My Brother My Brightest Friend

Thunder is the closet thing I know to God

You said as we ran for cover

From the rain that came like a pantheon

To herald that terrible summer

And when the sky fell through my fingers

all my prayers had gone unanswered

all my hope had been defeated

To a habit like a cancer

I didn’t care if you believed

In the Lord or in the lightning

You’re the company I’ll keep

My brother, my brightest friend

I’m in, I’m all into the flood with you

After all I’ve got the same blood as you

Same father, lakes for eyes, same mother, same surprise

at how much we could lose

It’ll happen again, too

So if the sky falls through our fingers

all our prayers again unanswered

all our hope again defeated

To a habit like a cancer

I won’t care if you believe in

The Lord or in the lightning

You’re the company I’ll keep

My brother, my brightest friend

Downpour (listen here.)

Downtown downpour
Surprise July storm
Take cover under the sycamores
In the park as day grows dark

You wait for the rain to die,
You're watching the water
For the drops on the pavement to splash a bit smaller
Don't want to ruin your shoes
Don't want the pocks on the leather
So you stay where you are and you yield to the weather

In the living room at your daddy's side
Surprise, mother cries
The words you could say would just get in the way,
Tear-weary, you sit in the quiet

Wait for the job
Wait for your partner
Wait for the healing you pray for your father
Wait for your mission
Wait for permission
Wait for restoring, you wait for remission

Warm Not Harm

In the coldest winter

I only feel warm

My only shivers are your

Fingers on my arm

I want to stay with you so I’m

Praying for a storm

So hold me while the sky falls white

And the city sounds the alarm

And in the longest winter

I’ve stopped keeping time

The streets could freeze til summer

I wouldn’t notice; I wouldn’t mind

I don’t want to leave this room, so I’m

Praying for a storm

So hold me while the sky falls white

Forget our fear of harm

Worry’s a forgotten friend

And hurry fades to hush

As certainty slinks sideways

And lies between us

Oh in the coldest winter

I only feel warm

My only shivers are your

Fingers on my arm

I want to stay with you so I’m

Praying for a storm

So hold me while the sky falls white

Forget our fear of harm

Start It Right

Turn toward me

When you hit the light

Before you say goodnight

Turn toward me

Say yes to me

To my wild ideas

My unreasonable tears

Say yes to me

If we start this thing

Let’s have the mind

To start it right

Please choose me

Among the choices

And all the voices

Please choose me

If we start this thing

Let’s make the time

And start it right

Put your hands on me

Even when you're tired

Because I am wired

Put your hands on me

Save some energy

Bring it home to me

Let’s start it right

Give your best to me

And rest with me

Let’s start it right

Be brave with me

To the grave with me

Let’s start it right

Books To Be Buried In

In my hometown

on the sidewalk

We lay out our things to sell

Thirty boxes

Five hundred volumes

My father’s life to tell

The cardboard torn

The pages worn

The heaviness, the wear

He is at home

His words won’t come

His hands, clotted and wobbly as he stands

The strangers kneel down and say,

“Who is the man?”

They thumb through the piles, as if

gold were pressed inside

And imagine the mind that was made

in these pages

While I imagine the words that

we’ll share in the ages of ages

His sixties reads

The Tao de Ching

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters

Caravaggio

Spread in color

Wolfe, Warhol and woodcraft

He had chosen a few

He would hang on to

Books to be buried in

The poets and preachers

The saints and the teachers

The voices who’d whisper him to dust

Chorus

Quiet (listen here)

She’s bound to a one-room library

Too many murmering books to read

Still too many books untouched.

She longs for a quiet mind

The snow on the field is empty white

And the wind whirring over it says, “Hush”

There is time for all of this

There is time for rest

There is time for no words at all

There is room for emptiness

An ivory page and blank canvass

For it is not by words you stand or fall.

Quiet

But she wants to be smarter

And to be faithful daughter

To a father who’s a poet and a saint

To be careful in craft

To make something that lasts

A song for the seraph to sing

There is time for all of this

Now is time for rest

Now is time for no words at all

There is room for emptiness

An ivory page and blank canvass

For it is not by words you stand or fall.

Quiet

Look On Beauty (listen here)

Look on beauty

To undo me

To unite my disparate parts

To receive me

And reweave me

Knit my hands to head to heart

Are you shocked with gladness?

Are your cheeks soaked by surprise?

Somehow filled and emptied

At the same time?

Don’t say a word; rest here a while

Rest here a while, rest here a while

Happy shivers in the snow blown

Purple winter sky

When the moon don’t shine

But the haze is bright

Or have the ballet dancers

Spun you dizzy with delight?

See their sinews flash

O! The grace and might

Are you swept away and swallowed

In your sweetheart’s eyes?

Well she loves you through and through

Loves all of you

Look on beauty

To undo me

To unite my disparate parts

To receive me

And reweave me

Knit my hands to head to heart

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind

Lest auld acquaintance be forgot

I'll sing for auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll take a cup of kindness yet

For auld lang syne.

Brim-fill that cup of kindness up,

Have a sip of wine and glow

Beside the tree, O pine with me

For the Christmas clock to slow

The Christmas clock to slow

I’d give you all I know and have

If the Christmas clock would slow

The auld lang syne, told there

In the heirloom wooden crèche

Too strange, too complicated, O

We regard with awe and hush.

