The Door Is Open

​

The door is wide open - from inside I hear

The screaming of color.  The incense unclear

Wafting in clouds, sounding gray in the heat

Of the absence of sun in the hole by my feet.

 

Father the door is open

I'm going through the door

Father the door is open

 

Lines, carried, counting the way back abound.

Fugitives file at the corners of sound

Lost to the ears as the tools cut and shear.

Noise from perception and perception from fear.

 

Lost and rehearsing the futile old game:

Where timers are ticking and god has a name,

Where books line the shelves in attempts to explain,

Where paint daubs resent all the lies they contain.

 

Release me, release me, I'm tired and I'm sane.

But I've died knowing less, knowing less is too vain.

Pretensions and scratching in the dirt with my feet:

All I can give in the face of defeat.

​

Tempting Times

​

The landscape gives a heartless shrug -

It claims a barren soul of dust.

The driest wind that e'er has blown

Will wipe the plain clean of disgust.

While blinded stares hide 'neath the clay,

Where no one sees or heals the sick.

And burrowed tunnels echo soft

With sounds of dark and tempting times.

 

The Dark Age never really left,

It's only tubes that light the lies.

The simple way is hard and cruel,

But what is good in gold and sighs?

And still the landscape holds no cares:

Horizons filled with smoke and flame.

The huts are filled with swollen eyes,

Watching clocks in tempting times.

 

A fruitless tree forever bearing

Poison on a plastic limb.

Another tree's been stripped of plenty

Of food to fill the bowl to brim.

Ploughs that turn the dust to green,

Lack the blade to cut the rock,

To carve into this landscape grey:

A petrol spill in tempting times.

 

The faintest light from distant stars

Leads the way back to a place,

Where walls abound and rivers ramble

Paths of narrow bleeding space.

The landscape hovers near to here.

Horizons seen to moan and cry.

Color loses all its meaning

In these toneless tempting times.

 

Hopeful breath is left to wither

Crackling in the desert sun,

While the senses scream for treason -

Corners turned but nothing's done.

A compass points a thousand places

On this aimless plain of stone.

The sick are heard to say a last prayer

In these dark and tempting times.

 

A Pattern On The Winter Moon

​

We built a little house in the piney wood

With big windows looking toward the sea.

As we stood together ‘neath the winter moon

I smelled smoke upon the evening breeze.

 

And the branches on the dead trees scrape

A pattern on the winter moon

 

And I worked so hard to ignore that smell,

But I couldn’t get it off my mind.

As we stood together, I was miles away,

But no fire there that I could find.

 

With a sense of dread, I went down below

Underneath our little house to see.

I saw blackened trees and some coals remained

Wafting smoke upon the evening breeze.

 

And the piney wood sounds so quiet, calm.

I can smell the ocean on the breeze.

But the moon is new, and we stand apart

Between the skeletons of those trees.

​

I Write In Red

​

I write in red but think in black,

Except when that old man is back.

He’s come to pay a visit now.

His aim is true.  His goal’s a row

With every living breathing thought

That a weary chattered mind has caught

And held to light and seen as good.

I’m wandering where I know I should.

 

I speak in tongues but talk in black,

Especially when that man is back.

He comes descending as a cloud.

His thunderclaps are rather loud.

A blanket made of moldy wool,

A pillow not for rest, a tool

To smother hope, to garrote sense.

I’m wandering where I’m rather tense.

 

I whisper lies but shout in black.

I’d really like my senses back.

I see the old man isn’t breathing.

I see the soul is nearly seething,

Trapped without a chain in sight,

Trapped although I’m traveling light.

Free, but not a bloody saint,

I’m wandering and I’m feeling faint.

​

The Coastline Of California

 

I walked on down through the oaks and scrub

And I looked out at the ocean.

I was hot and dry, like the sky above,

And I sat down with the notion

That I had come to the end of all

This country - what it stood for -

A culture pushed and here it stopped:

The coastline of California.

 

I turned around and I looked upon

The mountains I had passed through;

Logged and left like an open wound,

And the creeks run red with refuse.

A river runs to the end of all

This country - what it stood for -

A culture pushed and here it stopped:

The coastline of California.

 

No signs of those who had been before

But some piles of shells revealing

A thousand years of settled life;

The patterns kept repeating.

But they were there at the end of all

This country - what it stood for -

A culture pushed and here it stopped:

The coastline of California.

 

I knelt upon the ragged edge

Of a sandstone cliff that's crumbling;

I tried to grasp what was left for me

But watched it go a-tumbling.

For I am here at the end of all

This country - what it stood for -

A culture pushed and here it stopped:

The coastline of California.

​

When Waters Parted

​

Were you there when waters parted,

And the waves came crashing down

On the unsuspecting people

That were standing all around?

When the floodwaters receded

And no one was left alive,

Were you there standing beside me

As I looked and softly cried?

 

Were you there when fires finished

All the darker works of men?

Where they ripped and hacked at nightfall,

When the stars would light again

The same old fields and forests

That our grandmothers once knew.

Where they birthed our mothers crying

And they wondered “Was that you?”

 

Were you there behind the wire?

Were you there inside the fence?

When the dead ends of the mind were found

To leave the bounds of sense,

And flow into the rivers

Draining deep into the sea.

Were you there when waters parted?

Were you there inside of me?

​

This Is Not My Country

 

This is not my country –

No, I don't know this place –

Where once poets went howling

Into the nameless face.

Where Kerouac went walking

And sat in desolate grace.

