you in a brown coat

It may be a mid sized town
but it's too small a core of government cubicles
centrally located,
downtown,
not to walk past her time to time,
she were walking down bank street,
her coat was brown,
she may have been thinking about lipstick
or she could have been pondering a new place to eat lunch,
so I hid in a crowd on a corner,
next to a pharmacy,
waiting for the light to change,
it was raining
and I became another face
in another grey afternoon
but I know you saw me
you took a hard long look
I would have said something
but you've made it clear
so I crossed with the light
and had to laugh to myself
four years of naive sentiment
a complete metal breakdown
three years of chemical imbalance

two hard years of recovery
a very destroyed reputation
and a lifetime of recovery for being the fool



this is not a love song


I want to thank randy newman
for making that clear
I want to thank him
for simply stating the facts

It was pretty bright
up on the eddy street bridge
and when the cards were dealt
someone had to lose and someone had to jump

I used to run red lights
trying to get arrested
I pictured an angry mother wagging her finger
saying where's a cop when you need one

jesus spoke softly to me
never with malice or judgment
laying the foundation of redemption and rebirth
never a condemning word

I'm running now
I'm getting clean now
and standing outside this bar
wishing I could go in and quickly down a few

but the chemicals have been balanced
and I find myself swimming to the rescue boat
a decent lady offers me a cup of tea
I think this is ain't bad this ain't bad

wasn't that a head fuck?



It may been the gunter grass
could have been the seventeen drinks
but I kept thinking that I still loved you,
the mind is a dangerous thing 

I'm now sixteen miles from texas
twelve hundred from home
and I'm still stuck with you on the mind
I can't run away and I can't stay inside

it coming up to ten years 
and i know i can't go back
too many bridges blown up
too much spent on psychology

I know all the answers
and now to walk away 
this is just a personal lament
an inside joke

the of the head fuck. 

Dayton State of Mind


theoretical physics was never my specialty
bared from the uranium club of copenhagen
the chairman of the commission for atomic physics
wrote me saying he had no time for dyslexics

moving along, I fell in with a band of wolves
spreading a flawed brand of nuclear fusion
look at it glow, I would say with smile
this little rod is the loneliest of all spent materials

fraternal twins with duplicate snide comments
shouted me down and called me a fraud
they even published a paper at the universitat of leipzig
I left a discharged tenured professor

heinrich himmler was the head of the ss
he wanted to know about hilbert's theory of integral equations
so I sat him down and we talked over coffee about my future
and I asked him about the death camps and the v-one rockets

after the war I ended up in dayton ohio
teaching teens the basics of atoms
those kids are old now and making amends just as I once did,
and I'm dreaming more and more of the innocence of youthful summers

everything is easy, before you get caught up in it
the simplest pleasures are lost, as we move forward
evil is never in the surroundings of debate or ignorance,
it's found in our curiosity of the mysteries of science

Tout le kit

and this is the spot where I sat hollow.
empty after the worst nine months
of the first thirty four years
shipwrecked a thousand miles from water

and this is the road that took me back to sane.
full of pot holes, inquisitions and self loathing
in time the water drained
my feet touching ground

and that was the trek that led me back to who I was.
through the artic madness of  chemical imbalance
I probably gave up hope a few times but you never did
even though I gave you every reason to

you had my back
when no else did
I got lucky when you found me
I can't say thank you enough

ocd

it's two a.m again.
thoughts are like snowdrifts
and my skidoo is stuck, again
people, places

I'm six , I'm watching my dad hit my mom
I'm sixteen, I'm dropping some acid
I'm twenty eight, my son is being born
I'm thirty three. i'm cheating on my wife
I'm thirty eight, i've hit rock bottom

it's summer
1985
i'm playing midfield
i make a through ball
I kiss the girl, i score on a corner
she's leaving, her coat is gone
i'm falling , so this is what they mean tumbling
like a car crash,

when a second seems like an hour
the ocd is in charge,
it's 2 am again

the record is stuck, the record is stuck, the record is stuck

why i passed on your funeral

I think it's kinda of funny
that I've always loved the rain
must have been a survival strategy
to get through the storms

thunder and lighting
in the kitchen
up and down the stairs
into the living room

never blamed you
but now I know
it took a long time to get to this point
some women aren't victims

it's why I passed on your funeral
I gave up on you when I was twelve
it's the one lesson I'll pass on to my sons
some women aren't victims

even if they pretend to be