Can’t Get Too Much of You

a song for my wife’s birthday

[A]
A little bit of Bach is enough.
Coltrane can be too explosive.
I love ice cream
but you’ve got to stop
before it goes to your head.
Good things in small doses.

I can’t get too much
I cannot get too much
there is no such
thing as too much you.
Not saying nothing but
what I know is true.

[B]
Out of all the things there are
to think about each day
there is only one thought
reality conveys.
That is, you are mine and
life is not crazy.

[A]
Since the start of time
humans have not been aware
that love rules all –
all that governs time
and at the end of every prayer
hovers a perfect rhyme.

[B]
From the first day of
infatuation I was yours.
After that I sang songs
of tit-for-tatted glory.
At the heart of thereof was
written my short story.

[A]
I can’t get too much
I cannot get too much
there is no such
thing as too much you.
Not saying nothing but
what I know is true.

[A]
F /// C ///
D7 /// G ///
G ///
Edim7 Fdim7 GMa7 /
D7 ///
G6 /// G7 ///
[NV] Am7 / C / d / F / G / Bm / Bb6 ///

[B]
FMa7 /// ////
C /// G69 ///
Am7 ///
FMa7 /// EbMa9 ///
[NV] C6 / C7 / Em / FMa7 / Am7 / Bb6 / C7 ///

The Grain

Not the stuff of stuff but design
showing up rarely but forever
breathing in and out the most natural
lines under over but never random
taking and making form fancy under
strong sun time is weakening that
glue that holds side by side hoping
longer to stand to dance some
call it law culture society reality
I call it The Grain.

Like the backbone of a hardbound
book the spine must be lined up
and sewn for refusing abuse
except that the volume writ large
contains chapters on everything
weaving from simple and unedited
details the contours of leopard hide
contorting normalcy to fit the need
that may not have appeared yet
to stress The Grain.

Spring wind as violent as a beating
blows the birds out of the trees
then blows in opposing directions
gustily with untrustworthy motives
movement flit with partial wings
back into the same trees as tall
and flexible as the girl on the beach
branching upward to shelter all
life in The Grain.

I am not and you are not
and neither of us is or can claim
to be the dna or algorithm that
too specifically and so vaguely
tries to capture it like the cage
desires to define the zoo animal
the mayor is not the city no song
is the genre and moments simply
sit within The Grain.

I talk to my children and write
snippets of snafu as expressions
coloring but not making my love
for their several tropical storms
of rich recombinatory recycling
I am a drop of rain in their climate
I mutter syllables in their libretto
my parents and theirs ghost-parent
the little hurricanes coming after
our reading and writing the scintillae
of the connotative and mutative genotype
spun by and spinning the atmospheric
currents kissing and kissed by the sea
flowing through The Grain.

Not About Birds

In the mountains
from the foothills
I see a camel
I see a caravan of them
crossing the sky.

In the gravel
on the driveway
I see the future
not only mine –
alas all mankind’s.

It’s a cabal between the canyons
and the sterile valley ranges –
the heart and lungs of my blood
flow back and forth
between change and no change.

Finches and sparrows
in flight end up
fighting the wind
and avoiding fate
because it was too slow.

The neighbor’s cat will
follow the robin
listening in stillness
for nightcrawlers hunting
impending answers.

It’s a revolution, it’s a film
about the people making love
work instead of die – an evolution –
the kind that makes one
place be where you live.

In the saying and
in the abrupt silence
that I have come to
expect from the heard
and not heard I learn.

I see in the leaning
of the green into brown
backlit by the blue
that you and I
have so many reasons.

Of Course

Everything is a heck of a lot
to give to someone else
of course in the absence of
some rendition of motherhood.

If you knew my divine mother
which of course you do not
her lightness and darkness would
iterate just like growing up.

She found me lost on the way home
she made me make my own lunch every day
she heard the words I could not say
when my father wanted too much.

It was not diametrically her decision
to arrive ready at creation’s door
as the result of a thought process
she was an ambulance chaser.

One adult week I recorded her
talking about the ups and downs
that despatched her and delivered her
to the altar of the present moment.

Of course I have not put that
tape on to be transcribed
one me could never translate
a bible from those long pauses.

You had no idea my mother could
turn a difficult day into conducting
a symphony of less than good
into knowing that you’re okay.

Everything is a heck of a lot
to give to someone else
of course in the absence of
some rendition of motherhood.

The Party

I dunno if you know
but everything bad possibly
mal-typed on a keyboard
and dumb as nerve-jerky
impulses on a covid-infected
asshole’s high-definition
display of self-selected
bang-it-off garbage
is on the internet.
Beware.
Brainlessness
in the heartless
mid-brain mid-heart
caucovated sharply partialed
neo-shit-tongued
narcissist bread and broad-
casted digital urge-forge
is being germ-fed
and dead-thunk
over the shrunken waves
of the cultural shitlands.
Once it covers
our breathing orifices
it will be intooook
into the miscalculating
neural capillaries
of what is venemously called
conservative
thinking about the workings
of what goes on
all around the jumped-on
carnivalistic cannibalism
of the
party.

Must Media

Where would electricity love to go
if we were to let it loose?
Already it muscles across savanna
negative and obtuse
through wilderness and habitat
charging our dust
into must-swallow media maintaining
our hubris.

Someday is Hardly

For half a life
we have been sleeping
on a steep road over
rear-view strife.

[chorus]
To a student of beauty
someday is hardly
any sort of substitute
for a heart full of
fresh simmering soup
and on the side pepper-jack
melted on muffins.

[verse]
One at a time or
a few in a pinch
we step by inches
into paradise.

Your precious face
undulates gently
then quite suddenly
surprises me.

[chorus]
To a student of beauty
someday is hardly
any sort of substitute
for a heart full of
fresh simmering soup
and on the side pepper-jack
melted on muffins.

[verse]
E ///
Am ///
G11 ///
D9 /// G ///
[NV] D /// Cm ///

[chorus]
Gm7 /// ////
Gm6 /// ////
Bm /// CMa7 ///
Gm7 ///
Bm7 / CMa7 /
D6 /// Gm7 ///
Am7 G7 / Fm7 F#Ma7 GMa7 //
[NV] E /// Dm ///