into the fastened yesterday

the headaches are for men in white socks

ties keep hard heads full   of knots

                     won’t quite forget what’s best forgot

their ballad blues have sudden stops

                                   these mellow horns of ragged age

give pause enough to turn the page

in  contraband denoting change

                          head to head     the solstice same

tenor hands   slow  and sweet

                           walter staring at his feet

counting minutes of the day

swing your step  to make your way

into the fastened yesterday

the eights say things that no one else asks you

math rock is a comedian stepping on his laughs  just a figure floating   fast   pick and past  jick licks last the russian novel tuning with a bullet wound occipital lobe   vestiges of hope  from a time we could cope we counted on things solid gold  the end of rainbows that weren’t all that special on their own but put together  minds are blown   LIES LIES political party platform ties  accidents of history by furniture makers drug takers  in ginsberg’s sanfrancisco  but what the fuck did he know   singing and shaking  a blue black tornado  great plains potatoes shiny shirts and drug abused pinwheel fast exhumation blues    snake fingered hands bottle neck pride twenty two years of fucked up insides  headed south to hungry mouths dilettantes  make all the doubts   fifty star placemats at jonathan’s house of breakfast smoking section  ice cream scoops of butter fool  he’s the kind of man who would do that to you  run to born  salley shirtless de la puked on soft soled shoes  wait what was that the roots   don’t be afraid of the obvious the lot of us up against the wall on the SG call it’ll break  if it falls you can glue the headstock but won’t be what it was   won’t be the same   it’ll sound just as plain but never once leave your ark to explain how the onetwothree rut of the early decade makes every attempt to pre-tend you saved enough time truth or money to finally sway the world the curls to look your way    the lines end up closer as the page starts to bend i’ll be your brother just don’t condescend you can suite it or theme it  the chapter comes after in the highways and try ways of impending disaster   can you smell the nitrogen  can you believe the chewing gum   it lasted a minute longer  than it had to   you see the eights say things that no one else asks you

photo by charlie waters

charlie waters' late autumn sky

the trees reach

                     they always   reach

                                                                          higher even

                              with nothing really   to  weigh them down

   the bright sky

             like her blue eyes

    has  a   coldness

                      the edge around

there is a cloud streak

or a jet stream

                        the new day is shaking off its night

there's a couple hundred reasons

and a couple thousand worries

of where she is

                                                if she might

there are birdcalls

           and            diz cheeks

    there's a cello sitting right out here

                 on church  street

               

that's where the voice fades

                            yeah      

that's where i stay

                            it's the blue again       

 just cold enough

                to keep     

 but the dark earth

                                 has its own worth

        like the brown eyes

                                             that coffee gave to me

                                                      they watch      time crawl

                                                                         right down the back hall

                                                     minutes

                                                                              until                   eternity

                           here

                                    the high notes

                  of his saxophone

                                    are staring          at my breath

         they beat   back ideas

floating through years

                 just enough sand shift to make me

                                

photo by Charlie Waters