Thursday, September 12, 2013

(Me and My) Morphine Cadillac


Song w/o Music 6

I drive a morphine Cadillac
and I feel no pain
I drive a morphine Cadillac
and I feel no pain
         Don't care about sun
         Don't care about that cold, cold  rain

I've got a tank full of gas
and I've worked through all the gears
Got a tank full of gas
and I've worked through all the gears
         Fourth down to first was what it took
         to get me here

                  Oooo-ooooo
                           morphine

                  Whoa-ohhhh
                           no steering
                           no brakes.

I'm in a dark, dark room
and I like it this way
I'm in a dark, dark room
and I like it this way
         Those shadows on the wall
         gonna' stay all day

It's so slow in here, baby
it's so slow right now
It's so slow in here, baby
it's so slow right now
         It's alright, honey
         got no place to get to anyhow

                  Oooo-ooooo
                           morphine

                  Whoa-ohhhh
                           feel like I'm fixin' to die.

Nighttime now
ain't never gonna' get to day
Nighttime now
ain't never gonna' get to day
         my morphine Cadillac
         is taking me away

                  Oooo-ooooo
                           morphine

                  Whoa-ohhhh
                           drive on, James
                           don't stop now

                  Oooo-ooooo
                           is that an Escalade
                           it's an Eldorado, honey
                           no it's not, it's a Fleetwood, Mack
                           you sure that's not a Lincoln Continental
                           no, it's not a Lincoln Continental, it's not a Lexus,
                                    and it's for sure not a god-damn Prius

                  Whoa-ohhhh
                           Cadillac, honey,
                                    Morphine Cadillac.


                  

Thursday, August 29, 2013

DON'T FOLLOW ME


Song w/o Music 5

Thirty coming into town
sixty heading out
Couldn't leave fast enough
on any highway route

A one hearse town
with a crappy whiskey bar
Near enough to everyplace
and ugly as a scar

         Thirty coming into town
         Sixty heading out

Get drunk, got drunk, gone
how'd you get next to me
Past the city limits
you still won't feel free

         Thirty coming into town
         Sixty heading out
         Ninety on the straightaway

I watched her watch the road
with that smile on her face
Didn't see the hairpin curve
'til we launched out into space

         Thirty coming into town
         Sixty heading out
         Ninety on the straightaway
         Weightless

Ain't no parachute to save our skin
Won't get out the trouble we been in
Just another lousy weekend binge
And she meant less to me than a shot of gin

         Thirty coming into town
         Sixty heading out
         Ninety on the straightaway
         Weightless
         Blind

Don't give it too much thought
how I might of wrote this song
You think the bottom's coming up
But it's still a long way down.

         Thirty coming into town
         Sixty heading out
         Ninety on the straightaway
         Weightless
         Blind
                  and dead.


Thursday, August 15, 2013

Older and Colder















Song w/o Music 4

Come over here, brother
pull up a stool
have a drink
that's ok, I'll get it
I just need to talk
you might lend me your ear
I know, it's Shakespeare that said it.

See that big old map hanging on the wall
shows every place I've been
and there's stars up there on those little towns -
heartbreak, misery, and sin.

Miriam was in Louisville
and Linda lived up north
there was Susie in my own home town
Crazy Mamie was the fourth.

I married every one of those girls
wasn't one that I liked best
but they all had arms
growing out of their charms
and they all put bars
up around the nest.

I left those women far behind
without a phone call or a note
and headed down to Mexico
with some money and some hope
I'd find a better place
where people prayed
on their knees - just like they meant it
and forgiveness would come
like a sweet sweet gift
a merciful God would send it.

But it weren't in the cards
it didn't happen
even though I prayed it would
so I came back north
with my hat in my hands
to try to make up
or try to make good.

I was soon to learn
that too much time
had passed and you know I let it
and if you're not on time
the people you hurt
won't let you forget it.

It's a hard and wicked world, my friend
full of roads that never end
and there ain't no truck that's long enough
to haul the hurtin' I been in.

Now I got me a room
in a skid road crash
and a job that don't really pay
that keeps me floating on whiskey fumes
and a couple of meals a day
I'd like to change my life
and do a few good things
don't know how, I'd like to try
but I'm afraid the sweet and the holy might be
too soft for hands like mine.

