Stop. I hear the running colors,

bleeding their way into staves of

yesterday’s piecemeal hide and seek.

They have a way about them, stoic and

unyielding in their passion.

 

Maybe it’s the seagull songs,

where nobody knows the words?

But the shear intensity of

competing voices marks territory

for newcomers and ne’er do wells.

 

Maybe it’s the ease with which

lyrics come back from high school sweet

heart songs? Backseat strolls, stretching

out winding fingers, unseen aches;

the Marco Polo jaunts of un-easy un-initiates.

 

Maybe there’s blood in the notes

that tease from privileged places,

hung high upon their low lying lines,

the wide open spaces where old things ease

and new things grow? The music of veins.

 

Maybe clapping these rhythms merely

confuses our steps to a dance, unfrozen,

that teams with uncertainty, like deer on the highway?

This dance, best left alone, makes off

with all remaining reticence, leaving behind

only tired partners.

 

Maybe, like the salmon choir, we submerge in

subversive harmonies, fit only to glide

through effortless musings on riddles of

the underworld? Faint words and muffled sounds

force us to listen more closely.

 

Maybe, instead of the insistence of virtuosity,

primping and perfectly postur’d, we should let

our barstool voices take us where

only friends can go. Sometimes,

there are better tales told under tables,

than solos sung from spotlights.

 

Maybe, the worried demeanor of

our shaky performances stalls itself,

out among the cocain’d critics and shadow-puppet

friends? Would that we only pursued

what’s dangerous, dying in the process, than

soil ourselves waiting for graceless applause.

 

Stop. I hear the running colors,

taking up their places, im-prism’d.

Reinstituted truths of tales best left

un-sung, songs best left un-painted,

casting long shadows on the longer land.

 

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