In Memory of Benny

Up the street down the block, kids hanging ‘round until the wee hours. A musician walks his dog into the empty shadows of another exhausted night. Patrol cars, spotlights, helicopters, road blocks. What’s happening? I don’t know but it’s sure costing us taxpayers a lot of bucks trying to catch some kid. Some kid who ain’t done nothing but be born into this hell. I kick through the broken bottles, make it back through the park, a long way from Iraq, but not really.

Bakersfield Tonight

Cameras flashing, stories spinning, sex violence, incest, mass murder, guns, culture out of control. How many dead? How does this happen? Politicians, judges, lawyers, talking heads, talking points, blowers of the flame, critics of the parade. Where are you mama? Who knew this girl? What time is it?

I don’t want to know about time anymore. Tell the guy up there to start singing. Maybe some Merle Haggard would do.

Free Your Mind

The criminals are at the door. Let them in. Who can tell what side anybody’s on anymore. What are you going to do? Things happen. They’re pointing the guns at everybody these days. We are all the enemy. Imagine how the soldiers feel. The Jesus nation they’ve turned it all upside down. They got it all wrong a friend from Africa once told me. Man we got to keep talking once we stop it’s over. Keep moving, playing them mind games. The king is corrupt. The corporate boys and their lackeys have got his ear. His wife has a taste for books. The expensive kind you know.

There’s A Line

Maybe it’s true in the end the power is with the people. No matter how powerful, how corrupt the puppets will eventually fall. The front lines are lonesome and deadly. Wars for profit rage on. The lies become known. Even the newspapers eventually have to print the news.

Love & Trust

From the hills of Kentucky to the streets of the east village. There’s a thread, there’s a harmony singing that somehow connects us all. I once saw the Everly brothers singing in their home county. I closed my eyes and heard the Beatles singing. Springsteen danced out of Jersey playing through the night. Don’t give up baby we can still make it. Mink Deville and the lights of Broadway. Bring it on home.

Lovers In The Night

Deep in the heart of darkness. We all know we all going there. There’s a war outside that door Geronimo. Don’t look now I ain’t changing the names. What’s in a name what does it matter. Harmonica in the 3^rd position. Kid don’t you go and get lost. This is where you learn mercy. Keep on talking boys it’s all poetry to me. 30 years ago walking down lower Broadway with my friend Pat, he turned to me and said lovers in the night man, you got to record that song. This one is for you Pat. Hope you’re still out there somewhere. Still crazy. Still reading Rimbaud.

Sunday Afternoon In Austin

Trouble in paradise. It sure is pretty here but things ain’t what they use to be. Sitting in a restaurant drinking margaritas people laughing and talking, guitars singing. Out in the parking lot two lovers. You ain’t born lucky… baby what’s wrong. Somebody got to stay somebody got to go. Traffic rolling by. You remember so well.

Pack of lies

You wake up in the morning it hits you without warning something that they call the blues. Space cowboy, puppet cowboy. They’ve master the art of lying. It’s like a beautiful woman. Come on boys there’s the war. Born to run, Blood on the tracks, Idiot Wind, Thunder Road, 9/11 buried beneath the steel concrete, hearts screaming, all those years ago when we first met. You are so beautiful. I will remember.

New Orleans

The great divide, the great continent. I’m coming up but the past ain’t far behind. I can see I can hear I can turn it off. Don’t crush my dreams. In the end I’ll see you there. We’re all staring down the same gun barrel. Get your money out of the banks boys, red beans and rice at Busters, French bread on the side. Kept a lot of men alive way back when a poor boy still had a chance.

Hey Miss Lucy

Lonesome love, dark as a dungeon, a man listens, follows his heart. Hey Miss Lucy what did I do? The world just don’t work that way baby. Love don’t work that way. People got to do what they got to do. It’s just bizness baby. It’s how we survive. People are cruel there’s a dirty world closing in. Ride boy ride, maybe someday…

Soul Street Shuffle

So it kicked in the move was on the move, the trouble was on the trouble. Somebody said wait a minute. I said I didn’t speak that language. Things never work out easy we just wish they would, but what would be the future in easy, who would care. There’s money in them there streets. There’s salvation in them there streets. I say let the harmonicas wail, look both ways and watch out for the cracks. There’s a way through it, there must be. Love the woman in your bed and don’t knock on the walls of young lovers.

Send a picture

There was this room I lived in back NYC. It had French windows opening up onto the street at least that’s what a woman who was from Europe said they were. San Antonio was a long way aways through those windows. Sitting on the edge of the pacific drinking a cool beer someone had handed me. A camp ground around Big Sur. A crazy country at my back. Something to think about, something to remember.

Blow man blow

Drift through the pavement, night into day you see it all. All night boys, all night girls in the all night joints. Tales told, tired men on the benches. Young man taking that first step into the darkness. Voices whisper secrets. Strange love around every corner. Judges fast asleep. It all begins, it all ends, eyes fade into day, garbage trucks rumbling up the street, old folks looking out the windows, deliveries being made. You follow your steps somehow your bed finds you. You dream heavy, stumbling through the wasteland.

Light travels with Buddha

Up on the mountain under the stars, lights beyond the mind. Mortal thoughts, eternal thoughts. It’s coming around left to right, right to left. If you believe then you know what the truth is. Rest easy GH.

So far behind

The revolution was on the street for awhile. It was even on TV. Then the world turned, people were killed, murdered, people disappeared. Technology came in like a whiplash, heads are still spinning, the players changed uniforms, the songs changed. The good guys, the bad guys became one. Conversations are patrolled. The numbers are there they can match them up. Peace never came the wars moved on to different countries. Lies are told as truth and the truth is exposed as lies. The new masters are clever…. You live long enough you get to see some things. In the end I may not know it, but this is a love song.

