Careya

-a flock of ravens and a bald eagle against the ridge line, -a cat struck dead in the street

-a miniature pony pulling a small wagon with three Amish girls peering nervously at the busy road which they share with the fury of steel.

-flocks of white birds flashing silver belly’s in a great circular dance above a pasture of slaughter cows.

-the commotion and haste that arises in the face of death. -midnight hospital transfers, weeping siblings, a doctor inquiring about the “do not resuscitate form” to my grandmother disoriented in the aftermath of a stroke

-chronic total occlusion of the artery’s, and the surgeon refusing surgery.

-holding my father tight and feeling him relieved but surprised when I do not pull away as I usually do.

-I drive to the Strong memorial Hospital in Rochester New York, will this be my last day with you? I kissed you on the forehead last night and you looked surprised. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before. Strange how much I require physical contact from my partner, but not from my family.

-time catches up to you in an evening.

-“She’s a ticking time bomb” the overnight doctor says. (he had just been busy stitching up a skull), “We can help you prepare”, he did not elaborate on that.

-my grandmother is one of the last great American cowboys. A true iron will. Her insults and threats fill a room with laughter at their absurdity and yet terrify the face they are directed at, for she means every word and has probably done much worse in her wild and beautiful life.

-she tells me stories from the hospital bed of stealing cows from the state land up north in her yellow Subaru, and of shotgunning down Christmas trees in the night and dragging them home on a snowmobile through the quiet tree farms of December. She tells me of stealing mistreated horses to give them better lives.

She used to dynamite Silos and highways for her work before retiring, and then un-retiring and working at the corner drugstore in Ithaca for a handful of years, selling cigarettes to the crazys and learning all of the local gossip from the cooks and pedlars.

She’s always driven beaters, lemons, and she’ll lock up her brakes going 50 if you tailgate her on a back road.

She has single handily kept Marbello in business since the early 70s. Two packs a day religiously since a young teen and I do not exaggerate.

She’s what the doctors call ( and they do often call a person this) a medical anomaly. “You shouldn’t be alive” they have been saying for about 15 years, her arteries more tar than blood at this point.

A song i wrote for the lone motel 6 concierge in a particularly barren stretch of Nebraska

-

On a lonesome stretch of midwest highway

I was coming home to you

When I saw this place on the interstate

And said hell anything for a snooze

So I walked right in to the graveyard shift

where a man was smiling to

Well to damn big for a place like this

Here in Desolations muse

Well they poured from me,

the words like wine

And I almost started to scream

“Now listen sir theres a world out there

and I hope you’re making to leave”

I am sure that once there was a dream

Residing inbetween you and this place

But I ask you take a look around

No one else remains

They all left for better days

I would hope you do the same

Hitch a ride on 80 east or west,

or go south if your looking for life

You can start again

Where the cities sing

And laughter rings in the night

It’s alright you see

You’ll be doing fine in a month or two

You’ll be making love to a bride

You’ll be sober struck

when you pay a mind

to the life you were ready to lead

That dream

On the road From Lincoln towards the sea,

Just before Grand Island,

It’s a hell of a view

Down in desolations muse

I was weary, stopping there for sleep

And though my thoughts did trouble me

I held to my tounge

“Just a room sir, smaller than a queen”

It was all that I could speak

Before turning my head

Oh the things i wish I’d said

To the man who makes the beds

In that lonesome stretch of view

Blessed be the twist, the turn, the talk

The unexpected place you never thought

The timing of the rouge and wild needs

The space between the dreams

Blessed be the swift and sudden love

And all the nights you sit with nothing but

The beauty of a life you never planned

Blesseded be this trust

Look how the worlds conspired

With its thousands of eyes

And placed you near

All which you now home dear

Blessed be the pull of quiet stings

That takes you into flight with iron wings

The calling of the world, it’s grown so clear

Blesseded be the tears

As all that you have known shrinks bellow

The changing of the guard,

The winter snow

Now what will you say?

What will you be?

Wring…

I’d like to wring

Those Wright brothers necks

For building the wings

that bring her back west

Parallel lines upon the evening sky

laughing and mocking me,

to tired to fly

She tells me of kingdoms

cut from ivory and white

Flooded in gold

then covered up by the night

What a show,

what a real delightful sight.

