American bombs falling on people,
living, breathing, 
each with a name
a story, a past
and somehow
no future

Is collateral acceptable?
While we drive our cars
Eat out, steak dinners
Complain about the price of gas
Make a big deal about the 
exact temperature of the thermostat

The privilege of being upset
over nothing
Talking about "having a bad day"
while entire families are vap...

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Pawn shop point and shoot 
is the root 
What the hell
why not
Find a spot
niche, biome
ambush plot
Blend in,
spin the talk sideways
in pet spider socks
Coal scattered wide
cooling outside 
soft and low
this land of good water 
is mighty slow
Blue heron knows, 
tells all the
deaf blind crows
Hanging on by 
teeth, skin,
and toes

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Vultures shuffling on naked trees in the darkness
Must be hundreds
Lost on the old trail by good water
Snakes curled in the limestone
Dry lightning illuminating bluffs
Battery running low and I'm far out
Crawl into the brush of the hillside
Build a fire ring among the juniper
Dry cedar branches smoke into home
Cross armed as the sky barks empty
Sleep is not the word for it
Shivering int...

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This is not the America I heard of,
heavy chain and handcuffs are word now
You haven't heard?
How?

This is not the America I heard of,
A dead bird of
many feathers,
dry as leather

This is not the America I heard of,
doves in danger,
hawks in droves,
no five loaves, two fish

This is not the America I heard of,
where anyone
could have
a wish

This America I heard of
is crying...

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The damndest thing they ever did 
was dam that river

A river has plans,
can't be canned

Out of hands and
small conceits of man

Dry parched lands, 
chert gravel sands

The bones of us and beasts

Teeth turned to blue fossils 
buried deep

Trapped in a spin cycle of
brushy, churning, creeks

Do they speak to you too?
These gone bison blues?

Bleak list of I.O.U.'s,
perpetu...

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Children vaporized in Minab, dusty, bloody arms raised to the sky under concrete slabs
Calling out to God to save them from those who are "fighting for peace"
From this hell on Earth there is no release, renew your lease on suffering
Faceless executioner, impersonal drone strike muffling screams
Snuffing out life with high explosive callousness, blood streams
But what is reported by the news ...

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Unbearable static in the background of my thoughts
Computer generated lies, truth sold and bought
Not something fought, something sought out
Poisonous as Manchineel, parching as drought
Reducing both stout and frail to empty sails
Devoid of wind we drift through the doldrums
Twiddle your thumbs or bite a bullet
Our soul? 
Sold it
Fold it
Pocket your humanity
Life is vanity
Ignorance is...

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Take that gold watch band around your moneyed hand
You have the watch, but we have the time

Take your power over the land, your final stand
You have the land, but we are the ones who know it

Take your fame, self immolating flame, crush the 
ember in your palm

Read a Psalm or a Surah, the river won't hurt you,
take all day, friend

You have the wind, but we have the sky

You too ha...

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They used to steal glass insulators
Alongside the railroads
Turned them into knives

Red knives
White knives
Blue knives

I follow their example
Stealing Georgetown blue flint
From outside the electric

Sick of red lies
White lies
Blue lies

Told to believe everything 
but our own
eyes

To ignore
your tax dollars 
extinguishing innocent life

Bombs falling in the darkness o...

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Searching for the cane break
The cold spring, the sand camp
Lost in Colorado river hemp
Hummingbirds weave between yellow blossoms
Bluegills tuck into shady bank 
Among dead stumps, submerged branches
Working our way up every holler
Cold water and the taste of limestone
From the quiet of the cutbank 
To the clearing above the cliff
Wind blows stiff from the south
Carrying the smoke from...

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By Brush, down Drowning to the Neosho 

To Walnut, past Lost, smell the Canadian churning

Sore Finger from Willis, San Gabriel flooding high

Tucker ditch to Greenhorn, buried on the banks of the Saint Charles

From the Clear Fork to the Salt Fork, from the mountain of black stone pines

From the Current river, cutting through the valley of my father's memories

Put in at Pigs Ankle, ...

