American Indians

We were American Indians
In the hot summer heat
Playing and dancing and
Stomping our feet.

We washed in the river
Got mud in our eyes
Stole feathers from pillows
We made our disguise.

The woods called to us
And to the woods we did run
Moccasins on our feet
Backs warmed by the sun.

With an old arrowhead
We bloodied our hands
Brothers forever
As tradition demands.

Crouched on a hill
In summer’s hot grasp,
We beat a toy drum
While burning sweet grass.

We played games ‘till the sky
Was tainted with red
Our mighty war cries
Could waken the dead.

American Indians
Now late in the night
Our war cries grow quiet
The moon gives us light.

With notepads and pens
We recount the day’s glory
So we’ll never forget
Our Indian story.

Sins of the Father (Part 2)

I've been running my entire life.
Ran away from home when I was seven.
Cheated on my high school girlfriend
To push her away.
Now I'm walking out on my wife
My son.
I've never been good with words
And even less with goodbyes.
I packed my bags while my boy was at school.
At least I waited until he got home.
But now I'm leaving.
Don't ask my why.
Let's just say I'm cashing in my chips for a new hand.
This life was too small for me.
But the road ahead is wide open.
The freeway is calling my name
So I'm washing my hands of this life.
Maybe you'll understand when you're older, son.
Maybe not.
God, I pray you turn out to be a better man than me.

Sons of Nevada (Part 1)

A heartless bastard
Is what I called him
When his feet hit the floor.
He headed out to his dirty blue pick-up
Where he'd already thrown
His army duffel bag
Filled with his flannel shirts
Marlboro cigarettes ("What a real man smokes, son")
Leatherman knife
And his compass.
My mother's tears stained the kitchen linoleum.
She asked him not to go
And I said he was
A heartless bastard and
Don't come around here anymore
Or I'll kill you.
Those were the last words I said to him.
He walked out the door
Taking my youth with him.
He drove off into the burning Mohave landscape.
I watched from our porch
And spat on the ground where his boots had tread.
I was nine years old
And more of a man
Then he would ever be.

Stone Rose

I gave my love a stone rose. It was cold and beautiful.

She planted the rose in a concrete lot
in a New York City slum.

My love was like the stone rose. Cool to touch, with a beauty that could not fade.

I would hold my love's hand and tell her how beautiful she was. She would smile and whisper in my ear, her voice spiced with secrets, grown in a garden behind her eyes.

We lived in the heart of Brooklyn, above a soul food diner. We could see the river from the rooftop. In the summertime, we would bask in the heat, smoking cigarettes, listening to Marvin Gaye, high in the friendly sky.

Sometimes my love would ask about the stone rose.

Did you find it in a pawnshop? Was it abandoned in a dark alley?

No. I sang a ten-story love song to a gypsy in Central Park. She began to cry and showed me her wares. She kept them in a burlap sack, tied to her back.

Why did she cry?

She had never heard such a beautiful song.

That's a lie. You can’t sing.

It's a story. Let me finish. She tried to offer me fools gold. I said no. She could read my palm and tell me when I was going to die. I declined. She showed me the rose. It was the best she could offer. She told me to give it to my lover. And so I did.

That's very sweet.

It's the truth.

I still don't believe you.

That's okay.

And my love would wrap herself in my arms. I would hold her close, telling her secrets from a world only I could see. A world beneath the city streets, where myth and legend run rampant, like wild things.

She would laugh and tell me about her dreams. She would whisper her secrets in my ear, offering me an elephant stone or the words to songs sung in heaven. I would smile and hold her closer still, her hair across my chest, like a dismantled angel wing.

A stone rose is unfading, unchanging. Just like my love.

So I gave my love a stone rose, cold to the touch and beautiful.

North of 60

Bury me with a cigarette in my hand and a leather jacket on my back.

A song in my head and my heart at Wounded Knee.

Raise a totem for my story, for the few who care to know.

Lower my body into reservation land. My eyes staring up at Heaven and my back to Hell.