The angels fell from heaven -

They wouldn't know this place.

 

This is not the country

That Woody Guthrie knew –

The talking blues and the work songs

‘Round the dusty fields blew.

Could he ever have guessed this –

That the fascists would win?

The bombs and missiles flying –

The enemy within.

 

This is not the country

That my grandfather saw

Through the eyes of a painter

As he walked along

Highway 1 up the coastline,

Before the Second World War.

The lonely call of the desert –

Hard to hear anymore.

 

This is not my country –

This is not my war.

The bombs and missiles flying

And I don't know what for.

Everyone is a target.

No one has a face.

Taking sides - making demons –

No, I don't know this place.

​

Well-Marketed Men

 

With the lifting of the filters,

And the dropping of pretense,

Words are taking on a meaning

Far beyond accepted sense.

 

Well-Marketed Men

Will free us again

From worries and thinking

Let’s get back to our drinking

 

Tortured remnants of a language

Left to rot upon a tree,

Along with saviors, martyrs, teachers -

Who gave their all, who gave it free.

 

Agitated angry

Ashen-faced and crazy

Glasses full of bubbles

The methods not so subtle

 

Tongues are twisted, spirits lifted

By the freedom found inside

Of bunkers, warm with aging bodies.

Nowhere safe, no need to hide.

​

The Cold War Is Over

 

Scarcity scaling the fences of plenty,

Bruising the totals and knees of the workers.

Where do the fickle ones lighten their load?

Who built the fences and who found the totals?

 

The cold war is over

So why are we freezing

While men in high places

Are laughing and warm

The cold war is over

The feeling is creeping

That someone or something

Will bring us to harm

 

From where does the noise come when all are asleep?

From all of the rest who must work to ensure

That fence builders, total-totters, sleep, oh so soundly –

Work to ensure that they blissfully rest.

 

Unaware of the sweat but disturbed by the noise -

Grumpily rising from beds filled with feathers -

Calling for coffee and the papers that parrot

Lies from the lips of an ego gone mad.

 

Aware of the sweat and quite deafened by noise,

Slaves underground rising up to the day

Blinking, the lights all around them are flashing.

Troubled and shallow the sleep yet to come.

​

A Delicate Peace

 

Delicate the peace,

Shattered once, now shy

Of tracing the steps,

Rehearsed well.  But try

Never to speak

Of the methods and moods.

The conquered but free -

The hot-blooded feuds.

 

The rills in the sky

Forming currents that mirror

The streams that cut gently,

Too hot to come clear.

And boots tread the surface,

And guns shock the sense,

But minds never clouded

Will never grow tense.

 

And what of the wars

Where the olive trees still grow?

The fruit of the land

Outlives all that go

The way of the sword,

The fist, and the gun.

A delicate peace

When the rest comes undone.

​

On Easter Morning

 

I awoke to the sound of gunfire on Easter Morning,

But I could not speak to save my life.

How I wanted to run from this place,

And I was pinned not by bullets,

But the sins of a past I never lived.

This bed is cold as stone,

And although the door is open,

I cannot leave.

 

Thirsty, I took the cup to drink on Easter Morning,

But the rim was cracked and cut my lip.

The drops of blood mixed with dry dust,

For the cup had been empty for ages,

And I could never fill it though I bleed for one thousand years.

This bed is cold as stone,

And although the door is open,

I cannot leave.

 

Awake, I wept at the thought of the night before Easter Morning:

At the violence of the actions that filled my head.

And I looked out the door

At the tree I once had climbed,

Riddled with bullets, and I could not save myself.

This bed is cold as stone,

And although the door is open,

I cannot leave.

​

Mind The Gap

​

Asking the why but the answer’s opinion -

Walking ‘round lifeless, no better than blind.

Stumbling trails that are littered with remnants:

Rocks and bare roots of a treacherous kind.

 

Mind the gap

Between what you’re hearing

Mind the gap

And what you know to be true

 

Strip to the bone but the flesh is too willing,

Naked, pinched breath on a cold barren day.

Sacrifices made at an altar, familiar.

No one can look at perfection this way.

 

Reason’s the father and the mother is sterile

Knowledge will cut out the heart of the son

But kindness will fill in the gaps

 

A black lamb is bleeding, and she’s lifeless for nothing,

The sticky black blood sucks the soul from the feet.

Walking these trails, tripping, rootless and barren.

No less and no more, just opinions to me.

 

Sometimes A Song's Just A Song

​

Well the world’s full of trouble,

I’m finding it’s double

Of what they once taught me in school.

There’s people that’s dying,

And old people crying,

And our president’s a sorry old fool.

When I look in the mirror

There’s one thing that’s clear –

I’m older and sorrier too.

Well some folks are right, and some folks are wrong

And sometimes a song’s just a song

 

Well, the sixties are over.

Were you rolling in clover

When time stole away what you know?

‘Cause now the old geezers,

Between having seizures,

Are charging big bucks for a show.

The music’s the same,

Just a whole lot more tame,

For the new songs they ebb more than flow.

Well some folks are weak, and some folks are strong

And sometimes a song’s just a song

 

Well I’m starting to sound

Like I’m determined and bound

To dislike this world that we’ve got.

But in fact, I’m in love

With the heaven’s above

And the rest of us here where it’s hot.

So, the wheel keeps turning

And my stomach is churning

As I give it my very best shot.

Some folks want to lead, some folks tag along

And sometimes a song’s just a song

​

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All songs © 2006 by Jim Powell.