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Mississippi switching course to Atchafalaya

Stealing all the souls back from Angola prison

Bayougoula blowing past Baton Rouge

Lost at the mouth of the Red

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Celebrating the tools of our own destruction

Front row tickets to nuclear concussions

Same conclusion reached without instructions

Violence, the basic human function

Hole in chest with lopsided suction

Slits in dirt filled with our sons, dead

Who cares what God said

His hands are most red

We made our own bed?

Lie in it, die in it

For nothing

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Two failed trips and a broken transmission
It all leads to Norman
A milk crate in a brushy creek, green and tarnished
It all leads to Norman
A man in a trench, face down among the artillery scars
His name was Norman, strip his magazines and grenades
Under a bridge over the Canadian river, among the broken glass and burnt tents
It all leads to Norman
Walking in sand that smells of piss, dod...

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Smooth as beeswax on red catlinite 
Sharp as black chert knapped out of spite
Souls in this creek wander downstream tonight
Dreams wrapped in sinew take their last flight
Listening to darkness from old cutbank heights
Cardinals chasing crows through pale moonlight

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Disposable soul
Thrown down it's hole
Like something I stole
Once empty now full
Inhabiting skull
False securities lulled
Fingernails lovingly pulled
Holding onto this cold
Doing only what's told
Scold the mold for growing
Or the bones for showing
Men for towing their sorrows
Dreaming a hundred dead tomorrows
Screaming sparrows and cardinals
Today I lost all my marbles

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Rough rusted railroad steel in my palm

Dogs are following me in the woods 

It's a long way to the river yet

Running out of battery

Dark tracks rattling hard

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I found you in the gravel,
the wet muddy gravel

How far did you travel,
in sunlight or in shadow

River winding high,
receding when it's dry

Reflecting clouded skies,
perceived through panfish eyes

Here chipped secrets lie,
downstream our dreams do fly

All we can do is try
scattered like flints awry

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Wise in worldly ways?

I'd rather be a fool

Who dies honest anyways

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A handful of heat, coffee tastes sweet in the bottom of the mug

Splayed out, dissected human bug, body chopped and tugged

Catalogue my suffering, patch me together with hemp twine

Ignoring every sign and warning, falling is soaring interrupted

A life defined as loveless, a body bled out bloodless

This mud is sticking to my brain again, no way to win

Don't you hate it when it don'...

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Hello old friend

I want nothing to do with you

But here I am searching you out

Hello old friend

I thought you left so long ago,

But here you are, crying

It must be a dream

Brain letting off stream

Sanity flowing down stream

Southbound or bust

By rubber or rust

Getting nowhere on trust

I’ll crawl if I have to, not even fuss

Turned mean as a...

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Call a therapist or write your suicide note
Either way you're going to have to decide
To live or to die, because I don't feel like I'm living
Or will be much longer
If I keep sitting and spinning in the dirty corners of my room
Cobweb brain breaking free for the first time in a while
Still feel like I'm walking in the dark next to a chasm
Butterflies and needles in my stomach, Nicorette unt...

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Why do I keep coming to these places?
Attempting to siphon something into this void
Vicarious joy, vicarious hope, still dream of the rope
Can't cope with this anymore, the wound is forever sore
I'm getting sick of trying, lying to myself a bit more
Fuck your good health, choke on your worthless wealth
Burn down another Newport, the tenth or twelfth

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A shot of whiskey for the rain
A shot of whiskey for the pain
My efforts to stay insane
Let's take one for the rain

Burning down another menthol smoke
Pulled from packs like dirty jokes
Learning that it's all or broke
Flick away that butt and croak

All to be said was spoke
Between us in the end
But something brings back memories
Which I cannot defend, that send me

To places gone,...

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Seventy eight cents accelerated into a slapped palm
A nod between us to prepare this nickle dime handoff
Passenger in this body behind a wheel
Slave to yellow white blurs on blacktop
Can't stop thinking I should drive up all the roads I drove down,
Manic around town, sporting a frown
Like a clown with mismatched shoes
Filling blank space with blues and booze
No cruise control to pull me do...