The Late Night Fright

The wind is howling late tonight
And I must say, there is a slight
Uneasiness in how I feel
As if my stomach were an eel.

My room is dark, the colors muted
But suddenly, as if recruited
Thunder, lightening, hitting fast
Strike with great electric wrath.

Blankets pulled around my face
My parents gone, without a trace.
Out to visit Granny dear
Leaving me alone in here.

We live on Hollow Crescent Lane
A dreary street with loads of rain.
A creepy place to raise a child
And here's the kicker (this is wild)
My backyard is a cemetery
"All who enter, be ye wary."
Reads the sign above the gates
Perhaps some evil perpetrates
Cruel acts of malice with intent.
At least this place is cheap on rent.

I venture forth out from my room
For if I stay I could be doomed
What if a tree branch crashed and fell
Onto my bed, I could not tell
Would I live or maybe perish?
If only I lived near a parish.

I reach the kitchen, bathed in black
And almost have a heart attack.
Two eyes burn yellow in the night
Giving me an awful fright.

Before my knees give out and buckle
I catch myself and have a chuckle.
For sitting on our kitchen table
Is our cat, Sir Henry Fable.

I grab Sir Henry, milk and cookie
And head upstairs, the house less spooky.
I snuggle down and before long
My snores ring steady, like a song.

Where the wild heart of the night meets the cold morning song, that is where you will find her. She keeps watch over the tired people of the midday sun.

Brother, Brother

There were crisp autumn afternoons
Playing football near the garden
Where our ambitions grew tall.
Rhubarb in the corner, useful
for whipping each other
like boy kings flogging unruly subjects.

In our small prairie town
We rode our bicycles down back alleys
By nature ponds where geese would rest
after long flights across painted landscapes.

We played ice hockey and surprisingly
The smell of fresh ice and the sound of
taping up a pair of skates were golden moments
Turned nostalgic dreams.

Running down the single main street
Visiting the few friends we possessed
Going bowling at the five-pin
With the video cassette section, filled with
Movies were weren't old enough to see.

You and I had each other
And that made all the difference.
We made the most of a small town
That didn't make the most of us.

Patchwork Hollow

I lay down my head
and my thoughts grow quiet.
Columns of light burst forth like a phoenix
Behind my eyes
A final exhale and my lungs are spent.

I am a captive
A prisoner
In the recesses of foreign relms
with echoes of thunder.

I am still and silence grows around me
like a dense forest
Great oaks burst from the earth
and shadows abound.
There is a majesty to the woodland
that dwarfs my being.

I run wild through the trees but
A thicket of bristles and thorns block my path.
I clap my hands together
raise my arms to the sky
And my body becomes concrete.
I bear lightening in my hands
Striking down the brambles and burning the trees
To their very roots.

I am still and a path shows me the way
Through the woods afire
I walk for miles and enter
a dark field.
There is a door in a stone wall
That ascends to the heavens.
Patchwork Hollow
is carved above the doorway.
I knock once
Twice
Thrice
And enter.

There Is A Rumor

There’s a rumor that started tonight
Three girls were drinking whiskey and talking about the
Harmful effects of the sun
Skin cancer
It kills
But the moon doesn’t burn.

But anyway, this rumor
It seems the new boy at school
Jeremy Fredrick
Isn’t all he appears.

He’s been spotted late at night
In the woods by the edge of town
Late in the midnight hours
When it is especially dark
The black sky heavy
Truly
The dead of night.

I wonder what he’s doing out there
Says a rather petite blonde.
Probably hooking up with some girl
Quips a sassy brunette
As she samples a strawberry lemonade cooler.
Apparently
Pipes in the third
He stripes down naked.
I went out once
To spy
And I found his clothes in a pile
Beneath an oak tree.
He must have a dog of some kind
Because his clothes were covered
In hair.

A stony cry breaks the silence
Of a rather ominous night.
As if someone had
Chopped off
The tail of a mongrel.

What was that
The girls wonder
As they huddle close
for comfort.

The night tonight
Is not dark at all
It is in fact
bright
In the light
Of the full yellow moon.