As Mary gazed at shepherd guests

And wondered at their words,

I’ll hold you in my pond’ring heart

Old friend, still much unheard

Old friend, so much is still unheard

Old friend, so much unheard,

A chasm full, immeas’rable

Are your secrets still unheard.

Imagine yet a table set

For all I’ve loved before

For brother, friend, ea ch tear to mend

Sit there with me til morn

Til morning light intrudes on us

Til morning light intrudes

Unhurried, stay til night gives way

And the morning light intrudes

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll take a cup of kindness yet

For auld lang syne.

All That I Can Do

When he turned 18, moved to NY, hit the scene

I said, Goodbye my sweet boy, I love you.

And you’ll always have a home here,

Door’s open when you’re lonely

With your mother and your God above you.

Haven’t heard from him in days

Mother’s instincts going crazy

With whispers of overdose and violence.

Not a letter, not a call,

are you safe, dear, have you fallen?

Lord knows I can’t stand the silence.

So I will search for you

‘Cause it’s all that I can do

This severed love won’t do

My son, I’ll come for you.

Drove to Brooklyn, crack of dawn;

Didn’t realize ‘til I’d gone

The grit of the life that you’d moved to

Stomped the hard

city streets on my wearying feet

Asked each stranger I crossed if they’d seen you

He has the piercing blue eyes of his father

And my ever-working worrying mind

We knit you together dear, our images to bear

Our treasure, I won’t rest ‘til I find you.

So I will search for you

‘Cause it’s all that I can do

This severed love won’t do

My son, I’ll come for you.

In the gunshot glass of the shops I pass

I think, ‘How did all get so shattered?’

When I held you dear in your youngest years

Never dreamt you’d resent my compassion

But I will search for you

‘Cause it’s all that I can do

This severed love won’t do

My son, I’ll come for you.

And when I see you through the crowd,

catch my breath, smile so loud

And I stand from the stoop where I’m sitting

Will you let me hold you,

like a mother longs to do

Make a home in my arms once again?

Consider the Lilies (listen here)

I’m not fine and everything’s not OK

I can’t even put on my clothes today

Remind me what’s what, will you please?

I’m coming back, I’m on my knees

So pull me in and fold my elbows

Beneath your arms, these great walls of history

Hold me now, tell me again

“Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid

Hold me now, tell me again

“Take heart for I have overcome the world!”

My hands shake from the weight of the load

Steady these small sacrifices

Enclose them between your palms

Those magnificent loaves—are they woven with fingerprints?

Hold me now, tell me again,

“Rejoice with me! I have found my lost sheep.”

Hold me now, tell me again,

“Rejoice with me! I have found my lost coin.”

Will you build my homes and write my poems?

Love my love and sew my children?

Paint the barn and weave the tangled yarn

Into a needlepoint story of all the things I do not yet know?

Hold me now, tell me again

“Consider how the wildflowers grow”

Hold me now, tell me again,

“Take heart for I have overcome”

Chanticleer, Certain Hope (listen here)

Wish that I could take your flowers in so I could feel their bloom

In the moments when the winter wins and all around is gloom

But buds spring forth! The promises, so vivid midst the gray,

with whispers, "Sweet girl, hold on hope!” while darkness turns to day.

Chanticleer, I will draw near and settle in your patches

Here I need reminding of the glory from the ashes

The gardener works the afternoon, a whistle on his lips

A quiet smile beneath his beard, power in his fingertips

To nurture life and loveliness in the tender toil of pruning

And secrets to young poets who are desperate for its meaning.

Chanticleer, I will draw near and settle in your patches

Here I need reminding of the glory from the ashes

It started in a garden and it ends up in the city

Where beauty will be piled high and the streets won't glare so gritty

And everything He once deemed "Good" will be cultivated better

And everything once broken will be puzzled back together

What was will be restored as if it never had gone rotten

And what can be will be ours and what is will be forgotten

Chanticleer, I will draw near and settle in your patches

Here I need reminding of the glory from the ashes

Where what was will be restored as if it never had gone rotten

What can be will be ours and what is will be forgotten

Mess We Made (listen here)

It won’t take time, time ain’t enough

Time won’t make a boat for me when the waters get too rough

Time won’t make a bed for me to lie down safe at night

Time can’t root out bitterness; no, time won’t make it right

Won’t you help me clean the mess we made?

Show a little tenderness and quit this mean charade

Our hearts are knots of twine; they’re all tangled and frayed

Won’t you help me clean the mess we made?

And I can’t take another lover when my heart’s not right with you

These things will carry over, they’re not fair to put him through

I want reconciliation; want this thing to be redeemed

I want more and better life! I won’t settle for routine.

Won’t you help me clean the mess we made?

Show a little tenderness and quit this mean charade

Our hearts are knots of twine, they're all tangled and frayed

Won't you help me clean the mess we made?

They say, ‘Just don’t think about it;’ well I cannot change my mind

It’s a mess these days, I keep seeing your face, I think about this all the time

So if sturdiness and self-control I cannot conjure up

Where is healing for this frail and fainting buttercup?

Won’t you help me clean the mess we made?

Show a little tenderness and quit this mean charade

Our hearts are knots of twine, they're all tangled and frayed

Won't you help me clean the mess we made?

Jesus, help us clean the mess we made

Teach us to be tender, to be kind and unafraid

Our hearts are knots of twine; they're all tangled and frayed

Jesus, help us clean the mess we made