One Horse Town
Lucky it’s a one-horse town: it cuts down on the horse-shit;
but watch your walk, you’re bound to step in some.
And any fool can tell you there’s no trick to finding trouble;
it comes up on you ugly, mean and dumb.
The world ain’t too much different from one small place to the next;
you get around enough, you learn just what you can expect.
It really doesn’t matter how you think things ought to be;
they’re usually off target, more or less, to some degree.
Lucky it’s a one-horse town. It keeps the sidewalks cleaner;
but folks avoid the middle of the road.
They walk the straight and narrow down their own side of the street
and don’t wander out beyond the status quo.
But it’s not too much different, this place, from all of the rest;
it’s the absence of comparison that makes it seem the best.
It really doesn’t matter what they think, or if they even care;
so long as you sit here, and they stay far off over there.
Lucky it’s a one-horse town, it simplifies the transit:
there’s only one road out to anywhere.
And you don’t have to worry over what to pack for traveling;
you just need shoes, so bring an extra pair.
The grass is not much greener there than it grows right here;
it’s just different fertilizer and new kinds of smoke and mirrors.
You know, it really doesn’t matter where you think you’re gonna go;
different day, the same old horse-shit piling up along the road.
29 NOV 2007
11.27.07
Like Syd Barrett
I feel like Syd Barrett in a fun-house mirror,
as if the rest of the world has gone crazy;
and what’s left of the light has crawled off in a hole
where it’s becoming bloated and lazy.
Like the tale of dervish whose well was untainted
when the water supply became changed,
and he looked on with horror as everything pure
became somehow sick and deranged;
and then in desperation, he took just one sip
of the nectar his neighbors preferred;
in less than an instant, he too was convinced
that his previous life was absurd.
I feel like Syd Barrett, left grasping the edge
of a dream cut from bright colored glass,
a puzzle of unfinished mirrors and fragments
for watching the circus march past.
27 NOV 2007
11.27.07
Better Your Dream Dies Young
Better that your dream dies young,
its promise as yet unfulfilled,
a youthful willow Juliet
to your enamored Romeo,
than that it live until old age,
when riddled through with cancer scars,
its cracked voice jaded with regret,
it makes your life a nursing home
where you both wait
to meet the grave.
Better that your dream dies young;
so you can shake your head and laugh
when those who posture, pose and preen
still with the vanity of hope
(which is religion for the young)
expound upon their charted course,
imagining the world will care.
Better that your dream dies young,
instead of sadly lingering on,
its beauty faded, spine curled in,
and what was once a lucid wit
reduced to shriveled memory.
Let it go in your youth,
while you still have enough time
to mourn, and move on.
27 NOV 2007
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Sitting here thinking by myself
Sitting here thinking by myself
Wondering what to do
Got no money, no cigarettes,
baby, and I don’t have you
Seems to me there ought to be
Just one thing going right
But it don’t seem to matter much
the way I feel tonight
They say in a dry spell
You keeping hoping you’ll pull through
Well maybe that’s true
But I’m telling you
What Good to Grieve
What good to grieve a faded hour?
The sun has long since filled the sky
and led to moments come and gone
as filled with life as that passed dawn.
Besides, to mourn what has now ceased,
too long, is to remain in black;
and while the new day’s wedding feast
is still a revel, see its shroud.
What good to dwell on might-have-beens?
One action to another leads,
and just as likely finds the course
that from another deed was dreamed.
Besides, the marrow of the past
makes for a poor and somber dish;
it is a ghost of this day’s meat,
and does not fill up or nourish.
What good to grieve a faded hour
when minutes live but to expire,
and, in their brief and fleeting flower
of seconds, spend no time in tears?
Besides, who would deny the dawn
and cling to shadows that must fade,
while life remains today unlived,
tomorrow’s sorrows yet unmade?
20 NOV 2007
11.8.07
The Ideal Band (right now)
So here’s the deal. I play in a band right now, but it’s more or less a wedding and bar band that plays soul, r & b, blues, zydeco and occasional rock covers. We’re a great band IMHO. I play both bass and lead/rhythm guitar and sing lead and backing vocals. It’s a good thing. But there’s something in my soul that cries out for a little more. Something original. Something that’s closer to my own groove, my own thing. So if you’re in Natchitoches (or nearby) and are into, and can play, like the following albums, drop me a line and we will definitely get together.
The Pretty Things: Parachute
Badfinger: Straight Up
The Yardbirds: Shapes of Things
Eric Burdon and War: Eric Burdon Declares War
The Band: Songs from Big Pink
Bob Dylan: Oh Mercy
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This Place
Everything about this place just tends to bring me down;
I look into the mirror and see one more hopeless clown.
The people on the street have a sad tendency to frown
and no one wants to be the only soul left hanging ’round
this little bit of nowhere that some joker named a town,
who’s happier to be long gone and six feet under ground.
Everything about this place was meant to be just so:
straight white picket fences and fake shutters in a row,
with people shut up inside watching television shows.
Nobody wants to be outside and watch the flowers grow
along the winding street that follows where the river flows
but still seems to get nowhere, and why, no one really knows.
Everything about this place is waiting to expire;
folks waiting for apocalypse or when they can retire.
The people on the street seem unimpressed and uninspired;
nobody wants to tell the truth or cross beyond the wire.
It doesn’t seem to matter much who’s honest or a liar —
either way you’re wasting air trying to light a fire.
Everything about this place is tied up in the past,
secured in little boxes tied with string and stitched up fast,
going through the motions like bad actors in the cast
of a show still in re-runs, like a flag flown at half mast
in praise of some great compromise that ends the war at last
with an uneasy silence interrupting the broadcast.
Everything about this place falls down around my ears
in echoes of an irony that will not disappear:
sad people on the street seem to accept heartache and fear;
nobody wants to be the only one left when it clears
and leaves each of us naked with our ledgers in arrears
as the sad charade is ending and the day of judgment nears.
Everything about this place just makes me more depressed.
I look into the mirror and admit I’m not impressed:
can’t stand my sad expression and can’t stand the way I’m dressed,
but thinking about changing only gives me added stress;
and anyway, it really doesn’t matter, I confess,
’cause everywhere is nowhere in it’s own way, more or less.
06 NOV 2007
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