Thanks a lot, brother
let me get you another
there's some reason you're sitting here
but you don't have to say
and you don't have to pay
and you don't have to shed a tear.

There is one kind favor
I ask of you
think of me down the road
'cause the days are short
and the nights are long
and the older you get
the more you feel the cold
yeah, the older you get
the more you feel the cold.




Wednesday, August 7, 2013

A Quietly Disappearing Slow Dance


Song w/o Music 3

I'm just as dry as I can be
and run right out of happiness
The signals that you're sending
are of shipwreck and distress
I swear your midnight Hoodoo
has crept into the day
and makes it hard and all the harder
for me to stay.

If there was a bus
I'd take it
If there was a train
I'd get on board
But there's nothing here but us
and the absence of the Lord.

We used to live in some place safe
where God's creatures had a chance
And where every invitation
didn't lead to the last dance
It wasn't paradise, I know
still we acted like it was
and you took me disappearing
down your back roads.

Now all that's come tumbling down
we're caught in misery and strife
And I'd sell off everything I own
to buy a different kind of life
and if there was a bus
I'd take it
If there was a train
I'd get on board
But there's nothing here but us
and the absence of the Lord,

the absence of the Lord.

Friday, August 2, 2013

A Blues for Coyote


(Vaguely to It Takes a lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry)

Song w/o Music 2

A BLUES FOR COYOTE

He's a coyote, baby                       
            out lookin' for a thrill                       
Just a trickster, honey                                   
            sittin' on top of the hill                       
He stays up all night                                   
            singing coyote songs                       
Travels through time                                   
            brings his friends along           
He's a coyote, baby                                                           
            out lookin' for a thrill                       

He's always been here
            ain't nothin' that he hasn't seen
Yeah, he's always been here
            standin' just betwixt and between
He's a rambler and a roamer
All around the universe
He might be greeted with a prayer
            might be greeted with a curse
He's always been here
            ain't nothin' that he hasn't seen

Now I met him in Jerusalem
I met him in old Santa Fe
We been in situations
            where we didn't want to stay
I seen him in a nightclub
I seen him in a church
I seen him in a hotel room
            and places much much worse
He's everywhere, baby
We even had a drink in Paris, France

He's a hungry critter
            he never gets his fill
He's a varmint, babe
            circlin' 'round the kill
He might be hunting
            'cause he's starving
Might be hunting
            'cause he's bored
If he's in your dreams, honey
            better try to find the door
'Cause he's hungry, baby
            he never gets his fill

He's a coyote, baby                                   
            out lookin' for a thrill                       
Just a coyote, honey                                   
            sittin' on top of the hill                       
He stays up all night                                   
            singing coyote songs                       
Travels through time                                   
            brings his friends along           
He's a trickster, baby                                                           
            out lookin' for a thrill.                       


Thursday, January 31, 2013

Gun Control


“Jimmy, Jimmy, oh Jimmy Mack, when are you comin’ back? Oh, Jimmy…”
Martha & the Vandellas


Jimmy Mack, our infantry squad leader, was a short, heavy-set, black guy with a baby-face, and absolutely no charm. Jimmy Mack was a corporal and a lifer bucking for his third stripe before he rotated to Nam. We were a hash-smoking, beer-drinking, slacker outfit enjoying easy German duty, and resented the ambition that got worked out on our time. No one had been fragged in Germany, but Jimmy Mack was a prime candidate.

We were in Hohenfels doing our winter field maneuvers, and were out on a live-fire exercise. Our squad was working its way through a wooded area, on the look-out for silhouettes to blow to smithereens. Jimmy didn’t have us in control, and we were moving around willy-nilly, squeezing off rounds as the spirit took us. I was in the middle of the squad, on my knees, rifle to shoulder, trying to sight through the other guys, when, lo-and-behold, there was Jimmy Mack not ten feet in front of me, right in my line of fire, and I had a bead on the back of his little, lifer head.

Oh, those relativity blues as time stretched out, and I ran through all the reasons why Jimmy should or shouldn't get a one way ticket to the resurrection.

I eased my finger off the trigger.

I committed no act of murder.

Jimmy Mack lived another day.

A couple of months later, after Corporal Jimmy Mack got his much wished for transfer to Nam, word got back to us that Sergeant Jimmy Mack was no longer of this world. I guess he had a ticket - I drew it, and passed, but it got cashed in anyway.





