AS-YET-uNTITLED ALBUM IN PROGRESS

WALSH

I got Walsh on the line

He lives alone, but he calls me most every night

Smokes him Dorals

And Salem throat comforts off and on

He wants to meet at Three Teardrops

The only tavern he’ll drink at for fear of a crowd

But tonight they’re out

Of his brand of brown

But they got wine

And I watch Walsh making sense of life

Washing time-honored memories down

Wishing all of the oldest’ll drown

I pay the bar tab and leave

As he’s reaching a zenith of beauty and grief

And comfort and ease

90 WEST

Reckoned by graveyards, one historical marker,

And grain elevators grand on the prairie,

The distances tangle and wander some:

There’s no one behind, but yonder come

Headlights, a long bed, the half-ton.

The road’s low commentary

And Buck Meek’s new album

Speak for the prairie,

Beckoned darker.

And calls some,

Bids some

Run.

PENSACOLA

Serpent says he wants you just to taste it

The serpent, friend, he wants you to forget

In a cocaine heartbeat, just that fast

Sinner, have you coveted your neighbor?

Have you coveted his better half?

You have coveted his ox and ass

Say, preacher, how? I’m glad you asked

Turns out your future’s much more present than your past

PENSACOLA PT. 2

And he does a little dance and coughs in waltz-time

Owns a certain Southern Gothic turn of phrase

A hero in a silver hat

The rifle in the second act

And, crucially, a hard on

For the sinners in the back

The pulpit and the pews

Are automotive blue

The curtains are black

Served his country in the last war, the motor transport

Worked in pest control a time, before God’s call

An Anglo with an Asian wife

He rung a bell and won a prize

He’s got his finger in his bible

Where his sermon will be

There’s a twinkle in his eye

There’s a bloodstain on his tie

You might say, Preacher, who?

You might not believe it’s true

But sinners in the hands of an angry God do

You might not think it’s right

Well handsome, you might die tonight

Brother, I’m trying to warn you

The devil ain’t gonna mourn you

He killed a man in Vietnam

Wears a brass ring on this thumb

He’s got a Johnny Unitas hairdo

And a mermaid tattoo

FILTER KINGS

Leaving twenty-one dollars in change on the bar

Howling, Out with the last of the big spenders!

Last of the rodeo clowns

You feel shame for what you ought to show pride

Still and all, I can’t sit here and watch you surrender

Watching the lights going out

Both of us knowing it’s not very far

Feeling our way in the dark

I watch the whites of your eyes

Turn yellow the closer you are

Well, I guess that’s as good as goodbye

You whisper somewhere in the yard

In the passenger seat of an ‘82 Cutlass Supreme

Blaring Glad Girls in the parking lot

A tone poem of misery, though

You had the courage to go

Tonguing a filter king fresh from the pack

Wishing it wasn’t your last

Giving secondhand what you left behind

Fellow reminds me of you

Says he met you once, I say I tried

My best to clean the mud off your boots

HESITATION WOUNDS

I know you can’t read my cursive, but I took the time to word it perfect. Tried not to be unkind, tried not to leave my pride behind. I was hoping not to wake you. We still got time, go on and close your eyes. Darlin, it’s early yet. Light don’t fail me now, case I can’t remember where the door’s kept.

Hell, nothing’s perfect, but let’s waste our time on something worth it. Till a flood of angry words come to make a high water mark. Oh, I see it now–been there a while. And I can’t remember why, just as I’m up and leaving. Blood don’t fail me now, just as I’m bled and as yet bleeding.

And there’s no use staying, when you’re the mistake she’s been making. And there’s no use in tryin to outrun the rain on the Pan Am Expressway, Shame we ain’t together. Fate don’t fail me now. What a cryin shame about the weather.

AT THE DON’S & BEN’S

I step toward a microphone, check if it’s hot, and promise a new record soon. To the very last patrons of guitar rock, who are all in this very room. I don’t know what you see in that clown. Sovereign, your flag never touches the ground. You’re right, as usual, and I’m an engine you started to trust, that quit in the rain. Broken, I wait for the rust at a Don’s & Ben’s. And toast the armistice of bridle and bit, of smugness and giving a shit. And, quickened with liquor, soon don’t give a fuck--all hat and no cattle. To wit: A champagne leather suitcase still sits, carefully provisioned, at the foot of the bed--the both of us right where we’re left.

