“Broad Strokes of Mind” album lyrics, 2010

Refraining from any self-deprecatory comments (with some difficulty), I present the following for your consideration. Most of the pieces on this album were poems that later found an instrumental accompaniment which fit them well; a few were written as actual “songs. I thought it would be interesting to print the original poems, rather than the re-worked versions, so you will notice some subtle differences from what made it onto the disc. In the words of the great Stan Lee, ‘Nuff said.




1. Broad Strokes of Mind

I want to speak great gusts of wind that

Open the heart to full sail and soar

with a scream every tempest, cry the mind's eye

in a tear of hair from the beast

forcing closed the door



To moan the dog's groan, the breeze sigh,

Words of rain to explain the turning sky

through the sound of inner ground rising,

fragile lines branching

into wings, spirals of meaning

to wrap the world

in an angel of singing

grief, love, ache of rain

upon the brain stinging



Start it off with broad strokes of mind;

Grab the serpents that coil the world

and unwind.





2. The Rain Still Lingers

The rain still lingers

In that place

Where your face

Falls fresh and cold

As newly melted crystals of snow



Rain still lingers

In the memory of our garden house

And the sloping drops

Beaded up on the rose



Rain lingers

In the same way birth

Remains in the smell

Of descendant clouds upon the earth

And always will

Gently play

Even as the feeling

Of petals

Between my fingers

Stays

After the rest

Of the storm has gone away

From that swath of air where

The rain still lingers.





