I'm listening for the nightingale Until the morning light turns pale All naked and frail I'm waiting for the phallic Spear of God To impale Me deep Knee deep in stomach acid in the belly of a whale Who sings songs to the San Gabriels And dreams of white skinned girls in pistachio shells What the hell You, you're watching black and white footage Of a nuclear bomb The telephone rings It's probably mom She asks you to tea Those loose tea leaves in the bottom of the cup Something didn't agree It made you throw up all your teleology Knee deep in the rolling bathwater of the sea The earth seems to choose who she chews and swallows And if it ain't you Then it's probably me We stand in a row on the shore, the line is long Where's that bird I never heard its song The tones fell out of the pink air and landed Neatly in the palm of your hand Knee deep in the twilight colored mud The black lightning trees outlined against diamond earring studs With the rattle and hum of insect life You feel less alone But I'm still listening for that nightingale While you're lost in a lagoon I'm crazy as a loon Inside this birdless whale

Troubled by your wandering eyes Troubled by your wandering mind Troubled by your lonesome heart That tears you apart every time Troubled by little white lies Leveled by the feeling in the room And the pair of eyes that cut right through Watched as the picture frame Fell to the floor Broken in two Troubled by what you did and didn't do You never complained but you never let go Now your pent up rage is starting to show And your mind was made up too long ago Troubled by all the open doors These decisions always shake you to your core Many choices to be made But you're afraid of what they might say If they became yours So you never claim anything anymore Humbled by the honesty in her Like being confounded by the simplest tunes of a songbird And there were things you needed to see And everyone tried but you were blind We gave you pictures not words She was the only voice you heard You know it's alright If you start to feel seen And you start to cry or start to dream Those are good things to do if you want to feel free So go ahead cry and go ahead scream Give yourself room enough to dream

It is impossible to distinguish The difference between Pine needles and worms On the sidewalk In the early morning January rain It's just the new year's pain Falling from the sky again Disguising living things among nonliving things So they get stomped just the same Underfoot, on the sidewalk in the early morning January rain But the voices in the air ask you to mourn But your so far away from how you're born That you don't know how And pretend you don't care You're compassionate and then you're caustic You're religious and then agnostic You think you've found it when you've lost it Trying to decipher cryptic meaning But if the heart would just stop beating Then the scrape would stop bleeding And if it's cause and effect Then maybe something I'm doing would stop January from raining But the voices in the air ask you to mourn But you're so scared of being scorned That you just ignore them Goddammit, I don't know Goddammit, I don't know Goddammit It is impossible to distinguish the difference between Thoughts and feelings In the early morning January rain

All I need now in this midsummer rain is a bit more daydream in my mason jar Beneath this rainbow umbrella that’s now working on overtime All I need now is a way to catch your ideas and bottle them up Put it out on the market somebody fills their cup Maybe then folks would spend more hours out beneath the ticking time bomb sun But in this raving heat The heaps of love gestures That we make feel incomplete Devours our passion and energy We end up watching garbage all day on this fucking T.V. All you need now is a million piece puzzle on the dinning-room table Always half solved relegating your meals to the floor like a monk All you need now is a mantra and some beads some brown sugar in your oatmeal and the American Dream and some community college classes you never show up to so you flunk But in this raving heat You take cold showers for lack of air conditioning The smell of the air is a warning, it might start raining again So cover up your head Your thoughts get soggy when you wet But you can rain on my 4th of July parade Any day And all I need now is a friend who politely tells me to wipe the sleep from my eyes in the late afternoon after waking half-crazed half-dazed from a nap where I dreamt of you All you need now is an endless suitcase that fits in the overhead that goes where you go as you travel the world to baptize yourself in the new But in this raving heat Insanity isn’t all that far away from me I throw all the letters and notes into the street The rain came last night so I pick up your soggy thoughts in the morning