WITH OUR SECOND WIVES

When with our second wives

Still speak as best we can

In magisterial lowercase and longhand

Prey on civilians and cocktail waitresses

I guess I doubt it

When with our sons’ll reminisce

And carry on

Bring us anything bottled-in-bond

Pray they admire us for the men we were in fits

I guess I doubt it

WEBB COUNTY FAIR GROUNDS WALTZ

Stormed till the border and stopped on a dime

No telling what, as a rule

She’d half discovered I lie half the time

With nothing at all else to do

Fifty to ride and a twenty for wine

Purse of a hundred or two

Drew on a bull they said no man could ride

And who knew I had nothing to lose

And the Eyewitness News

And Miss Rodeo Texas, too

It seems only one heartbeat, one once in a while

But I bleed like the rest of you do

PARABLE OF THE PERFUMED GARDENER

Rose, who’d bare but one breast

Rose, a terrible lush

And if I’m being honest

A booger sugar crush

Rose, a store-bought woman

Iris, claims Christ risen

Claims some Cherokee blood

That all brave men’re in prison

A grandad an extra in Hud

And sings in her sleep some

Iris, my mother’s name

Hollow as a bass drum

Pitched as low as same

Daisy, to intrigue her

Offered my CD case

The Wheatstraw Suite, Pete Seeger

Played I’ve Just Seen a Face

Emmylou At the Ryman

Daisy sighs again

The shape of a diamon’

Some ancient, precious vein

Nick Drake but never Paul Simon

Either Hazey Jane

MAN IN TIGHT TROUSERS (ABOUT A HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL)

A man in tight trousers is something to see, I quite envy his honesty. With nothing to hide but a soft pack of filter kings. My last hundred dollars is spent in my head, what I wish I could buy with that bread. Is a portrait of the artist with squirrels and starlings, instead.

Field Recording, No. 1

“Cherokee Lunch”

No one was as tall as 

Hundred Dollar Bill-- 

Shirt made of gabardine

And britches of twill--

There at the Cherokee Lunch.

Skin a shade darker than

His khaki and hair,

His Perfect Repeater

From heaven-knows-where--

But as old at least as he.

A brother dead, I knew,  

In the rodeo;

His ma from Wyoming,

An Arapahoe; 

His pa one of Ratliff’s bunch--

He never liked Christmas,

Nor Jesus, nor church.

Well, he sat by the fire--

Mesquite and some birch

Booger brought down from Cody--

And sang out of tune songs and

Told imperfect rhymes.

Swore he’d never seen the sea,

But sang of it samewise and

Of forgotten times,

And some Larry McMurtry:

Spite all that it likes in green’ry,

How Texas is only scene’ry.

Charismatic Predator/Native Grasses

Crimson with shame, you waved goodbye, the killdeer and native grasses at your back--the kind of thing you can’t account for, as reflexive as an old pumpjack. The Reverend Charismatic Predator, the Baptist bookstore for his habitat. Cigaret cough and a pocket square--when I know nothing, I remember that. It was the last time we were children, mouths full of baby teeth and epithets, dispensations we would break with. Fully once, I wish I had it back.

Champion of the Breed

Well, I guess you know the rest. That kind of thing cuts like a razor--it don’t hurt at first, but you know it will later. They say he left his robe of flesh, been in the presence of the savior since one second later. And put like that, it doesn’t sound so bad--I know he ain’t a patient man. Whether angels sang or sighed, then, I can’t tell, and that’s a fact. He’s just an empty haircut--he took a hammer to that coffin; she took a chisel to his headstone, “Champion of the breed.” Here, the dilettante of record says he don’t pay for his women, but it ain’t never free. And put like that, who could blame her ass. They say he died a natural death, lacking any natural predator. And I guess you know the rest.

‘93 Oilers

Same bitter ground that grew all that sweet acacia and Wandering Jew. And hardy things with slow roots, that hardly go peaceful when they finally do. Calling mercy down, seldom speechless in that respect. Meaning all the time curses, in an old vernacular dialect. But I would not twice return to the well when I’d once found it dry, reckoning blind from my shadow cast in his ambulance lights. Early I knew beauty and pain came in red and blue: The super blood wolf moon; a languid suite of piano tunes; the ‘93 Oilers; and other stray dogs, who by memory know all the small places the road goes under the railroad.