the western front

driving at two am
with a bottle of rye in between my legs,
with another in reserve in the back seat,
without a mad mother in sight.

and with a granddaddy who watched his brother die at ypres,
and a daddy who bombed the rhine until it shone in the dark,
there's no king or empire with me tonight,
it's all cheap sentiment that ends in some poor bastards death.

all I have is a buzz that wishes that it would never end,
the apostle paul always travels with me,
as he does with those fleeing death in the suburbs of kabul,
from those who say they're there to liberate them

the western front is always around us and moving in

me, you and trois-rivières

We were walking this town
on a another snowy night
and she said
your lies are so big
they have suburbs of their own
and sub divisions full of fibs
you need a transit plan,
to simply get around

so I said
you're an asshole in a bra
and you're becoming the poster girl of your mom
to uptight to get the punchlines
and to lost in the joke
that is your bullet point life plan

we walked past a church
were jesus saves
and jesus bent down
and whispered into my ear
"go ahead and kiss her, you don't know what your missing"

so I did and she said
you're not as clever as mark twain
but you're easy on the eyes
so give me another kiss
and tell me some more tall tales

well there was a corn field near trois-rivières
that used to sing in the rain
and now a box mall stands on the spot
and shits out carbon by the parts per million
crazy enough, its where I fell in love with you

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