Caitlin and Fire

Kicked out of Mormon high school, for setting someone’s locker on fire
A career in conflagration thus commenced
Try telling her the gods dispatched it through her fingertips
She knows it’s hers alone to thus dispense
She finds it in deep solitude and brings it back to you
Says it’s where she finds the stories she knows to be true
Her home is in a suitcase, or maybe on the page
Sometimes in a single malt, 12 years or more of age
Like the poem tattooed to her back
If she finds herself alone when it comes time to pack
You may hear echoes of lament, but you will not hear her complain
About the price of channeling those tongues of flame
Maternal madness, weird religion make for some kind of muse
A curse is just a gift she can use
If she’s lonely, she’s the rowboat frozen fast to the shore
Knowing it’s combustable right down to its core
Self-imposes exile, intrepid as it gets
Feels it like bereavement, comes back with no regrets

Bring

Wanna bring you something that would make the angels weep
Sing you lullabies when you can’t fall asleep
Lavish you with sine waves ’til you quiver way down deep
Shower you with stardust ’til the rent starts looking cheap
Wanna make the lyric love you in a way no human could
Resonate in such a way that you feel understood
Wanna talk you down when you are up there on a ledge
Make you put the gun down when it’s up against your head
But I’m not so good at loving anybody up close
I work with a piano and a page
I’m accused of being quiet and too much in my head
But it’s sometimes less a shelter than a cage
To bring back a thing of beauty would at least make it seem
There’s a reason for the time I spend away
To be Orpheus ascending, and not looking back
To be a surgeon of the soul for just one day
Wanna help your dead ass fly away when you’ve had your last breath
Wanna rip a new one in that mean angel of death
Wanna crush all your despair, I wanna make you laugh
Wanna make St. Peter testify on your behalf

Incantation

I don’t even know if you exist
Could be we passed each other by and somehow missed
I’ve walked this world so long without you
The whole time hearing songs about you
I’d know it if I saw your face
I’m too familiar with the vacuum in its place
I want an ancient recognition
To animate your apparition
Will you find me through all this fear
‘Cause I can feel you getting near
Or will you pass me by again?
I want to rip the veil apart, I want the sky to light my heart
Much brighter than it’s ever been
And if I should explode with fear or pain or ecstasy
Into a million pieces will you bring them back to me?
I’d know it if I heard your voice
The silence in its place was not my choice
I want to feel it resonating
In all the places I’ve been waiting
I’ll cross that chasm I don’t care how wide
I see you on the other side
Annihilation lies ahead
For all the walls I built instead of love

Martini Geometry

The geometry of the martini glass
Is such that one more inch can be the one that kicks your ass
Girly drinks found in the Castro you think are so benign
Taste like candy ’til they come up in a techno-hurl design
Pi R Squared, divided by three times the distance from the base to the rim
Gives you the exact measure of misery
If you should disrespect the substances therein
Hotel Occidental was the place
1860 San Francisco, it transcended time and space
Someone shook up gin and ice, and just a smidgeon of vermouth
And some bitters and some olives, and achieved poetic truth
Bombay Saphire nicely shaken, bite your butt when you awaken,
Bloody Mary’s made with bacon won’t ameliorate your pain
And it’s all because of that inverted cone that you are taken
To the place where you’ve forsaken the cylindrical domain

Bartender

Makes me feel pretty and so understood
When I’ve had a hard day he makes me feel good
Psychic about bourbon and my rye and scotch needs
There’s really no end to his professional good deeds
He serves it up with a near narcotic expertise
So meticulous about his liquid artistry
He’s my partner in crime
In the killing of my time
He’s my bartender, my best remedy
Like a dog to his vomit, he knows I’ll be back
Knows what I need and he probably knows why
I don’t tell my problems, he pretends I can fly

Gwen

When I met her she was studying the saxophone
A zillion drinks and cigarettes ago
The day she threw up on a tour bus she quit smoking
But in the sisterhood of scotch she’s still a pro
And there’s a place the shape of her inside my psyche
That without her would have never been the same
It’s probably the part of me the sucks the very least
The part that is less selfish and less lame
And there never seem to be enough enlightened rhymes
For someone who’s been so important so many times
She’s been a friend many ways that run deep and wide
Across the decades and the in and outside
When I met her she was studying the saxophone
She’s mastered other instruments since then
She moved from Canada to Nashville where she writes the best songs
You never heard ’cause they don’t suck enough for them
And I should have written this song twenty years ago
In fact it’s not the first time that I tried
How do you channel sunshine so sublime in 16 lines
Without a host of angels as your guide?

Alia

She’s thrown up on a Porsche on Madison Avenue
When you’ve grown up on a horse your aim can only be true
She was born in a warehouse in the Mission District
Long before the last four waves of douchebags overtook it
Equestrian time travel and some Southwestern sands
A touch of noir is an agent of transport in her hands
With a Sagittarian birthday and a mother named Mer
There’s a Centaurian constellation in her epic red hair
She went to school in Havana and she walked across Spain
Heard Castro speak standing in the pouring rain
She’ll throw back the bourbon like a Bukowski muse
Or somebody in a book written by Harry Crews
Her mom’s the most red-headed hussy mom that ever was
Her husband somehow manages to never harsh our buzz
She herself lights up a room in all the finest saloons
Her crimes are the kind about which Sinatra croons

Mile Rock Man

Nothing but my memory marks the place of your exit
The rains have washed away your blood and any proof with it
You must have seen the Golden Gate Bridge all lit up at night
With your struggle and the instrument to speed your deathly flight

I’d like to think you traveled over water
Like to think you flew above the cliffs
That you heard unearthly music playing as you passed the bridge
That somewhere some part of you remembers this
But maybe you remember nothing
Perhaps that’s what you wanted most
The rusted lighthouse and the labyrinth of rocks
Beckoned you to this, the final coast

Wish you’d stuck around enough to meet the morning sun
The fight you fought does not appear to be a fight you won
Did not even call for knives and still you brought a gun
In the nation of the heart is enough war for everyone

Did the blackness you were brought to bring you peace?
Did it just extinguish light and stars?
You did not leave the way you came
Did the moon illuminate your scars?

Republican Jesus


Republic Jesus loves rich people more
Republican Jesus defacates on the poor
Republican Jesus doesn’t like the new pope
Who says G8 countries fighting poverty would be dope
Republican Jesus is a capitalist
The stock exchange trading floor is his eucharist
Republican Jesus brings the free market love
Blesses your 401(K) from above
The military industrial complex 
Is one of this Jesus’s favorite projects
Cheney, the Koch brothers and Haliburton
This Jesus is down with them, that’s for certain
Republican Jesus loves the Fox News
Hates research and facts, and especially the Jews
Except for Israelis and their Israeli guns
Because he hates most of all the Palestinians
Republican Jesus loves you more if you’re white
If you’re melanin challenged you all can be tight
Republican Jesus hates science and gays
He sends storms to smite them for their gay ways
Palin and Bachman are this Jesus’s fave
They all hang out talking ’bout how you should behave
Loves the death penalty and tries to preserve it
The mentally unstable especially deserve it
Republican Jesus loves him some Ayn Rand
Says the sick and the weak are not part of his grand plan
Republican Jesus digs corporations
He’s all about letting them write legislation