But way down here, the quiet grows

and I curse the minds and hearts of those who sought the stars until they rose

In iron wings

They must not have known love

Or certainly not such love

as urgent as mine

For if they had

They’d of never risen their eyes

In hopes of the heavens

and gifts of the birds

It’s clearer than day

they knew no one like her

Yes her,

The one now lifted towards the sun

In the morning glare

she was here I swear

Now just past noon

she’ll be arriving soon,

ten thousand miles away from me,

I’d like to do the same as she

How many pass this place by every day ?

Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?

Well in that lobby in the dead of night it was awfully silent and when I rang the bell and summoned the wide eyes and wide smile that greeted me, I wanted to shout, I wanted to tell that man to get the hell out of this desolation. Wipe that smile off your face and hitch a ride west on 80 or east if you please but do not remain here. Continue on like the rest of us, the dream doesn’t reside here any longer and I am suspicious it ever did. I was boiling but my eye lids were heavy and so I simply asked how much a room was and paid the seventy two dollar price. I lugged my guitars through the sweet stench that all seventy dollar hotel hallways possess and was pleasantly surprised by my room.

A brief visit to Jeff Buckleys place of passing along the Wolf River in Memphis Tennessee.

-

The trail was a simple running path that led from a wooded welcome center decorated in BB king and Elvis murals and out onto an open plateau. There were a few benches and a big Sycamore tree above a grass lawn that fell steeply down into old cobblestones tapering out of sight under the murky waters of the Wolf River. Small silver waves lapped at the shore in a rather lovely hum and the wind was a steady breath against the black eyed Susan. A large dinner boat six stories tall and in the style of the 1920s sat across the canal, polished white with checkered awnings. An amphitheater sat directly behind the boat, strange but fitting I thought and I imagined I might like to play that stage one day to look out across this stretch of water and onto the cobblestone shore where my hero fell.

I was alone, sitting on an off cut of stone. It was truly a beautiful place. I could understand the urge to be here and even to swim if the day was hot enough. I spoke aloud to Jeff and told him of all those who carry on his tune. So many of us affected and determined to live and breathe his grace, his joy, his kindness, and his power. I played his version of mama you’ve been on my mind and the music fit like a glove in the silence between the waves and the wind and the rare hoot and holler of the ship workers across the canal.

I had brought a dried bouquet of flowers, they’d traveled with me for some time now. From New York to California and back across the Mississippi at least once. They had matured into a beautiful maroon and dark velvet bundle and with the addition of a few black eyed Susan’s, they cut quite the figure. I wedged them between a rusted metal circle atop an old piece of steel used to tie off the ships way back when. I tossed a few pieces of my hair into their foliage and watched them dance against the silver white caps that broke just before their feet. It was a splendid sight and especially there surrounded by broken beer bottles and the guts of the Mississippi, it felt like anyone who came looking for Jeff would recognize him in the lone bouquet and like a beacon be drawn to sit besides it and listen to the water whisper. On my way out I relieved a stone and a few flowers for souvenirs and strode back up the grassy hill, my back turned to where jeff Buckley last stood as a living man upon this earth. My father like Jeff’s, and also named Tim, waited for me on a bench under the sycamore tree and seemed as soothed as I was by the beauty of this particular patch of Memphis.