JIMMY MACK
Martha & the Vandellas



Bonus Track: This is My Rifle








Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Dorothy and the Fawn

I've been tinkering with this since 2009 when I first saw the story in the Albuquerque Journal at Casa Bienvenu.

I was just as shocked as many other people, including the news aggregators must have been because the story hit all the wires.

My heart went out to Dorothy. The fawn was collateral damage in Dorothy's life, and I didn't wonder about the killing nearly as much as I did about Dorothy, and the media notoriety.





DOROTHY AND THE FAWN

EUCLID, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio woman who found a fawn in her flower garden has been accused of beating it to death with a shovel.

Seventy-five-year-old Dorothy Richardson is charged in a warrant with animal cruelty at her Euclid home near the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Creek Reservation, a wooded park where deer, foxes and other wildlife roam.
---Cleveland Plain Dealer

A GOOGLE search for Dorothy Richardson Euclid Ohio yields about 32,700 results in 0.24 seconds.


i.

Old Dorothy, quiet as wildlife, steps across her hardwood kitchen floor and out into her backyard garden. She stands still and feels the morning sun on her arms and face.

A fawn, curled around itself in the tall grass, lifts its head, twitches its ears, and listens.

Songbirds, sound of the Interstate in the near distance.

The fawn, only a little less shaky than the night before, comes to its feet.

Old Dorothy and the fawn eye one another.

Time as thick and slow as humidity. Dorothy raises her hands and claps - twice. The sound barely moves through the air.

The fawn stands still, fast heart beating faster, and sniffs the air.

Old Dorothy, old heart beating harder, backs up to her house, and takes up the shovel leaning against the wall.

So many years ago, when Dorothy was a young bride, there was much more wildlife in the area: rodents, chipmunk, squirrel, raccoon; a wildcat once, and once a bear; and deer, of course, always deer. Deer were the worst and hardest to keep out. Dorothy begged her husband to fence the yard, and though he liked the idea of the wild passing through he relented. The fence has stood for fifty years, and though it has never kept the climbers out nothing as big as this fawn had entered.

Old Dorothy scans the fence. Her eye stops at a spot where a slat is missing; one slat, just large enough for the fawn to have squeezed through.

The dogs start up.

They had chased the fawn into the yard the night before and have returned to the scent.

The fawn, the dogs, the missing slat, the morning sun, the memories of other summers are too much for Old Dorothy. She bows her head, closes her eyes, and barely holds herself up, slumping against the shovel.

The fawn senses Dorothy's near absence, steps up to her, and brushes her hand with its cool nose.

The touch snaps her awake.   She puts all her strength into the shovel.

Banshees

Screaming

blood.


ii.

From a witness statement:

I could overhear Dorothy telling my neighbor how she killed a baby deer dead the morning before.

...the fawn was basically screaming.

And as she was beating it, she was asking it if it was dead yet.


iii.

Bruce Weigl, German poet, writes:

Anything murdered makes a horrible cry.


iv.

WOMAN BEATS BAMBI TO DEATH WITH SHOVEL
-----Frank James, National Public Radio


v.

Dorothy, Dorothy
Alone in this world
Washed in the blood
Made the fool by NPR

Jesus come save us
Come down from your heaven
Come into the garden
Comfort your daughter
Come rescue poor Dorothy
from the deed she has done.

Dorothy catches her breath, stares at the small death in front of her.

Flies and bees dance around
the fawn's unblinking eye

- the police knock at her door.


vi.

It’s a big rat. He was in her flower-bed. She wasn’t in his flower-bed.
-----George Forbes, President, Cleveland NAACP


vii.

"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."

-----Fawn's Foster Mother
Robinson Jeffers


viii.

I killed it. I'd kill it again.

-----Dorothy Richardson


DOROTHY AT NINETY-FIVE

Old Dorothy
blind as a bat
and crippled
with arthritis
is wheeled
into her spring time
garden gone to seed
and seed
and seed
again
and shivers
as she remembers
some twenty years
past

Dark eyes
sweet & wild breath
fast heart beating faster
and the tilt
of earth
as terror
and blood
touch one another.

Old Dorothy
sighs and thinks
that we're all guilty
of something;
stories never
tell the whole truth;
and gardens
always
always
go to seed.

Old Dorothy
unclenches her hands
and feels the sun
rest upon her
one last time.

THE END