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Voices overlapping
Drinks spilling
Cigarettes smoked
Eyes cast down
Looking into nothing
Bottom of a glass speaking in tongues
Words cut rough on broken glass
Plastic cups melting on your lips
Pop the filter, suck the poison
Repeat
They're mixing up the bones
I hear them clacking between cracking old fingers
Sitting on the edge of joy
Trying to suck up some piece of it like a campfire...

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Crown Royal in a Coke can, warm rain fills the midnight blackness
Sitting on the flight deck among the tie-downs, staring into the wake
Something inside me says to jump, blind and mindless, deep into this Indian ocean

Rifles in a pile, triple canopy and palm groves
A beach made of trash
I stand in this screaming greenery, something inside me says to walk
Lose myself in this impenetrable,...

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Doves on the fence line, shedding the morning rain
Sitting in this quiet fog with me
First sleepless night in a while, but I'm more awake now
Third cigarette down, shaking cups of hot black coffee
Mornings are the best, and the worst, sometimes both at once
The roof drips staccato in the garden, old friends shedding leaves
There is something peaceful in the birds, these dying peppers in the ...

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Tomorrow can be brighter, 
help me polish up this old sun
Days pass by with mercurial temper, 
simmering away 
Pot is boiling double time, 
all the skins off the jackets 
Red salt dancing in the dirt, 
tender green shoots spring forth 
Tamed by loving touch, 
bowing gently 
Tomorrow it might rain, 
dampened earth under shade, 
rolling off bent grass blade
What I'd trade for a day with...

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The night they killed Osama bin Laden,
we drank the bottles down to the shards
We screamed
We pushed all the sand off the third deck
We racked every bolt in our soul
We shed every piece of body armor
We spat into the face of this childhood stupidity
War movies and old men talking
Watching the whole world fall down
Why did I find myself such a fool,
to carry a rifle for nothing
 

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Whiskey when I'm thirsty, whiskey when I'm dry
Whiskey in the morning, whiskey till I cry
Me and this old whiskey, in the same place by and by
This whiskey cannot hurt me, this whiskey makes me die

Paddle this old river, the banks go sliding by
Polish this old trigger, wipe carbon from your eye
Put down that amber liquor, it's eating your insides
Go and find that river, it is deep and it ...

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How many individual cups of grief sit on this counter alone 
holding pictures of their sons and daughters
The distant sounds of shelling 
Dreadful walk of a slumbering, evil giant 
drunk and wheeling
A galvanizing hate, one that grinds teeth to gum
drives all tears from their spring eternal
dries one's soul into shriveled reeds 
dry, crumbling thistles 

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Winding down a well penned road, written like red leaves and hickory smoke
Wandering down another limestone dust dirt nothing, little slice of heaven in the sun
Creeks rolling, eyes wide on Folgers and a spent cigarette, walking a mile for the next pack
Pack on your back, climbing up crevice and crack, quiet nights with thunder and fire
Fire and rain, eyes in pain, wipe away these tears from m...

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Mundane, molting in the shade, moth under black light
My heart grasps at dusty winged angels, hiding from a sunbeam
A glass empties itself down your throat, vile pitcher plant soul
Gripping and splitting my lost life asunder, efficient self destruction
Clear water corrupted, blue air bereft of blown wind
In this surrounding stillness I bury my head like a child
Attempt a portage around my gr...

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One day he will follow her to the sea
By way of creek breaking through cold pine root
Through stone and sand, through outstretched hand
Through this silent land he laps languidly
Rushes relentless, rests in pools, rolling blue jewels
To the sea, on to the endless sea, meet her at the shore
The salt and the roar, the recession of wave and water
Starlight's son and daughter, mingling in the t...

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A bee tumbles into my water glass,
rights himself on thin ice cube,
drinks from a droplet,
disappears drowsily
down wind

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Tumbling and rolling, strutting and strolling
Watching the moon go bowling across the sky
Big dipper wonders why Orion is bending
Wonder what his mother was mending on his cloak
Go for half broke, or just half of that, a casual chat
Fried up pork fat and biscuits, just missed it
This ship is listing, but I'm listening, commissioning blues
Nothing to do, listened to how the grass grew, dared...

