally rising like some heaven-headed sign.

The thing about youth
Is …ya know
It so often confuses
meaning with truth
And the thing about aging is… well, ya know…
It’s a life.

If Duchamp drew beautifully
His waterfall would descend wetly.
If Duchamp drew beautifully
His waterfall would descend wetly.
...if Duchamp drew beautifully.