I Walked A Wizened Mile

 

I walked a wizened mile

To see the clouds explode

Inside a broken sky.

I felt the rain expose

My dark and bitter side,

My dark and bitter side -

I walked a wizened mile.

 

I swam a surging sea -

The salt became my prayers,

Dissolved in endless depths.

My breath: a drowning tide,

A cold and brackish sigh,

A cold and brackish sigh.

I swam a surging sea.

 

I dreamt a sleep of dreams

And spoke a foreign tongue

To ghosts that filled the flames

Hot inside my head.

They sang a haunted song.

They sang a haunted song.

I dreamt a sleep of dreams.

 

Rivers Of Gold

 

Money is a road to ragged neglect,

And I’m tired, oh so tired, of sleeping underwater

While half of the angels are standing mute

Watching the other half drown in rivers of gold.

 

One thing or another can lead to the end

Where one meets the other careening through fields;

Lost in the waving and hypnotic leaves,

Watching the trees slowly drown in rivers of gold.

 

And why won’t you swim

And lift your head clear?

And why won’t you listen

To the sound of the river so near?

 

I don’t care to fall through memories you have.

The lonely are milling in shadows and doubt

(The storm bearing down in the clouds and the rain)

Watching their dead lovers drown in rivers of gold.

 

Nothing Worth Repeating

 

99 seems so relentless,

Passing through these lonely towns.

Yellow lights fight the darkness,

But the darkness of this valley always wins.

 

Eastern skies and looming mountains

Shed the snow and flood the fields -

Birds in spirals above the steeples,

But the towns are drowning far below.

 

Drowning in impatience

And disrepair.

Bridges spanning rivers

That no one knew were there.

 

Loves seems short but life is shorter,

And the dirt covers the graves.

And the bones recall the memories:

There is nothing worth repeating when it’s gone.

 

Dreaming through frustration

And despair.

Sleepless, spanning lifetimes

That no one knew were there.

 

No Turning Around

 

I awoke walking past a row of terraced houses;

I heard a train in the distance and I started running.

And I don’t know where I am,

And I don’t know where I am,

But I’ve been here before…

 

I sat down on the train and I looked out the window

At a tattered, harried landscape full of broken, dirty dreams.

And I don’t know where this is,

And I don’t know where this is,

But I’ve known it before…

 

The soot on the houses, the bricks and the rubble,

The grime on the trestles that shelter the homeless,

The trash and graffiti, the broken glass sparkles -

This isn’t a promise unfolded,

This isn’t the promise revealed.

 

When the train crossed a river, the tracks started trembling;

I stood up with a start and it all was familiar.

But I don’t know where I’ve been,

But I don’t know where I’ve been,

And I can’t turn around…

 

Echoes Of The Storm

 

Water pouring down and the walls are bleeding;

Strands of ivy waving in the wind.

Broken bricks in piles above the ashes, crashes

Wake the walking strangers from their sleep.

 

A damaged step upon a stairway leading

From the street above to the hole below,

A garret underground.  A cloud is lifting.  Shifting

In a chair a singer sings her song.

 

Words of halting laughter

Notes of polished steel

Shining light reflected from the moon

 

Thunder, screaming rain, and the walls are pounding,

Trapped inside a head that won’t explode.

A friend of mine is praying to the ceiling, kneeling

In the rubble, blood and broken bones.

 

The breathless face the wind and keep repeating

Words they’ve heard a thousand times before.

Echoes of the storm in phrases falling, calling

Out to gods abandoned long ago.

 

Broken Hearts And Drowning Tides

 

I bent my back on a broken wave.

I knew my heart was not that brave.

I knew I’d go – I knew you’d stay;

I ducked my head beneath that wave.

 

Broken hearts and a drowning tide

I cannot keep this all inside

 

The water cold, the currents strong,

I didn’t know if I was wrong,

If I was right or just confused.

I held my breath and it was bruised.

 

I couldn’t swim against the tide.

I knew at last I’d finally died -

Until the wave broke on my back.

I felt the surge and heard the crack.

 

The winds will blow from sea to shore.

The waves will break upon my door.

I’ll keep it closed but in my eyes

Tears will flow from sorry skies.

 

No Future For The Fearless

 

The fallen bones of summer lay crumbling on the earth:

The broken nameless forms of our existence.

The winter night was dropping the stars upon our heads,

While we scratched and clawed the dirt for our subsistence.

 

No future for the fearless – no tombstone for the meek

The walls that hold the world at bay are falling

 

The rows that were remaining held a yellowed line of kale;

The weeds that choked our breath lay wilting, rotting.

An older man, exhausted, forgetting what he’d known,

Refused to face the fact that he was faceless.

 

After all the windstorms that ripped the soil and left

A rocky barren empty urban landscape,

Cracks that broke the concrete, the asphalt and facades

Yawned and opened up to hold the future.