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Strong coffee, sticky flowers
Newport hundreds, zig zag power
Stand on the chasms brink, then cower
Wait patiently for horrid pre-appointed hour
Softly disemboweled on this leaning tower of lies
Blind and deaf to choking, hopeless cries 
Ten thousand miles of hell as the crow flies
Defeat snuffing out these shining candle eyes 
Take pity on the man that tries 

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Skating down cracked sidewalk waves

Shedding this mind enslaved

Shredding in the name of peace

Inner peace, not some short term lease

The real deal, official seal

Watch me steal away down this sidewalk

Hear my wheels talk under streetlight

Disappear into deep night, no fright

Riding concrete waves out of sight

Knowing this feeling is right

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Little pieces of hope sticking out of rubble
Dull razor dragging away the stubble
Popping my own little ignorant bubble
Couldn't imagine the trouble this would bring
Hear the darkness sing, feel the rain sting
The fluttering of owls on a wing, swirling silence
Emotional violence of day to day existence
No effective resistance, just incredible distance
Watch our spirits get smashed by cinde...

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I am grass crawling out of the pot, once all the flowers have rot
Delicate green, spreading your gentle fingers, same color lingers in her eyes
Spent too many tears trying to forget the feeling of making those eyes cry
The years do fly by, but now I just find myself trying to make sense of them
A jumble of puzzle pieces from different sets, cutting and pasting my soul like Papier-mâché
Waitin...

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Across mountains, on the fleeting foot
Left is forward, right is south, but I dream of north
Of distant peaks, of turbid coast, at the bottom of the end
Swallowing my tail, fishtailing sideways
Walking through the creek, dead limestone spire
Tripping down the lee shored dreams
Crimson port songs, starboard green moon
Bring me to those mountains once again,
to climb

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Tossing stones into shallow pools
Putting on these blue socks & walking away,
but these blues keep stalking down my neck
Dropping from my lash, from cheek stained red
Shame and bitter contempt
Sorrow and chewed Nicorette headaches
Dead breaks of trees waiting to burn,
on a match to turn things sideways
Wide days spent dreaming
Long night spent grieving
Childhood spent teething for truth
...

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My tears bleed into the sea, pleading for foam to take my breath
Sand shifting between knees, I'm so tired, I must simply rest
Remembering the days of new islands, new seas
Watching them appear off port bow, new mountains, new trees
Lee shores and bioluminescent dreams, flicking smoking butts into dark foam unseen
Staring into undulating emptiness off the starboard aft beam

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No matter the effort, the end result is determined 
Your hair will grow into the ground
Impounded  corpse into claustrophobic confinement 
A cacophony of black birds in parking lots, on buzzing wires
A symphony of cicadas subsiding to silence 
If love was violence you'd leave me dead and smiling
Worth every last damn cent

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That fucked up flag flying
Is a waste of cloth!
Lower it immediately, a blanket now!
There is a man sleeping on the street, a sheet of cardboard!
Give him this lie of a sheet,
To wake up warm!

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Don't know why I come to these places, such inflated expectations
Waiting on someone to walk up to my cocoon soul, do magic
A dwindling pack of Newports, another sour beer
The hour of its end draws near, yet I stupidly sit here, waiting on nothing

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Distracted by a wisp of clouds,
I find myself on this lonely shore,
In distant hawks I soar vicarious,
wheeling through white powder,
Showers of droplets mix with salted tears
Watching all the years run past like sprinting deer
How they flew, far and near, to here, in quiet repose

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It's a hard thing when they want to skyline you
The ones you were meant to trust
Told to trust
They burnt you just for the fun of it
Scraped your down to a skin
Some lobotomized form of the former self
All the wealth in the world couldn't change it
Maybe that is the explanation for my derangement
Estrangement from reality, duality of sanity
The man in me says I need to do better
But I to...

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Pouring myself out of an empty bottle
Pooling between the weeds
Soaking into stone, utterly alone

Night time comes and we check the locks
Draw all the blinds, set back the clocks
The only stars out drip dimly through 

It's late, or early, I lose track
Newport light right from the pack
Burn a resolution into your palm

They talk of revolution like it's a song
Sing along, memorize the...

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