3. The Awaiting Jewels

Your body

Is only the jewel

The light passes through



So, as much

As I long

To touch you

And taste the diamond air

That floats all about you



I will wait

And instead seek to find

If the light your eyes define

Can uncover the necessary shine

To illumine

The awaiting jewels

In mine





4. Santa Cruz Roller Coaster Blues

Babe, can you feel the roller coaster start to move

Hey baby, can you feel the roller coaster start to move

Start to move, start to move

Can you feel the music blowin on through the grass

Can you feel the ocean as the motion keeps on

Rollin past, rollin past



Babe can you hear the music in the ground

Hey baby can you hear the music all around

All around, all around

Don't you feel like fallin off the ground

It's all about getting lost till music makes you found

Makes you found



I want to crawl inside the side of your brain

I want to get into the seat of your pain

Of your pain, of your pain

I want to feel you like my face against the rain

In the rain drivin poundin soundin its echoes in my brain



I want to crawl inside the side of your brain

I want to get into the seat of your pain

Of your pain, of your pain

I want to feel you like my face against the rain

In the rain drivin poundin soundin its echoes in my brain



I want to feel you from the inside out

I want your music like it came from my mouth

From my mouth, from my mouth

I want your heart beating drums inside my chest

I want you free and warm with angels on your breath



Hey babe can you feel the train as it's leavin

Baby can you feel the trees as they're leavin

Their crumbled brown hands wave from the faces of the floor

Crumble into me and escape from that door



The train's got to move my sweet little maiden

The train's got to move it can't just sit here waitin

Got to move, got to move

Make the most of time and your hold upon this land

Make the most of the music and take hold of my hand





5. Girl Comes Up

Girl comes up to me

With a song

Though she hasn’t said a thing



Girl comes up

Carrying the sun

I was busy

Not noticing



Girl comes directly in

To my field of view

And opens it, back to

A field



Girl didn’t do

Anything

But her own being

So well





6. Easy

Easy, so easy, make it look so easy

Way you do that thing you do to me

Party in a red dress, goin nowhere but the bed

Gotta say I like the way you move from dreams

Into my head





7. In Your Mind

I got the war machine

I got the gasoline

I got the butterflies in my head

Got a shadow’s gleam

Like a backwards dream

Got a famine that's never been fed

Well the lights are on

But the sun is gone

Down in the valley below

Where the people graze

The dead shoppin malls

Like the ghosts of faded buffalo



It's all in your mind

It's up, you’re behind

Losin' touch don't take too much



Had a strange design

In a frame of mind

With a shine like a crystal day

Had a thousand eyes

And only one disguise

That kept a hundred visions away



Had an ear like a hand

Pulling sounds from the land

Juggling words in the air

Had a heart like a star

That freed the light from the jar and

Burned the shadows like a solar flare





8. The Game

She’s got another plan, she’s found another man

She’ll take him for a ride to take a look inside

She will want you just for an hour or two

Until she’s positive she’s got what you can give



She wants to say just what you’ll hear

And then when she gets the arrow clear

Make no mistake, it’s all a game

Give her a break and she won’t do it again



She’s down on the scene

Talking sharp, looking mean

Armed to the teeth for thrill

Hoping her looks will kill



Make no mistake, you get what you see

The beauty’s skin aint deep and

Even that aint free



She’s down on the street

Slicing up new cuts of meat

Looking with a butcher’s eyes

Sizing the prize with knives

She’s somewhere out there, lurking in the air

Like a perfume that blurs up the room



Make no mistake , it’s all a game

Play it with one hand on your heart and

Two hands on your brain





10. Birthday

Today was your birthday

I brought you some flowers

Though it was a good day

You cried all the hours



Though it was a good day

You couldn’t

Even get outta the bed

Even get outta your head



I brought you some roses

‘Cause it was your birthday

How could I have known that

You were callin your death day



How could I have known that

Something deep inside of you died

Just to get outside



You are a wounded horse


On the edge of an abyss.


The holes your hooves enlarge


Galloping so frantically after intangibles


Leave not much of


You left.










I pray for you


Though I have no religion


And hope for you


Though I possess no decision.






Your choices of smoke


Are quickly becoming


An icicle cloak


Behind which freezes the blood


No longer running.






I pray for you


Though I have no reason


But that something


Has brought us together


For a season.


And somehow the waves


You make as you move


Create in my spirit


A permanent groove.






We are both in danger.



So I lit up a candle

To pray for your freedom

You fell in the hard smoke

To slowly stop breathin



You fell in the hard smoke

Not so slowly goin’ right out of your mind

You could leave it behind





11. Lunas

The crescent moon

Is the curled horn of a bull

Or a cup of tea accidentally nudged

And spilling a bright ring

On the tablecloth Infinity



The crescent moon is the reflection

Of the sun’s boomerang returning

And the crystalline light

Of the color white

Burning



The crescent moon is one half

Of a fluctuating yin-yang ring,

The intensity of an eye

Just about to close

Or opening



The crescent moon

Is a necklace of bone

Or a silent chip

Broken off stone



And the crescent moon

Is one thought from the angel

Watching over the café

Whose proximity makes me shiver

As Orion reaches for his quiver

Of night outside and bows, away





12. The Looking

I looked for you everywhere

How many deserts have spoken

Your name

With their silence?



The moon's breast is filled

With the same white longing

Where her milk spills into the silver clouds

And diamond streams.



How long have the rocks known

Your secret

And how long

Have they suffered to know?

You are preaching sermons to

The mysterious ears

Of alley clowns and silent mountains.



Your ghost is a flickering shade

Just come over the hill,

On the verge of speaking

Its truest name

As I suddenly turn

To face a reflection vanishing

In empty air





13. Not to Rust

"How dull it is pause, to make an end,


To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!"

-Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson



Ulysses returning to an empty palace, filled with people

Gone ten years gray with hollow welcome;

A bygone lap of luxury for the easy of heart,

Shadows taking form in the antique gold

Though distorted by curves in the tarnished metal.



Nothing to hold him in a world of ghosts,

No way to feel welcome surrounded by hosts:

His strange wife escorts him through the palace,

Through its multitudes of lost lively rooms

Through the faces of children grown men

And his son a one adrift in the many.

“Please, take a load off,” the man tells him,

Extending a gruff hand forcefully.

All his belongings fit a little bag

Carried next to heart.

“Here is your sword from the ten year’s war;

We’ve many such like it from then and before.”

Tired with memories his mind feels the drag

Like an anvil dropping anchor in deep sea,

A clock stopping and falling over forever,

The world stopping, crust collapsing

And finally dragged into magma.



The ocean looms at the bay of a window,

Sweeping rhythmically through the commotion.

Eyes closed on a phantomy wisp of shore,

A stranger opens the door

And startles him standing on the aged floor.

“Come have a drink,” someone says,

And he thinks it’s his wife,

“The wine is imported from the far shores

Of the eastern sea.”

“Yes, I’ve been there,” he replies, lazily.



The old island forever apart from remains.

His eyes droop again toward a green palace

To dust drooping from a brown vine against the window



And a bottle of wine savored long ago.

Eyes on the ocean, wind blowing grey hair

And slowly moistening against the tide,

Eyes on the horizon, time enough before sunset

And more unknown beneath the sky.

“Just put the drink on the shelf over there;

I’m only stepping out for a moment’s air.”



Setting sail, exiled to the gale,

Blowing from sea to sea for air,

Past breezing years and moaning wails

Cast pale with sirens singing the past-

“I’ve tied myself to the mast

And suffered a taste of death

For new horizon and new breath,

I can’t marry you wife or marry what’s gone,

Even now the sea swallows the sun

And the tide blows steady wind on the rise.”

