bringing it all back home
I.
The most this homeless ghost can boast is: "see this poem? i own this" - because we're getting older and beginning to find ourselves on long roads passing the bones of armadillos and the scabbed over eyes of trees and she won't stop singing and its all right and everything is all right all I want is water to float in. All I want is my own ocean - all I want is my skin to hold my paper spirit and a beer - coz our hands clasp gold and we clasp hands - and let loose all our veins on the pavement. I don't want to be overcome by the short paralysis of sleep so we talk about the hotels famous people died in and I think how the shoulder of the road is home to many dead animals.
II.
Descending Monte Verde with stone wings, sun on spine, steel fingernails - throwing our bones in the earth - chewing on rocks - we are indigenous - since this son's spanish tongue vanished lungs damaged from loose cigarettes and city smoke - now heavy hearts hang on horseback but heads held high and only inches from the sky -
III.
And if we really wanted we could grow scales and swim to where we wouldn't have to work and it'd be easy. And while it rains and the prophet tells love, no woman will cry and not the red armed mothers sweeping perpetually muddied stone steps until quiet death.
IV.
carstrucksbusses are all phantoms and so they pay their tolls - we're still driving and we're still silent and not speaking because there is hardly any need now - not with Ani Difranco on the stereo and our own telepathic discourse filling in the quiet - and the ring on her finger is catching the last fast fading rays of sunlight just before sinking - and the air of the trails we beat, crazy and in sandals, the last couple of days through mud and mountains, still fresh in our veins and love is still a crazy little thing, mister mercury - the path is set before us and we walkin'
The most this homeless ghost can boast is: "see this poem? i own this" - because we're getting older and beginning to find ourselves on long roads passing the bones of armadillos and the scabbed over eyes of trees and she won't stop singing and its all right and everything is all right all I want is water to float in. All I want is my own ocean - all I want is my skin to hold my paper spirit and a beer - coz our hands clasp gold and we clasp hands - and let loose all our veins on the pavement. I don't want to be overcome by the short paralysis of sleep so we talk about the hotels famous people died in and I think how the shoulder of the road is home to many dead animals.
II.
Descending Monte Verde with stone wings, sun on spine, steel fingernails - throwing our bones in the earth - chewing on rocks - we are indigenous - since this son's spanish tongue vanished lungs damaged from loose cigarettes and city smoke - now heavy hearts hang on horseback but heads held high and only inches from the sky -
III.
And if we really wanted we could grow scales and swim to where we wouldn't have to work and it'd be easy. And while it rains and the prophet tells love, no woman will cry and not the red armed mothers sweeping perpetually muddied stone steps until quiet death.
IV.
carstrucksbusses are all phantoms and so they pay their tolls - we're still driving and we're still silent and not speaking because there is hardly any need now - not with Ani Difranco on the stereo and our own telepathic discourse filling in the quiet - and the ring on her finger is catching the last fast fading rays of sunlight just before sinking - and the air of the trails we beat, crazy and in sandals, the last couple of days through mud and mountains, still fresh in our veins and love is still a crazy little thing, mister mercury - the path is set before us and we walkin'