I do feel tried though and the fog lasts after a good nights rest. The poet on the commons sitting under his umbrella in the rain gave me awful feeling. We were quite akin, both well read and well traveled, at least as warriors of the white lines in this here U S of A. He knew Big Sur and the Henry miller library, he knew the sage fields and pueblos of Toas. I’m sure if I had asked he would have nodded his short stubbled chin in agreement at the mention of slab city or steamboat springs. He had kind eyes and I really mean him and that feathered cap he wore no harm, but he made me feel awfully sad sitting there alone writing his poems on a rusted type writer for a few bucks a pop. It felt like I was staring into a mirror. I wonder if he feels as rundown as I do, I wonder if he feels as desperate as I for consolation and recognition. God I hate the words coming out of my mouth right now but it’s true. It’s do or die these days and yet my mind is a cesspool that won’t sit still, I’m caught in all the webs I detest. Everyday I feel like I am polluting my only real assets by slipping into the lives of those more flush than I, or if not them simply the absence of eyes and minds and fingers upon my “output” or at least the output I share in a frantic fashion online. I never show my real treasures anymore. Not even to those closest to me. I hoard them in secrecy and they nourish me, I fear they would fall flat like the rest if I brought them online without a plan. It’s all a sick trap and I see that. Galilea gets on me all the time for it, for keeping myself hidden and then growing upset when I remain unseen. I guess I haven’t quite cracked the code of how to create in the soft splendor that overcomes us at our writing tables from time to time, the lines rush out clear and cold against the page, the melody fits, the guitar too, the whole damn equation adds up. Jubilation, my fervor restored and proved to be a great gift and not just some madhouse dream of a child raised by kind parents. A song stands tall before me and yet alone I am not satisfied. I want to share it with those who might understand it. I have seen it happen before my very eyes and I am now bound to walk this earth in search of that very feeling and those very souls who took a creation of mine into their solace and dropped the needle which rose my voice. Together we were alone for a few minutes. Such a beautiful exchange and a gift it is to hear the stories relayed after shows or in a morning letter from across the sea.

He was serving me in a Chitown bar, his hair was cut short like when he was younger, during his Sin-E days.

I knew he was dead and he smiled a slick smile when I brought up the point. He smiled as if he was quite aware of that fact and quite pleased with himself for pulling off this trick.

He was wearing a black hoodie and mixed my drink casually. Everyone’s mood at the bar seemed lifted for his being there, back amongst the living. We chatted and I can’t remember about what but when the conversation turned to music I asked if he would play a song and he agreed easily. He beckoned for me to follow and left from behind the bar, he strutted out onto the street and into another bar one door down. He walked up to an amp and fired it on, nothing fancy, quite the opposite, a real beater. He plugged in a black electric guitar and the room which had been in chatter and commotion all silenced and everyone uprooted themselves, forming a semi circle around Jeff. He played Lover you should’ve come over. He sang it beautifully and I wept, more so because he was supposed to be dead and yet here I was listening to him, real as the day is long, I knew somewhere in my mind I was dreaming but that didn’t matter for he was certainly real and certainly paying a visit to my mind. He at one point during the song began explaining in a joking fashion the chord progression, it was a little bit of his and he kept looking at me asking if I was getting it. God I was so overcome with joy to be in that room, 30 of us, maybe less, all grateful, all quiet and listening. When he finished I wanted to ask him to play “Just like a women” but I decided against it.

I don’t remember what happened next but I believe we spoke more and took a walk under the late summer sun. It was a wonderful dream and the tears I think were real too for I woke with a heavy heart but such a glad feeling.

an old home demo recorded with the shruti box into band lab. It was my first and one of only a few times i have “produced” my music alone and away from a bigger studio. There is a certain quality in the naive and almost sloppy completion of it that i find beautiful and completely my own. 

-

Oh and if only i might be of some comfort to you,

what else should i wish to do?

When i have nothing now but time

and this restless, wishing, willing, splitting mind.

And You, well you are something whole

something bound and full

sewn from only cloths of all the finest kind.

Like weathered clay the world around you holds

quiet as you go, carful but to show only the brightest days,

sweet thoughts of youth, and easy praise,

a well kept path of steady change

Last night, my first back east, was spent in a fierce lightning storm that had me barring my doors and cowering in suspicion away from the blackened windows, drummed upon by heavy rain. The sky was marvelous when struck in purple flame—a ribbon of electricity, the world briefly illuminated, the rain suspended—as a low crack stretched and broke across the valley like a kettle drum amongst the orchestra of night. I was certainly far away from California now, from the easy days I occupy there in abundance of man-made luxuries.

The movie theaters and countless cafés, all offering the same goods repackaged. Street tacos and clothing stores, Arenas and concert halls, band rehearsals, and trips to San Diego, where more cafés and more clothing stores wait… complete excess that, after such a long winter, I thoroughly enjoy.