A raindrop on his cheek from the skies,

The sunset silhouetting on distant eyes,

A tear for remembered joys and goodbyes

And then a look towards the open expanse

And then a look for the wind blowing chance

And then never another look back.





14. The Way We Love Best

The fields are green

And running away from the road

As we move

And you, you’re looking at me

As the sky opens up and we groove



On up into the sunlight

Out onto the blue trail

Fire falling from the edges

Of the afternoon’s cloudy tail

Nothing but blue music and

The song of the sun setting in the west

Let’s head out towards the evening

In the way that we love best



The yellow rug of fall

Is stretched across the mountain grass

And it rolls and it falls

Deep into the crevasses of earth

The mountains look prepared for bed

Or as if something has just awoken them

As if something still sleeps and hides

Beneath the sheets of the silt hillsides



The sun is white and in our eyes

Over mountains off in the distance

Grey and blurry under western skies

Let’s head for the evening

In the way we love best



The mountains are hidden behind

Distant clouds and the rain

But we’re moving together

As the music gets loud and we sing



And it’s on into the shadows

And ghosts on both sides of the trail

And you grab onto me hard

And I grab onto the wheel

And it’s nothing but midnight

With new stars rising in the west

Let’s slide into the evening

In the way we love best

Another Street, Filled With Too Much Rain

Only time can seal the divide
Between us now, the space
That gapes
At all the wrong things in the way,
The unspeakable disagreement
That has replaced
The face of love
I used to see
Everytime we met.

Now, just another street
Filled with too much rain
To take the risk of crossing
And getting far too wet.

Far Away, With Her

Thinking of you
In the small sliver moon
Overhead-

Of you asleep
Among pillowy suns
In our stellar bed

Feeling here
Far away
How dreamily
Your eyes
Must also be
Seeing me

Face the World

Out into the wheel again
The feel of concrete steel again
The asphalt echoes where thundering trains
Muffle the slowly going insane
Grind to the halted hearts of people‑
Out past the church of the elaborate steeple,
Past ribbons of receipts
And parades of sales
Down by the drunken whiskey bales
Past alleys asleep in the newspaper hay‑
Out into business of outside day
Armed to the teeth
With a cheesy grin
Concealed to the face
With a safety pin
Covering shit of the inner child‑
Inside with welcome, outside with wild
Eyes staring sternly in
Downing the soul
Till it barely breathes‑
Out into the smog and weakening heaves
Of desperation waiting
At a stoplight to die‑
Out into the cold with a frozen eye
And the will to give
Not a sense away,
Out into the self-same yesterday
With just a question to ask
Of myself in the glass:
How long have I always hated
The world I carryOn arms I created?

Racing Through Myself the City

I've walked Grand Canyons of mind
Through the narrowing cracks
Of building opinion, suddenly turning to find
Myself on the attack
With the growing rage
Of my own silent minions-
I've struggled to be free
And keep my captors in the harness,
Faced the firing squads of fear
In a tuxedo cut from my darkness,
Searched the alleys and cans
For a single dream
Of something
I felt compelled to call pretty,
Smoked the dying cigarette of a last man
Who tried with shaking mechanical hands
To show me the plan of the self in the city-
I ate the food my brothers laced with poison served me
And spent forevers washing down
Their golden silt goblets to achieve
A river of green forgiveness-
I've wailed oceans and sank their bottoms,
Survived only silently through treading determination
Till life arrived to preserve me-
Been stabbed again and again again
You manipulated, manipulating bastard of a bastard-
Who treated you like a bastard-
You made it hard to love you.
I've knocked over more plates than I've eaten,
Taken the food from a baby of innocence
And thrown it to a sewer of deception
For the vultures to pick at
And watch it grow and pick again.
I've chained my thoughts to a rock
And thrown food to my agony
To feast my desire
To tear my wanting limb from limb
To burn my soul over coals of cold despair
For eternities of mind,
Of pain, of aching brain,
I've lain across tracks of truth to break that chain,
Got bored then ran to start the engine again.
I've lusted my way into holes
I wouldn't care to mention,
Lost myself in warm ecstasies under honey-running volcanoes,
Made love in the pure fire blinding white union,
Had sex somewhere between the sheets of a lover,
Been afraid to love or hate or masturbate,
Share my soul or smoke a bowl
With a stranger
Who's maybe more deranger than me.
I've slipped on the marbles of insanity,
Got stuck on a one-stop lost rock block of thought
That lasted for days then weeks and years
Of teenage fears and endless beers
And LSD highs high on the mountaintops
Over drops and drops of cops and guns
And midnight runs to stores for more-
I'm known by every owner of a liquor store
For miles and days in the dirty ashtray haze of Sacramento-
Poor Indian bums guttered in the street nearby
Make you wanna stop for a beer and cry
But no time to waste in the chase
Of cars and bars and happy-hour stars
All pressed against the backside
Of the Church of the Blessed Union,
Next to the American River
Or maybe even in it-
But let us not hope this is the end and begin it
Before the sun of this muse and the strength of this spirit
Begins to drain down to its very last minute,
Let us not oversight before the vision has set
That this one road traveled is the only road we get-
That minding this body on rocking through Hell
Prepares Heaven eyes for seeing it well.

