Solid Conservative Sentence

What they call classy these days used to pass as common decency.

Femme Noir

A Romance Novel

Stockholm, 1973


"You don't love this life.
You've just been in its grasp for so long,
that you don't know what you'd be
without it."

Then he unsheathed his dagger...

Don't Awaken Sleeping Reason

Awaken the Sleeping Giant!

Arizona

I wrote 4 songs tonight

Now, that's not exactly true

I wrote 1/2 of one

finished 2

and took a cold, hard, look at an old 1

But finishing something

is a hell of an accomplishment

anyway

and that aint but half of what I did

I'm fibbing,

I didn't mean to

I just realized something just now

that makes me from a second ago

an outright fabricator

I might've wrote 1 and a 1/2 songs today

because two of the songs I finished

are mashed together

and I don't know what that counts for

Lately, I've been thinking alot about Art

I got this professor

always talking about "designation"

(which I don't give a shit about)

as a necessary requirement

for something to be Art

Like we all need more Authorities in our lives

So I dedicated a song to R.G. Collingwood

its an expressionist lyric

he oughta like that

"Collingwood"

When you were a writer

You were in love with your words

You wrote all those letters

Until you lost your nerve

What did you see?

Only the Mountains and the deep blue Sea

& What did you hear?

Only the Birds, Only the Birds, Only the Birds

Were There

Now that you are a painter

You're in love with all you see

You paint all your pictures

& then you ask it of me

What did you see?

Only the Mountains and the deep blue Sea

& What did you hear?

Only the Birds, Only the Birds, Only the Birds

Were There

~

There's an outro to it too

but there's no words

I like to think of it as a Dillemma

which is the same thing to me

as saying the Blues

It brings the melody into a more major

but way stranger space

in 6/4

(With the #s indicating number of measures)

Em G Em G F Fm B7 C7 Cm7 G B7 Em

2 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 2

It's sad and triumphant

the way I like 'em

Really wants a horn

but they're hard to find around here

and I find my mind

drifting off to Arizona

and my lonesome heart

trailing behind

I already done fucked that up

because all that above

comes at the end

and now its all out of order

but it don't matter really

there are always ways

of stranding things together

I wrote the next section first

and its been a minute too

but the words got me thinking

and seeing them in their own light

reminded me of a friend from the Service

That aint true really either

I knew the guy

but I wouldn't call 'em a friend

We were in the same company

and had a couple chances

to shoot the shit together

anyway

he was killed in Afghanistan

guess a week or so now

but it breaks my heart

anyway

"Snow Song"

That idiot drummer

He marched through the summer

Beating his drum

Till it snowed, playing,

"I'm Coming Home"

"I'm Coming Home"

Your soft-hearted sister

She's down by the river

Singing the only song

That she knows

"I'm Coming Home"

"I'm Coming Home"

Because

The Bells in the Alley, they clang

So Slow

And the Horns in the Army, they sing

So Slow

So don't Go

Back to the Snow

Without Me

~

That last bit I wrote

thinking about that kid

AJ Creighton

Who knows if he'd appreciate it

Anyway,

Dedications from Strangers

are more necessary to Art

Than Designations from Anybody

I know they don't make much sense together

at first glance

and they're not really supposed to

in any logical way

but its never been about logic

Anyway

Who Remembers the Swine Flu?

I’ve been under the weather for a few days,
lethargic, queasy, & aching all over
It feels like it hasn’t stopped raining for 2 weeks

At the first sign of true sunlight,
I put the dog on her leash, and headed out the door
the warmth lasted for about a block
but that block was crisp & green & wet under foot
and we darted between the puddles
squaring the block before heading in under gray sky

The neighbors are a big Hispanic family,
I got no idea how many people live there,
but they’ve always been pleasant,
kids playing in the street,
a couple of dogs in the backyard.

I couldn’t tell you if it was somebody’s son, friend or cousin
but there was a kid standing in the driveway
fresh haircut, in his Graduation Robes,
posing in front of the house for a couple of photographs
they’d missed the best chance they had
for a window of good light by no more than 5 minutes
dark skies, the glistening pavement,
welcome to the working week, kid.