MARDI GRAS BLUES

The woman's gone.

She's on the run.

She took my gun.

The woman's gone.

You hear me crying?

You know I'm dying.

Do you hear me crying?

You know I'm dying.

The woman's gone.

She's on the run.
She took my gun.

She packed a gown

and left this town.

She hopped a train

She's on a plane

A knife to the heart

is no place to start.

The woman's gone.

She's on the run.

Our love is done.

She took a flight

into the night.

Dressed in red

she walks with the dead.

A knife to the heart

is no place to start.

The woman's gone.

She's on the run.

THE MISSING

An egret whirls into the wind,

and then turns and folds in upon itself and lands

beneath a cloud of water;

while in the distance,

airplanes at the edge of thunder

murmur and echo

like the thin mirrors of the ego,

glittering and lost, and I shudder

in the dark and consider

the dead (and all of their voices),

an unwavering remembrance,

a delicate descent.

THE KING IN A COUNTRY OF RAIN

When the rains came, who would have guessed that he kept a secret?
That he knew his kingdom would fall, castles and all.

He was no prophet. He was just a king lost in dreams 
that no one could not quite recall.

When the rains came, who would have guessed that he kept a secret?
That he knew his kingdom would fall, castles and all.

THE GHOST OF A GIRL

Imagine the shadow of a sail moving over rough waters,

the waves like turbines

turning over and over again, tumbling endlessly.

There are no monuments where the car crashed

to honor the dead girl.

There is just a stump marking where the tree stood that stopped time.

Like a limb that has been surgically removed, her mother

and father can sense her presence. Sometimes

they can hear her voice coming from her bedroom

up the stairs, murmuring in a language

that they can't quite make out,

and even all these years later they believe she is with them,

reaching out, just beyond their grasp,

just out of sight.

BACK HERE AGAIN

I am back here again looking for something
that I lost a long time ago.
Something that I left in a box
for safekeeping and then forgot about until now.
Come with me and look.
Don’t be afraid.

The rooftops are still blue here at night
and the stars are so white.
Hold my hand.
There’s an ocean in the wind.
Can’t you hear it?
It’s so close it could almost blow us away.

THE MOON FOLLOWED ME HOME

The moon followed me home, 
its watchful eye 
wide open, never blinking, never looking away. 

There were no clouds, no obstacles between us, 
no shadows standing in our way, 
no barriers of any kind.

There was just an unconditional acceptance 
of each other, 
a connection, radiant and true.