Set of Footprints in the Sand

There's not enough music in the world
To sum up the feeling I feel now,
Not enough trees in the woods
To find the shape my soul is knotted towards,
Not enough wind in sky
To blow the precise chill temperature,
Not enough hands
To touch the place that longs for contact,
Not enough mothers
To comfort me in this hour,
Not enough philosophy
To soothe my mind in ideas,
Not enough clothes
To cover up what's slipping out naked to the world;

Not enough legends
To inspire these feet to climb,
Not enough religion
To walk this water on faith,
Not enough drugs
To keep me fully numb,
Not enough pictures
To capture this feeling in its motion,
Not enough walls
To make me safe,
Not enough windows
To bend this striking light
And not enough time or sculpture
To capture this feeling as it anchors
Sentiment to indescribable floor.

The Turning Wheel

Assembled from the machinery of land
A human treads the very sand
They sprouted from
And moves through space like a dreaming breath
Which dreams those things the world cannot
And touches with hands the beating breast
Of earth, tracing lines along the knot
Of pines, of slowly growing moss
With legs the rooted trees have not,
With fingers of skin, sensitive and soft
Pushing in amongst the rot
Of wood and leaves they once lived in
Through worms and roving flocks of wings,
Through beetles and the buzz of passing flies
Who long since now have sunk back thought
To dirt in which the process lies;
At rest yet working the turning wheel
These passing thoughts have risen from
Like spokes emerging from ground to feel
The warm turning of the sun-

White Morning

Once, when still too young
To voice the deepest cries
I woke up rubbing fisted eyes
To the hush of rushing
San Diego beach waves, early in morning,
And climbed out of the stationwagon
As children dew, quietly
So as not to wake my parents in the quiet.
The atmosphere was that cold salt dampness
That crawls into the skin and wraps the bones
Beneath your T-shirt, but then
I noticed the birds and ran
And as my bare feet struck the smooth sand
I felt a flapping of wings unwind,
White as the unwritten words in my mind,
As sheets of paper, gusted by silent wind...

My Other Self

I wear all your tears and smiles
In a wardrobe behind my eyes.

The pressure of all your kisses
Still lingers on my impressionable lips.

Your hot breath churns in my chest
And keeps me warmer
While your dreams give the sense
Of a shadow falling
Around my corner.

I know every time your heart hurts
Because the wind gets into me
And I cannot move.

I suffer the same beats,
Hearing an echo to every second.

And now, my dearest self,
If you say goodbye to me
I will have no choice
But to forever abandon
All the shared leaves
Ceaselessly departing
From our tree-

A Crucifixion of Trees - just in time for the Christmas Tree lumber aftermath :)

Telephone poles
died for our sins
in a crucifixion of trees,
chiseled from the limbs
of living bodies

laid to rest over moats
stacked in piles for self-defenses
made to suffer each floating boat
hanging corpses to build our fences

Evolving David

Shore describing the landscape of wave,
Sea sculpting the border shore,
Evolving a David disguised in the rock
Tossing spray from naked shoulders-

The sea's an unsatisfied artist
Always seeking to perfect
The statuary of mountains
In surges, bursts of tools working
The surgery of cliff faces, dancers
Carved from the onward dance, chisels
Torn from each emerging body, Motions
Made of the passing hand,
An impression of ocean
Thumbed in sand-

Nights Like This

On nights like this
My love has all the solidity
Of a wound.

Stars scrape against that place
Where my heart turns
The dark world
With its lava.

It is wind and not air
Entering me, fire
Not just heat
Igniting my internal star-

Nights with the passion
Of nature for ideas,
Poetry for thoughts
And all of humanity
For tenderness.

A love of so much strength
It throbs like a sun
Around the flower in its hand.

But does not squeeze.

