Father of mine
Tell me where have you been
You know I just closed my eyes
My whole world disappeared
Father of mine
Take me back to the day
When I was still your golden boy
Back before you went away

I remember blue skies
Walking the block
I loved it when you held me high
I loved to hear you talk
You would take me to the movie
You would take me to the beach
You would take me to a place inside
That is so hard to reach

Father of mine
Tell me where did you go
You had the world inside your hand
But you did not seem to know
Father of mine
Tell me what do you see
When you look back at your wasted life
And you dont see me

I was ten years old
Doing all that I could
It wasnt easy for me
To be a scared white boy
In a black neighborhood
Sometimes you would send me a birthday card
With a five dollar bill
I never understood you, Dad
And I guess I never will

Daddy gave me a name
My dad he gave me a name
Then he walked away
Daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
My daddy gave me a name

Daddy gave me a name
Daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
Daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
My daddy gave me a name

Father of mine
Tell me where have you been
I just closed my eyes
And the world disappeared
Father of mine
Tell me how do you sleep
With the children you abandoned
And the wife I saw you beat

I will never be safe
I will never be sane
I will always be weird inside
I will always be lame
Now Im a grown man
With a child of my own
And I swear Im not going to let her know
All the pain I have known

Then he walked away
Daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
My dad gave me a name
Then he walked away
My daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
My daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
Then he walked away
Then he walked away

Dan: I want Anna back.
Larry: She’s made her choice.
Dan: I owe you an apology. I fell in love with her. My intention was not to make you suffer.
Larry: So where’s the apology? Ya cunt.
Dan: I apologize. If you love her you’ll let her go so she can be happy.
Larry: She doesn’t want to be happy.
Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.
Larry: Depressives don’t. They want to be unhappy to confirm they’re depressed. If they were happy they couldn’t be depressed anymore. They’d have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing.

True, I’d give my right arm
to keep you safe from harm.
And, true, for you I’d move to Ecuador.
And I’d keep a little farm,
chop wood to keep you warm,
but I don’t really love you anymore.

I don’t have to love you now if I don’t wish to.
I won’t see you anyhow if that’s an issue.

Because I am a gentleman,
think of me as just your fan,
who remembers every dress you ever wore.
Just the bad comedian
your new boyfriend’s better than,
cause I don’t really love you anymore.

There’ll be some day when your eyes do not enthrall me.
I’ll be numb, I realize you’ll never call me.

Cause I’ve read your horoscope,
and now I’ve given up all hope,
so I don’t really love you anymore.

In the reptile room,
Where the baby screams,
Weirder creatures loom,
Than in all of your dreams.

In the reptile room,
Hither and thither,
Creatures from cartoons,
Slither any-whither.

In the reptile room,
Anacondas dance,
Will they be our doom,
Will we be their bon-bons

And you wanna know, wanna know, wanna know why I frown?
Well I’m smiling, I’m just smiling upside down.

In the reptile room,
There’s an evil man,
In a strange costume,
Do not ride in his van.

In the reptile room,
Are pythons at play?
In the murky gloom,
What a horrible day…

From the top of the flight,
Of the wide white stairs.
Through the rest of my life
Do you wait for me there?

There’s a bell in my ears
There’s the wide white roar
Drop a bell down the stairs
Hear it fall forever more
Hear it fall forever more

Drop a bell off of the dock
Blot it out in the sea
Drowning mute as a rock
And sounding mutiny

There’s a light in the wings
Hits this system of strings
From the side while they swing;
See the wires, the wires, the wires

And the articulation
In our elbows and knees
Makes us buckle and we couple and then listen
Increase
As the audience admires
And the little white dove
Made with love, made with love
Made with glue and a glove and some pliers
Swings a low sickle arc
From its perch in the dark
Settle down
Settle down my desire

And the moment i slept
I was swept up in a terrible tremor
Though no longer bereft, how i shook
And i couldn’t remember
And then the furthermost shake
Drove a murdering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center
And I shouldn’t say so
But I know that it was then or never

Push me back, into a tree.
Bind my buttons with salt.
And fill my long ears with bees.
Praying ‘please, please, please,
Oh you ought not!
No you ought not!!’

And then this system of strings
Tugs on the tip of my wings
Cut from cardboard and old magazines
Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow

And in the place where i stood
There i s a circle of wood
A chord or two which you chop and you stack in your barrow

And it is terribly good
To carry water and chop wood
Streaked with soot, heavy booted, and wild-eyed

As I crash through the rafters
And the ropes and the pulleys trail after
And the holiest belfry burns sky high

And then a slow lip of fire
Moves across the prairie with precision
While somewhere with your pliers and glue
You make your first incision
And in a moment of almost unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
‘Hold me close’, cooed the dove
Who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds

I wanted to say “why the long face?”
Sparrow perch and play songs of long face
Burro buck and bray songs of long face
Sing “i will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay
Just to lift your long face.
And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious long face.
And though our bones they may break & our souls separate
Why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil
Why the long face?”
And in the trough of the waves
Which are pawing like dogs
Between pale-faced and grave
As i write in my log
Then i hear a noise from the hull
Seven days out to sea
And it is the damnable bell
And it tolls, well I believe, that it tolls for me!
And it tolls for me!

