Freedom

Freedom covered me in bubble wrap To protect me from life Because that stuff would surely kill me. It took a while before it was safe to feel again. To look at my face in the mirror and count the bruises. It took a while before I believed That smiles were not a disguise To hide evil.   Freedom didn’t come with a map To help me find my way back home, Or to navigate...

Man, you could build a whole brand around this thing Handle the snakes And orchestrate all kinds of glittery manifestations Jittery hands and holy demonstrations Slippery tongues and wordless intonations Oh you don’t speak em? Just take some words and tweak em That’s right, that’s the ticket Show it to the man at the door And he’ll tell you where to stick it But just between you and me? Forget it It’s not a brand...

What was it? I’ll tell you what it was It was a dragon A fire-of-hell-breathing dragon A black beast of death-muscle-and-teeth dragon   And I was no hero I was a child Afraid of the night So I fled from that beast   I buried myself in the earth And deep under the sea I built my own prison And bore the darkened marks On my flesh Where the concrete walls Taught me with their...

The room itself? There never was much light in there So when I tell you what happened I hope you’ll cut me some slack But as I stood in this room today That I had known so well for my entire life That chair in the corner The bed against the far wall How many times did I collapse on both? A heaping pile of angst Or bellowing laughter contagious like dust Never once noticing...

She is the one Who first loved me enough To show me I could be A better man than I was   And you can imagine How that worked out... Can a man with an inner-tube And a cooler full of beers Turn a stagnant pond Into a mighty river Just by jumping in?   And yet… She is the one Who continued to love me enough To try to chip away To grind and...

Why do you look for the living One Among the dead?   Do you lift your eyes to the stone cold stars Counting them like atomic sheep Fast asleep Till they fall like rain Do you? When that first atom broke in two And light poured out of molecular cracks Splitting hydrogen from helium From only one there came each of em When the atom broke did it break just for you? Or was it...

The land that lay directly behind me as I painted this distant view from a lonely rolling ridge on California’s central coast belongs to none other than Neil Young, and having learned this I couldn’t help but recall a recording I’d recently heard of him singing the old Woody Guthrie tune This Land is Your Land:   As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “no trespassing” But...

I was made in California Born in Disneyland With a busted lung And a broken set of wings So it’s been foot on the ground And wheel on the road Up and down In exile ever since To a cold and distant shore Far from the evening palms And citrus mornings Roots bound In the floor of the van Stunted growth With a beautiful view Has been my holy rolling   Double yellow Single broken...

I was just a young word that meant “monkey” In a beautiful terrible word that meant “jungle” Under the dome of a bright blue sky From which the eagle dipped down And rose again with monkey in its claw Beside a crystal clear river Full of a certain monkey-devouring fish Beneath the soaring green tree With branch made of venomous snake And limb full of golden chimpanzee Those greedy thieves they were mean And one...

I’ve been gone awhile But I’m alright I’m not asleep At this table of thankfulness I just died a little bit Thankfully dead Dead to a life that once Held me like a prison cafeteria Freedom is not what I thought It’s better And a little more disorienting Like a familiar market When they change the location Of the bread aisle And the wine aisle Oh, look at that... Fresh fish! And sweet potatoes! Mushroom...