“When chaos reigns upon the earth, maybe then I’ll have nothing to lose…”

Well, I absconded from posting yesterday’s recording here, due to its exceedingly personal and some might say explicit content. But the enterprising listener, I’m sure, will be able to hunt it down, because it’s out there.

Today’s the Seventh, and our recording is about shyness and loneliness and introversion.

Cave Hands

Every day I promise myself that I’ll try
Not to be so alone inside
My head which is where I prefer to be
And if the angels way up high
In their wide white sky
Decide to look down on me, then I
Hope that with their light
They’d send some peace

And I admit I’m dressed for the wrong solstice
Seasonal Dyslexia I suffer from
But that don’t explain
The tremble in my hands

And as the predator awaits with twitching tail
And salivating maw
Before the burrow of his scented prey
I fear the moment that I step outside
My patchwork slipshod shell that I’ll
Be set upon by internecine grief

And I admit most days I think nothing of
The outside world
I’m content to paint pictures of buffalo
Beside outlines of my hands

And as the wetted stone reveals its colors true
And yet when it dries
Appears to be a drab, unlustrous thing
I too abscond from drama’s wheel, and anger’s hold
That they wont magnify
The two or three realnesses in me

And I pray each night anonymously
That the Lord of Hosts won’t identify
This supplicant
Who hides his light
Between two tight-clasped hands

And at the End of Days
When Saints descend, and Chaos reigns
Upon the earth
Maybe then I’ll have nothing to lose
And I’ll step out from my cave, with what I’ve found
Held up high within my hands
And there declare the triumph of the peace

And I’ll search for you through the forests charred
And the harbors dried
And if I find you beneath a pile of
Broken toys
I’ll save you with these hands

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“As if you needed to correct some small accident…”

Day Three of The MayDayChallenge: a troublesome duet sung by two strangers in a double bed.

Napalm and Cake

Yesterday,
with a tumult in her eye
She tried kissin’ me, and I don’t know rightly why
But I’m about to be
Caught up in the storm, she brews next to me

Keeping my body warm
In this double bed
That perhaps from too much drink
I had let her in
And I can’t allow her to think
She’s got the upper hand

But I can’t recall her name, and she’s lyin’ on
My arm that’s half asleep,
And my knighted pawn
Moves to the words she speaks
In the morning light
Her skin a sheath of down, and her heavy sighs
The wind before the storm that she clarifies:

“Yesturday,
When I saw you standin’ there at the dim-lit bar
With your wild, unkempt hair
Your eyes seemin’ far
As though set on something wrong
In a distant land
And I could tell your will was strong
In your heart & hands
As though you needed to correct
Some small accident
And if I would interject
myself in your plans
You’d change my insides for the better,
Here…”

And she moved her hand astride
My listenin’ ear
And she moved her body high
On my body, and
We unmade the day with that gruesome act
Of napalm and cake
And her hurricane
It scooped the dirt from my guts,
The scum from my brain
And for a moment we were one
And all but the same

The Artist has a Split Tongue, too.

To have at hand a vessel

to restrain the dualness

of my heart’s polluted wrestle

its wisdom, foolishness.

I ever seek to edify

but in the wake of my creation

at once I criticize

my inspiration as inflation.

From The Blackbird Variations, 3 — Chapter 9.) Broken/Open