The Wounded Horse

You are a wounded horse
On the edge of abyss.
The tracks your thoughts make
Are so vastly intangible
There’s not much
Of you left.

I pray for you
Though I have no religion
And hope for you
Though I possess no decision.

Your choices of smoke
Are quickly becoming
An icicle cloak
Behind which freezes
The blood
Once running.

I pray for you
Though I have no reason
But that something
Has brought us together
For a season.

And somehow the waves
You make as you move
Create in my spirit
A permanent groove.

We are both in danger.

Hiking Nevada

Breezing the tips of crisp green needles
Hairy in the pines on craggy hills
Catching the alpine drift as it stings
The lungs at the peak of jagged spills
Into the mouth of the valley-

Clouds misting the rocks
Of every alley
Where the fog slides downward
In a brisk bite of wind,
Numbing bones and skin exposed
To the cold lick of snow
In the breeze tongue

Soaking in the stoic life
Of wet green winter arms
Careening the lip
Of cliffs hung
With strings of ice

Composing Darkness

I don't feel like writing
But I've gotta hang myself
From the lamp anyway
To see what lights-

I compose the best on steamy nights
When confusion moves
In an utter of darkness
When power is formless
Gasp of feeling-
Then hold it hard
As the senses reeling
Slow till the mind
Can give it form

Till the visions can be painted
Till the clay becomes David
Till the mood is reincarnated
Words
Hewn through language by the motion
Of feelings mined
From intuited gold-

Her Mind's Cloth

The wind wraps gentle arms
beneath her breasts
and surrounds
in a galaxy of sweet caress-

A slow breeze blowing
ignites the spark
that sleeps in her heart-

With eyes of knowing
she sees the dark
and pierces
the night lace
as if it was woven
inside her mind's cloth,

threading each nerve
of the wind's curve
with all the refined
will of a needle
eye-

Your Point in the Silence

Alone
And the room is only an echo,
Feelings inner silence
Stirred from deep moving

Quiet
Breaks forth upon my mind
And then a thought enters of you, a picture
Where it aches like a dangling clock

You terrify me
Because my passion is a terror
Longing to consume
Every fire
And bring it to your doorway
To be stepped upon

As I sit in this room
With only these words and the slow turning
I’m forced to remember
And suffer sharp new roses
Which even now crystallize in my mind
And bring back your vision
To my lips, wet dew to my nostrils
As they burn

A breeze enters the room
So subtle it’s not really there
And my heart smolders with it,
Flares up its candle and strikes
At a point in the silence
Where your memory has entered
Through this crack
In the open window
Of my heart
And blown away
Everything but your singular arrow,
Transfixing my lung
As it chokes upon
This impossible song
And cries

Bender Drunk in a Trendy Bar

It's all stupid
Without you to make it sense-
Here I die
In some drunken sand
Heavy beneath a sea
Of trying phantoms
And grasping ghosts,
Small music escaping
The hole of my alone mouth
On the clinging lip of the bar-
God I'm fucked up
And still writing no escape
While everyone else dances
To impress
The people who aren't watching
Only us hanging lids at the bar
Drolling over cigarettes
In the dream smoke
Breeze curls
Round the eyes
But still feeling
Even that's freer
Than no breezing at all-

Excusing the Flowers

For now, it’s better
That I wear my hair long rather than short,
Though I attain the goals of neither.
My best days are humanitarian,
My worst murder.
I drink gasoline to wash away
The water's perfection
And water to chase away
The poison's reaction.
I am a spoke

Spinning between two cycles,
With one cloudy foot amidst the dream
And one mangled in the realities
Of street machines.
My eyes change depth from surface
To Atlantis,
Empirical math
And irreconcilable darkness.

The music I make
Is the dream I'm falling asleep to
When it is not the lion
Whose hair wakes up the sun.

To explain these oppositions
Is somehow the reason
A poem climbs to its height
And then dies,
The same way valleys
Of disintegrating bodies
Forgive the flowers
Born inside their eyes-

Between Two Worlds

Lying on my bed sprawled out naked like a god
first feeling the wind along its skin,
fingers of coolness with a subliminal hint
of perfumed pollen and the distant ocean-

Half dreaming I turn and stretch
between two worlds, the sheets of a sail and the bed,
sustained by both, separated and woven
through the mesh eyelashes thread
when the light passes through-

My arm moves in every dream,
stroking the air where
the rounded-out ball of a star
now parts the grass of a purple lawn
mottled with suns,
digging fingers between the blades
as they soften, fold into sheets
that my hand lets go as they slide
away into the next wave-