Innocent man

On my way up 8^th street to get some smokes one time. A crowd gathered ‘round. What’s going on, what happened, who is he, did anybody see what happened. Is he dead?

Smokes use to be cheap. Remember as a kid running to the store to get some cigarettes and the late edition for my old man. No one thought twice about selling smokes to a kid in those days. People knew each other. It was a different world.

Things change the years come and go. Gather around friends and I’ll tell you a tale…

In my grave

Will the dead rise up against the living someday. Will they crucify us all on their way to heaven? Cremation of rat food. Who knows what the future will bring? We start off somewhere standing on corners trying to figure it out. How it all works. Some stay put, some head out west, some climb ladders, some dig holes. Some join the fight while some fight for peace. The votes are counted, the gavel falls and new laws are written. Who are these men who declare war. Who are these men who pass sentence. Who are these men who fly airplanes. Who are these men who dare to speak for God. I say send them down here let them face their enemies. I say send them down here let them crawl through the mud. I say send them down here let them kill each other. I say send them down here so we can all go home.

My home city

Money speaks, money votes, the wrecking ball rolls.

Right or wrong what can you do what can you say

It’s just your memories friend

Maybe it’s time to move away

Nashville blues

It ain’t easy living in the belly of the beast, but there is always plenty of food…. Food for thought that is. Nothing against nobody, nobody against nothing.

Hear no evil, speak no evil.

In 50 years the trial will take place.

Look out

It’s funny how things go. You can see the future sometimes clearer in your rearview mirror. Roads lead to another city, another way of looking at it all. Where are we? Omaha! How we’d get here. I don’t remember taking that turn. Different points of view about everywhere you look. Guess it’s only natural. Maybe nobody is fooling nobody. We all come clean in the eyes of others. We just don’t know. Men, women what are we looking at? Different sides of the same coin? I don’t know I’m just tossing it out there trying to figure along with the rest of them. I say keep your closets clean and your eyes on the sky.

Sisters farm

What the hell does that mean? Whore house, cathouse, a farm that your sister owns. It doesn’t matter it’s where I’m going. It’s where I got to go right now. The mud is getting thick around here. Nothing ain’t making sense. Feel like I ain’t existing. It could be something I’m doing, something I ain’t doing. Women around here don’t pay me no mind. I need a break I need salvation you know what I mean…

Code of the west

I knew this guy many years ago. He was crazy I guess you could say. Wandered around his apartment on the east side talking/listening to the walls. He woke up late, didn’t go outside much. He couldn’t stand the site of the great machine. Jumped off his roof one time and lived to tell about it. Went to visit him in Bellevue hospital the last time I saw him. Never will forget the look in his eyes. I can still hear the voices…

Midnight eclipse

The players, the heads, the mind fuckers. You take your punches, you pay your dues. Who are you? What do you do? You pace the room, you walk the streets. In your heart, in your mind you start to see things that can’t be seen, hear things that can’t be heard. Some stranger tells you this is heaven, another tells you this is really hell. You stay up for days. You stare into the mirror and see a skeleton staring back. Somebody is whispering something in your ear. You find yourself on some corner trying to remember what city you’re living in.

Love song.

Songs hit people in different ways. Down the road, down the highway, sitting under a tree in the middle of the night. Watching that silver moon sailing through October clouds. When was that, who was that guy who just stood there watching her go to slow to figure it all out.

Alright

It’s getting crowded in here man. Everybody is acting like they know something. I’m not sure what you mean but I hear you. The climate is shifting, beliefs are strange. The rules keep on changing. What you use to do you can’t do, what couldn’t do now you can do. There’s a move a foot to take us back to Kansas. Hail Mary mother of god. Can that be true? How can god have a mother? I don’t know but I’m getting out of here.

Memory of Benny 1

Taking it slower hearing a different echo in the shadows. Maybe it’s better this way maybe it ain’t. I have suspicions but I can’t be part of the telling.

Trains go by

Lost on the streets of Edinburg one time. I looked up and off in the distance I saw a train go by. Reasons beyond me a lot things came washing down. Back in Austin I hear the freight trains outside my window headed south, headed north. Trains go by with the one I love. Love in vain. Take me back baby where all began.

I got a feeling

The roof is leaking call the plumber. The future’s smoking down the track. Can’t be sitting around like the dead. Thunder’s crashing maybe we still got time to figure out the plot. I don’t know how it all begins, but I remember how these things end.

Song for the homeless

I found myself one time out in the Midwest with no keys in my pocket. Realized there was no door I could get behind. Winter coming on and no place to go. Through the streets of some big cities I looked for shelter. Met a lot of kind people along the way who helped. I was young then still chasing down some dreams. Years go by but you never forget. It’s a strange country I’m living in.

Brownsville tonight

Desperation, love and betrayal. Lonesome figure on a two lane road hitchhiking south. Miles rolling by, long sips of whiskey out of a paper bag, neon lights, love and oblivion, lost in the flood. It don’t matter anymore. He’s got the look in his eyes.

Jackson

After all is said and done the future came upon us. Found ourselves staring into its face. Up on boot hill they’re digging the holes, burying the last gunfighter. Dean Moriarty is gone. The new west lies in ruins. The cities are overcrowded men slip over the border beneath satellite stars. The wars rage on, a new generation stumbles to the front. Johnny Cash is dead. The old rivers roll. I’m sitting here thinking about something, someplace I need to go.