Thursday, July 3, 2008

Afraid Again


Has anybody worked with lyrics before? This came to me in lyric form (but without a melody). I'm not sure what to do with it. I'd love input/help!


I was in the desert
and didn't feel the burning
until I asked for sleep
and my blistered feet
kept me awake.


You were breaking me
and I continued to bend,
only felt the hairline cracks
miles and months later
when I was afraid again.


I'm afraid again.


I thought I'd finally passed the test
but the teacher asked
me to forget, not sit
in his empty classroom.
The books are gone,
the blackboard's creak,
the morning sun, it's moving on.


Even the lessons/ even the loves/ even the heartaches/even the homes/ even the mountains/ even the seas/ the rocks of remembrance/ even the trees/


The clothes you found that finally fit/ the songs you repeated/ the fires you lit/ the voices on the train/ the voice of the rain/ the fish and the hooks/ the myth and magic and address books


The rope and ladder/ the billowed sail/ the videocamera/ and checking your mail/ the words of caution/ the hands of regret/ the glimpse in the rearview/ your reaching neck
they're fading like water/ like colors/ like sand/ the sea's receding/ I'm afraid again.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Be Still

Be Still

Here in the interlacing light upon the water
hear the water gurgle in the crevasse, in the
crack the cackle of pebbles clattering,
chattering and there still the light blinding
bright where the sun left its white streaked
as heat on the eye made shy.

Seek me out in the sea of sand along the
sea and pick me up again, an agate against
the breaking beach but not long lost along the
breach between the sand and sea and splash.

Tangle sight in tree’s roots unrooted at every
angle, bleached silver slivers reaching sunward, webbed
and warding angels in this window twined and twisted as
the cathedral all carved stone and shivers of shadows
waiting, praying wistful for the angels in the angles in
the glory-giving white.

Where the sun sets low the leap of flashing
fish sets dancing flipping spinning fins and flecks
flicked here, there and fish dancing and rocks singing
and light beaming, silver prancing on the sea and spinning
in the dance from depths and droplets drop and fling.

From the surface of the sea, a face a
seal surfaced, selkie silk and lace
sleek and smooth and swam a ways to
sooth the soul that seeks for selkies lost
without a trace and back forever pace the
place of lack and first lost lace.

Aside my side the sea tern hops and in his turn
a loon swoops to drift inside the swell and fall of
tide and rise and fade while in the shade the drops of
breath hang and hover over holiness and Hades for
to breathe from inside a breath is holiness and holds the
hand of Hades off, a vapor from first breath to drift and
fall and fade yet rise on hearth of heaven, in hope and holy
there with glory the lore from earth of hearth made home and
gone the drift of first and last, the swell and fall of fade.