Never Been to Hammond

Never been to Hammond

Never been to Jackson

Never been to the changing table

Never been to the sevens and eights

And yeah I've been to Scranton (4)

And yeah I've been to Tustin (2)

And yeah I've been to a cave for kids (3)

And yeah I've been to cemetery gates (1)

It was in 1999

Her friend died

Leaving behind

A husband and a cold charmed city

It was in 1988

My love left

She said she had

A moment of regret

It was in the seventies

Man-made, not nature-made

Later, I left them all

Kids in a sewer in September

It was in 1981

I went to a bookstore

Then went to an another

Came home clutching comic books

It was in 2029

It was in the infernal pines

It was in 2029

I was in fear of the signs

I saw them everywhere

I traded four for two and two to make eight

I saw them walk away

It was not in 1998

Years roll and years split

Spineless, timeless, why not?

Never been to a believer's church

Never laid in a burial plot

Never been to Oxnard

Oh yeah I've been to Oxnard

Never been to Downey

Oh yeah I've been to Downey

But we are we are we are

Sleepy and bleeding

Breeding and weepy

Yes we are we are we are

Never been to Paterson

Except for passing through in '96

Never been to Albany

Except for holding court in '88

She couldn't wait for me

I couldn't spin the world

I couldn't pretend time zones were irrelevent

She wouldn't cater to me

So when my sister got married

And my cousin got matriculated

I stood by, sleepy-eyed, world-weary

And my cousin just extrapolated

He turned to Paris and Chicago

My other cousin found Manhattan to his liking

My sister found the lowest mansion on the hill

My absence was notable if not striking

Never been to Glasgow (true, true)

Never been to Dublin (except the one in Pennsylvania)

Never been to south of North America

Never been to north of my birthplace, not once

I want to double the final verse

I want to counter the family curse

I want to be better than prescribed

I want to unexpected and unretired

I want to relive the years I died and stayed dead

I want to forgive the tears I cried as I never said

Love is futile if it's only a name

Never been in love, baby baby still the same

December 17 and December 21, 2009

(1987 - 1997)

I love
Then I don't love

Then I walk slow
Down the still road

Stunt men
Women
Dogs and barking bounders


I love
Then I don't love
Then I run home
Stopping for a picnic
In the stunted, runty soil
Of the parkland
Where the girl named
What her name was
Told me not to

December 20, 2009

The Second Lace

When I tie the second lace

And turn to face the door

And walk until I reach the knob

And turn it 'til it lets me out

And walk to where the beach lies low

And march to where my car sits still

In silver remnants of a good run

In black and almost blue

I feel good

Yeah when that all happens I feel fresh

I feel compelled to tell the world

I'm happy and it shows

Might not last and it shows

August 28, 2009

No Refrain

I've run out of reasons
To come to Pasadena in daytime
To ladder up the L.A. River
From my temporary home
Long Beach with its fractured numbered streets
And its cleaved community centers
Gardens of hope and damp flowers
Ferns, fraud fauna, the sweep of history

So I rolled out of that parking lot
Turned right on Colorado and proceeded west
Past Allen and Hill, stopped in the street space
Between the record store and the racist restaurant
I realized that once that decision was made
To go with leather over microfiber
I had no need to come to Pasadena
Before sundown again
That's when the poker games and the arthouse films begin to bloom
No I'll stay down by the water
Writing operas and editing bibles
Counting cargo and capturing malice
Before it spills out the bottle

I've run out of reasons
I've spent too many seasons
Waiting
I feel the end will come
On different roads I'll run
Sad ballads will end with no refrain
And we'll dance into our own hall of fame

December 9, 2009

Tenleytown

I have not been
Sleeping so well
I would prefer not to be
Persecuted for my nightmares
It's not like I selected them
Carried and corrected them
Rather, I gather and cultivate
The robotic and the reprobate

I replace pinwheeled decorations, numerically descriptive
With inappropriate behavior
Colored by lonely penny-ante poems
I used to ask her to read them aloud
I'd sit there pensive, nervous, but proud
And if she'd get the accents and inflections wrong
I'd remember it's the singer not the song

Sad refrain:
Except when it's the song
Except when it's the song
It's always the song
Always the sad sweet severance song
You got it wrong baby, always perfect and wrong

I have not been

Accepting of fate

Throat-clearing as I spit

An "it's not too late" at the audience

If you don't see them there

They're a ghost of a guy with a gun and a girl

And another girl with glittery eyes

And their cats and their kids and mittens and hats

They applaud as the reading comes to a close

They applaud as the moment sweeps to an end

They applaud as the loved one sneaks away softly

As the one who loves him looks down

And the one who doesn't nods and says to his face

You have not been accepting of fate

Because you and I agree on this

Fate is just future; future is just dots on a grid

Together they crooned and capped on the clever kids

Of which they were two

But they is I and he is she

The one who does is the one who doesn't
A is B and C is D

Everyone is one and the same

I should be as lucky

To be as joyful

As the two kids in the D.C. subway

Coming back from a Joe Cocker concert

In 2003, didn't they know Joe was old enough to be their dad?

As they first-kissed their first-date into the deep dark tunnel

They disembarked at Tenleytown

November 27 and November 30, 2009

Bags

We all have a tote bag phase
We all have a duffel bag stage
We all have a "throw your hands up / don't have the right bag" year of our lives
As we long for the totes
As we yearn for the duffels
And sin plenty for the range of our years
But you know, now ain't the time for our tears

November 19, 2009

Stereolab 5

I've listened to Stereolab in a dark car on a dark street
In a basement of a college I belonged to at the time
In an attic of a full house in a long street of a half-town
In my office at home, when I had an office at home
In my office at work. I have an office at work
These are the times
I've listened to Stereolab
Five times, the other times I wasn't really listening

November 12, 2009