I Saw, I Saw...I've Seen
There are so many colors in the mind of Marie
She paints the sky blue and gives green to the sea
There are so many shades in her sinuous hands
She takes the grey out of the City and builds castles in the sand.
The train pulled out of San Francisco at half past ten
It left the station empty and headed out for the vast open,
The wild wild road, it pulled the the years down the streets
And scattered from its windows the landscape with gold gold gold.
The train of the dead, the carriages of the holy
The seats are mostly empty as it rolls slowly slowly slowly
Oh it is a slow train that is headed out for outer space
It is a narrow track its running, it's fueled by sorrow and grace.
The wings of the butterfly flitter in the mirror
The pool grows deeper as the floor gets slicker
Everything floats under the sun
As man lives by the sword and he dies by the gun.
I found the center of everything near a small town clock
Reality's nexus where time rewound, jumped forwards and stopped
Not everything gets to live which deserves a chance to breathe
It squeezed the life out of me and so I ran south to leave.
I saw, I saw, I've seen
I've left, I've returned, I've been
I've broken, I've healed, I cried
I've lived, been reborn and then died
And in the trash heaps and the gutters
Of the City as it glitters,
I found something to hold onto
As the hard wind blows
And a cold rain falls
And the storm rises up
To meet me in
Eternity's hallowed halls.
"There Is" Is All Around Us
There is a burden that glows
In the dark of the night
There are eyes that blink
In the dawn's early light
There is a speck in the eye
Of the burning sun
There is a crack in the moon
There's a fly in the bun
There is a jam in the door
That won't let it close
There are tears that stream
From the eyes of the dove.
There is an ace in the hand
Of broken Queen:
She has been where she's been
And seen what she's seen.
There are dead who relinquish
Unto the forever and endless
There are feet that step from
The beyond to the friendless
There are hands which are broken
There are hearts which are mended.
These are the days of wonder -
The story has barely begun . . .
Don't listen to the lie
That it has ended.
"There is" is all around us.
It exists and it has found us.
We live and we were watched
By the eye that hid but
Never
Totally
Shut.
The Watchers
Along an ancient wall
Under a bleached bone sky
Three wise men kept watching
To see what they could see
The wild dogs were barking
As the fox approached the gate
The wise old man was laughing
To see who was tempting Fate.
A howling came from up on high
A trumpet sounded the revile
An Angel stepped upon the soil
And man did fall a while!
The tesseract it rumbled
It kicked up sand and storm
The wind blew in a wailing
And sent the Ancients
Sailing back from sea
Singing: "The Earth will
Return to me!"
You can keep your wine
And you can scatter your salt
You can break your bread
And you can halter the horse
But that stable door's unbolted
And the hooves are on the rise
And in the sky
"There are more than signs!" -
The people cry -
As they wither
Or they bloom
Under
An
Alien
All
Seeing
Eye
That looks into your
Innermost rooms.
Escape From Reality
I've travelled north
I've travelled south
I've travelled east
And I've gone west, son
Looking for an escape from reality
Some curly haired poet with milk and honey
Sweet-toothed tastes
Has taken the only hatch
But I won't lay his precious soul to waste
I've been clever and I've played dumb
I've jumped that rail and I've
Mixed up that forbidden medicine.
I've inhabited burning basements
And forests have seen my only smile
I intended to go round the corner
And ended up roaming
Mile after scorching mile.
I trotted round Paris
And I worshipped the seven seas
I looked for you and you and you
And I found me halfway up a cosmic tree
Wailing about sorrow and sadness
And the loss of the undertow of humanity!
And the doctors all tried to kill me
And tell me that that was all folks for me.
Oh I've kissed the sweet waitress
At the café at the end of the universe
But she stole my left earring
While mimicking my voice
Then she drank all my brandy
And then told me it was
Not even her choice.
She tipped the lilly
Into the flowery bowery
Then passed out cold
In some rock star's old Rolls Royce.
Orphan Annie winks at you and tells you
It's all the same
She is just too blind to see the
Impossibility of her claims
Don't tell her I told you that
She ain't all that
She will serve you old pie
And tell that you are eating your own hat.
I live downtown but have uptown tastes
I watch humanity go its wild wild way to waste
That Cal Fire burns outside my window
But I don't even get no taste
And my best friend the mushroom man
Feeds me morsels from outer space.
It began so innocently, it started off with
A simple song and a dance
But soon enough I was seeing the cosmos
Rolling inside of a trance
Before me the temples of the sun and the moon
Rose up to meet the City that was hiding under
A watery ancient tomb
And I was left crying as the fingers of the Angels
Wove my hair into their golden loom.
I've been looking for an escape but accidentally
Found the door,
Not to less reality (but oh my ears and eyes) to more!
And all those Kings and Queens lasted twenty seven years
On the chess-board checkered dance-hall floor
Then jumped off this planet and went to hang out
With the Priests and Teachers of the days of yore.
The moral of this story, the end to this fairytale
Is careful what you wish you, or else hope that
Perhaps you might fail
Because the wishes of your youth might blossom
Into the fruit of your old age
And if you are lucky it will be beauty for you
And if you are not you'll spend eternity
Behind the bars of a fallen angel's cage.
I'm going home to unreality one more time
For the kicks and the insanity
Before I get set loose upon some
Divine off-planet playwright's empty stage!
The Tender Side
There is a tender side to San Francisco
Where all the freaks come out at night
They are fed on the scrapings from the poison pot
And stagger, and scream and fight.
When the day comes quickly and the past
Is out of sight
And we measure time in the moments before
And the moments after we saw the light
Do you think the freaks will freak out
Or do you think they will open their arms
Searching for a meaning
Away from Humanity's cruel cold farm?