My community there, alive in faces much missed, hours to spend, hours to burn with these rare sort of troubadours and wanderers. My lover, of course, and her house filled in the melodies of Silvio Rodriguez and Mercedes Sosa. In her company, all my questions quiet; I would be foolish to wish for more when holding such a treasure.

There in that city, with those people and that music, my youth and my age feel justified and correct. I feel young, like I’ve just remembered it anew; I rejoice and wonder how I ever came to feel so old.

Now back east, on the threshold of spring, the cherry blossoms and magnolias are open in breathtaking patches of violet and magenta, the green buds filling in the grey of ten thousand trees, the black-legged ticks returned in terrible numbers, the songbirds and peepers demanding to be heard, my fire unlit, a single blanket offering pleasant sleep all through the night. It is impossible to be blind to this change of season; it storms every sense, and the music, on its own accord, seems to return to Dylan, Van Ronk, and Furry Lewis. The blues suit this land, and who am I to deny the music its craving?

WHERE AM I IN MY LIFE?

At the helm, in a charge, further than I’ve ever been, and faced by the infinite.

Or maybe the center? The world spinning, visiting me from all sides, changing me from all sides.

Maybe I am motionless, maybe I am carried.

I do not honestly know. But I do wish to repossess, to rekindle, and to nourish once again that feeling of destiny that has always sat with me, ran with me, covered me, and calmed me. In the commotion of voices that Los Angeles possessed, and then in the quietness of my existence here in books and practice, my mind has stopped hearing destiny as clearly as it once did.

Now I am full of Patti and Emerson, of Jeff and Dylan—full of their pleas for integrity, their demands to create something worthy and lasting, full of their misunderstandings and their own confused, wonderful lives.

And too, I am full (much less pleasantly) of Eddie and the record labels, of the masses and collective. Their voices insist I am nothing without being known, without public appearances and sacrifice of my precious self. But what of me? What do I wish for?

I used to follow that answer so skillfully, without thought—a true master.

March 4th

The moon is full and the night pleasant at last. The air is warm enough where to breathe it in is not damming but again refreshing.

Gali summons the organ to life, pressing down the harpsichord and banjo keys, a melody mutter’s mimicking almost Amalthea becoming a woman.

Shimmer shine shhh the room listens,

the moon listens, and the wood stove alone rises up in its own song… pop put crack crack goes Calsifer as the hickory trim is turned to heat and my lover and I are warmed.

A bed lyes unmade and happy against the always creaking floor.

Spring hastens and the moon has risen out of sight, god I am lucky. Beauty at all sides, beauty storming my senses.

Creation waits for my return, I let her wait.

I am desperate to see, the sea, that is truly all I am missing at this moment. The sound of its eternal breath as it vanishes coastlines with inhales and exhales.

Beyond that precious deity I have all I could need right before me….

The warm flickering light like molasses maple sap siphoned and certain. The pleasant promise of the house organ played by the girl in a red scarf and wool coat,

she draws my mind to images of Paris

It’s crowded cafes containing cracked fingers cradling cappuccino cardamom camel cigarettes and quick wits.

The rain flowing down slanted streets of cobble, delivering the city back to its youth and splendor again and again.

She’s never even been to Paris but she sure looks the part.

I have too, the quiet comfort of family just down the road, larger than life, awake, eager, sensitive, and strong.

I have seen you behind bars restless and rambling, ruffling a deck of cards as you talk of all the places you will go.

I have seen you in our living room, yet a thousand miles away behind those eyes, haunted, miserable, and scared.  

I have seen you in rage too many times to count

My mother a punching bag, my mother a screaming figure condemning you to the night

I have seen you a coward looking down to me, trying to meet my stare

Just a boy I was and you a man with a hand slackening around my mother’s throat, meeting my demands.

I have seen you a zombie, a vegetable with blood full of poison, a clenched jaw, drenched in sweat, rotting at the hands of a high.

I have seen you gifted in miracles 

Drunken joyrides leaving the innocent and yourself untouched, the state troopers on strike. 

I have seen you in an apron, Jerry’s tenor filling the house - “We can share the women, we can share the wine” - The aroma of a craw fish boil conjuring up visions of your beginnings. 