And though my wrists and my waist
Seem so easy to break
Still my dear I’d have walked you to the edge of the water.

And they will recognise
All the lines of your face
In the face of the daughter, of the daughter, of my daughter.

And darling we will be fine
But what was yours and mine
Appears to me a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes

But if it’s all just the same
Then will you say my name? Say my name.
Say my name in the morning so that I know when the wave breaks

I wasn’t born of a whistle
Or milked from a thistle at twilight
No, I was all horns and thorns
Sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright
So enough of this terror we deserve to know light
And grow evermore lighter and lighter
You would have seen me through
But i could not undo that desire

Desire..

From the top of the flight…
Of the wide white stairs…
Through the rest of my life…
Do you wait for me there?…

the meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport over the pharaoh
a little while later the Pharisees dragged comb through the meadow
do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

there is a rusty light on the pines tonight
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
down into the bones of the birches
and the spires of the churches
jutting out from the shadows
the yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
and everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
in the mouth of the south below

we’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey
we thought our very hearts would up and melt away
from that snow in the nighttime
just going
and going
and the stirring of wind chimes
in the morning
in the morning
helps me find my way back in
from the place where I have been

and, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror

anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
you taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
though all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I‘d set them to verse so I’d always remember

that the meteorite is a source of the light
and the meteor’s just what we see
and the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

and the meteorite’s just what causes the light
and the meteor’s how it’s perceived
and the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

you came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in
threw the window wide and cried; Amen! Amen! Amen!
the whole world - stopped - to hear you hollering
you looked down and saw now what was happening

the lines are fadin’ in my kingdom
(though I have never known the way to border ‘em in)
so the muddy mouths of baboons and sows and the grouse and the horse and the hen
grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen
and the mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within
the talk in town’s becoming downright sickening

in due time we will see the far butte lit by a flare
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
and row through the nighttime
gone healthy
gone healthy all of a sudden
in search of the midwife
who could help me
who could help me
help me find my way back in
and there are worries where I’ve been

say, say, say in the lee of the bay; don’t be bothered
leave your troubles here where the tugboats shear the water from the water
flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter
and I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I know you better
what they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter

let us go!
though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
the ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
there is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow,
with hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow

and everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
the butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
and my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
come on home, now! all my bones are dolorous with vines

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
squint skyward and listen
loving him, we move within his borders:
just asterisms in the stars’ set order

we could stand for a century
starin’
with our heads cocked
in the broad daylight at this thing
joy
landlocked
in bodies that don’t keep
dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
till we don’t be
told; take this
and eat this

told; the meteorite is the source of the light
and the meteor’s just what we see
and the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

and the meteorite’s just what causes the light
and the meteor’s how it’s perceived
and the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

The Japanese girl in the raincoat is really a spy
One can tell by the serious way she smokes
But the man she is with is just an ordinary guy
One can see by the look in her eyes as she laughs at his jokes

She walks to her car and waves goodbye
And he smiles and looks up at the Paris sky
All dusty and rusty
The sun is going away
For tomorrow will bring rain

All the lights in the night make this city so pretty and gay
But I wonder sometimes, don’t these people ever go home
And whatever they’re smoking or drinking or thinking or saying
Makes me feel a little bit younger and less alone

I don’t think of the dreams I had in my life
I don’t wonder what ever became of my wife
And I button my jacket to ward off the wind and the pain
For tomorrow will bring rain

The old man who’s feeding the birds was once a great singer
Though you probably wouldn’t know his name
But in the hearts and the minds of those
There the memory lingers
Of those soft summer nights he and Charlie Parker
Shared the very same stage

And he watches the children run and play
And he watches the pigeons all fly away
And none of them knows that he’s 80 years old today
And that tomorrow will bring rain
Tomorrow will bring rain

Collideascope
Careful, don’t look down the wrong end
You will see ships that fall out of the sky
Who put that nail in your eye?
You make me want to cry with your…

Collideascope
Everything looks smashed and broken
You will see fishes that drown in the sea
If you don’t alter your mind
I’d hate you to go blind, why don’t you

Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper?
If you doze much longer
Then life turns to dreaming
Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper
If you doze much longer
Then dreams turn to nightmares

Collideascope
Everything looks topsy turvy
You will see one young girl split into two
One half who’s false, one half true
You better get your glue ready Little Sleeper?
Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper?
If you doze much longer
Then life turns to dreaming
Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper
If you doze much longer
Then dreams turn to nightmares

Collideascope
Careful don’t look down the wrong end
All the world’s colours will crash into one
Monochrome living’s no fun
You’re staring down a gun with your
Collideascope