Words by Lucinda Williams

Another song that’s on my mp3 player at the moment, “Words” by the poetic and beautiful Lucinda Williams.

—
I would rather suffer in sweet silent solitude
Deathly defiant from drowning out
Filthy sounds stumbling ugly and crude
Between the lips of your beautiful mouth

Deep down within me words move in phrases
Frozen and still ’til they decide
To melt and drip over the pagers
Until that moment they live inside

My words enjoy the feel of the paper
Better than mingling with your consonants
Once they get going they never waver
And they slip in between your if, ands, and buts

When my words are hiding between the lines
Then I’m afraid they won’t hear me call
What if they fail me without a sign
What if they hardly surface at all

Screaming and throwing your weight around
My words choose knowledge over politics
You can’t kill my words, they know no bounds
My words are strong and they don’t make me sick

They still remain my only companion
Loyal and true to the very end
They’ll never ever completely abandon
Ever give up the paper and the pen

Me & Mrs. Jones

Been listening to this non-stop since clicking on this Abagond post.

most impossible

god, are you a cloud
small vaporous wonder
lightly drifting thought
encircling forever
the globe

constant mass
changing volume

condensing rain
release as you rise

climbing mountains
filling streams
taming valleys
canyons
the great abyss

how do you make deserts
if not
by uprooting trees

making space
for most impossible life

the rich biosphere
that lives
underneath
my
toes


are
you
an ant
carrying crystals of salt
the miracle of life
amidst a dry ocean sand

or the unthinkable
porous magma ocean under land

Looking at the stars

“Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.

Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means.

To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.”

— Vincent Van Gogh, as quoted in Roger Ebert’s memoir Life Itself.

no longer

I will no longer
prevent you from being offended,
cater to an imaginary reader,
make edible art

change and
progress cannot be invisible theory
made in secret labs
no -- sometimes that which
is
in
your face is necessary

to see
what must change.