I have seen you generous, buying an entire bar drinks. Countless Gifts of excess including my life in Colorado or the easy toss of 50 twenties on a birthday. 

I have seen you mesmerized at the helm of a ship in the Keys, an endless sea before you, the spray of whales and white caps. What that freedom must have felt like after the years away…

I have seen you gentle. Gentle with the same wicked hands that bring ruin and purple bruises.  Curled up with the dogs whose love for you softens me.

And just last month I saw an old woman, almost a decade past the worst of it. She stacked a pile of wood and claimed to be a counselor of yours back when you first came to town. 

“A hard life that one, give him a hug for me if you see him” she said.

I have hated you, I have adored you 

And I have now had time to reconstruct some notion of your impact…

you gave me a sister, You gave me a song bird, and my only one.

There is nothing here to hold onto, and there never will be.

Yet slowly, then all at once, immediacy gets replaced by experience…

Your calluses harden, your phrasing becomes your own.

You can take the punches now, but something was lost along the way…. Or maybe the world has just up and changed.

See it in Richie’s face, his claw keeping time in a bar room on Mardi Gras night. His eyes close and his head hangs. His hand meets the banjo as it has a hundred thousand times before, and sweet melodies are thrown from it.

Without sight or word, he leads the fiddle and upright bass that follow. He is a master and has a lifetime of diligent, broken, splendid, drunk, and festive nights before him to justify the title.

But still his eyes break occasionally from their sunken smile into that nervous frenzy that grips all of us who take on creation as a lover.

Something cold floods his bloodstream, memories storm his mind, every choice taken and not is brought to him with no clear reason or request.

It terrifies him just as it terrifies you and I.

Of course, we have all learned how to quell those nasty moments that summon the power of every doubt and cruel voice that we keep.

Every stage unplayed, crowd unwon, friend born greater, and voice more beautiful. The women who left and whom we did not follow, the town we loved which we still gave up.

The opportunity we met with a stutter, which quickly receded into a thin vapor no longer ours. The pains we caused in voices of arrogance and entitlement.

The silence that sits after our hands lift from the instrument. The room is empty. No one calls, you told them to leave you be.

It’s strange how it all comes back and then vanishes again. The heart is such a delicate thing, and to dream is such a courageous act in light of its consequences.

Yet we are nothing without art, without the great ballads and symphonies, the poets and painters of our short existence. Every decade is filled with us, and this will never change. You will see us in the local bars or before the red velvet seats of some quiet theater. You will see us in wide windowed galleries and hidden East Village basements.

You will see us in beautiful homes of every size as well as on the street, using an overpass as our canvas as well as our lodging.

And despite the thoughts that will always return… we are all, in fact, worthy and equal in this pursuit.

We all play a part in bringing song and decoration to the world and the rest who need so badly something to ease the mind.

Eager tender and true 

Not a second of thirty days misused 

Bless the beginning when two minds are splitting 

every word, touch, and glance here is new. 

You were afraid though weren’t you?

Shedding your mind of years

before meeting my eye. 

kept us all night 

in the shakes and the fright 

until we would decide 

we had said all we’d like 

and I’d pull you upon me to sleep 

And God how I was afraid too, 

Standing naked and laughing 

Undoing my past 

I’ve never felt joy quite like that. 

Then id wash your hair as it 

soaked through to black 

In the heart of the corn husking flats 

Yes theres a world outside this room 

That holds our lives, our gifts, and doubts 

but at least right here right now it seems 

The least we care about

So might we just stay here awhile?

And find out what it means to be loved 

Tomorrow can hold all the rest 

Oh Bless the beginning of us 

Yes bless the beginning of us 

Might I stir old thoughts in you?

Like the 400 miles you slept on my lap

Through Wyoming dead to the Platte. 

Long stretches of time to be young to be kind 

Always east, never mind what we’ve left behind 

My eyes fell to you, never back. 

Now from the world outside that room 

I speak of life, my gifts, and doubts  

Now and then I find myself in need of rest

in all we held

Might I just stay here awhile 

To remember what it means to be loved 

Tomorrow can have me again 

But for right now 

Bless the beginning of us 

bless the beginning of us