 

Leafless trees were reaching to grasp the weary necks

And hold them till the breath had left the body.

A younger man was weeping, and dropping to his knees,

With his bare hands interred his faceless father.

 

The thirsty earth was drinking the hot and bitter tears

And opened up to hold the weightless bodies.

The stars were starting fires that melted rock and stone:

The broken nameless forms of our existence.

 

Bury My Thoughts

 

I dreamed I drank the waters of the San Lorenzo River -

The water cooled the fever in my bones and made me shiver.

The water line was low and left a trail of tangled grasses -

The summer sun felt warm upon my neck, but summer passes…

 

Bury my thoughts in these mountains

Bury my hopes in this soil

Carry what’s left to the ocean

And let my body be

 

I dreamed I was a hawk above the San Vicente Mountains

Circling in the drafts that come up off the dark blue ocean.

The bay was there before my eyes, Big Sur off in the distance;

I couldn’t see a sign of cars or roads or barbed wire fences.

 

Someone spoke - I dreamed that I could understand their silence:

A gentle voice, a gentle hand, without a trace of violence.

I tried to answer with a tongue so swollen in my sickness;

The fever broke and I awoke beyond the sway of illness.

 

Groundswell

 

Torrents of moments come flooding the mines

Where darkness is hacked at, where timbers and signs

Propping and pointing a path through the rock;

A crack is a danger no miner can block.

 

Groundswell

In a crack in the earth

Groundswell

 

It fills with the moments that freeze and then swell.

A break in a wall that divides him from hell.

Drowning in moments, the miner expires.

Darkness returns and his god quickly tires…

 

Of toying with mortals, of toying with hope.

His hands are quite dirty, he washes with soap.

The blood of the miner is the mark of the beast.

The most of this moment is the best of the least.

 

Empty the moment but swollen the storm - 

Cold is the promise, but promises warm

To the touch of a god whose hands ever shake;

To the death of a miner whose thoughts never wake.

 

Shouting Match

 

Window panes are shivering – a storm is coming on.

Lights are slowly stirring as the nighttime moves to dawn.

I am standing in my pride – I’m just about to fall.

I’ve never stopped this shouting but I’ve never scaled that wall

 

Standing on a precipice that isn’t really there –

If I had half the sense I’ve known I wouldn’t really care.

The wind is rising steadily, the trees begin to fall –

I’ve never stopped this shouting but I’ve never scaled that wall

 

Somewhere on the ocean there’s a boat that’s painted blue,

No one’s in the cabin and the mast is snapped in two;

I wish I had the tiller headed for your port of call.

I’ve never stopped this shouting but I’ve never scaled that wall

 

A Draught Of Sorrow

 

I would drink my draught of sorrow slowly,

So it coats my tongue and cuts my throat.

Leaving words where no shadows fall:

A thirsty sea and a sinking boat,

A bitter taste where there once were lies -

I would I could see through other’s eyes.

 

I would drink my draught of sorrow slowly,

So the former lives of all the stars

Would rise like wheat in a summer field,

Would fall like boys in forgotten wars,

And light up the measure of all I despise -

I would I could see through other’s eyes.

 

I would drink my draught of sorrow slowly,

So the floods would find the bank’s rough edge,

Come pouring down and drown the leisure

Of what remains of the trees and sedge,

And listen to woebegone moans and cries -

I would I could see through other’s eyes.

 

I would drink my draught of sorrow slowly,

So acceptance melts the ridge of stone

That stands between the beating heart

And the speechless mind that stands alone

Beyond the place where all knowledge dies -

I would I could see through other’s eyes.

 

Dregs And Holly Bushes

 

Nothing was flowing but the river remains;

Someone was drowning in the mid-summer rains.

Calling for mercy but their savior’s asleep -

A nightmare resulting from diving in too deep.

Someone was calling as the tide flows in;

A mixture of blood, stagnant wine and sin.

The screaming is haunting the disciple’s dreams -

Something for nothing – never what it seems.

 

And a sign that the day was drawing down – the wine

Oh the wine dripping from the crown

The holly turning brown

 

A savior awakens but it’s far too late

To break from the timeless into short-term fate.

Leaving disciples scattered, wandering, lost.

A desert is calling that no one has crossed.

A forest of failings mostly stumps are left;

The moorland expansive with a fault line cleft.

A holly bush growing at the base of a tree:

The dregs of a moment that could never be.

 

Falling through fashions that assume a storm

Crashing and tearing at the clinging form.

Disciples and saviors walk their well-worn tracks,

The crowns cut their foreheads, the wind at their backs.

Stealing the reason that requires a prayer;

Sediment settles but creates a layer

On top of another and another to be:

The dregs of a moment at the base of a tree.

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All songs © 2017 by Jim Powell.