Roselith

	



Music of Life


I don't spend much time thinking about this, well actually I do 
Anyway… we are first worlders, like, you know 
we have everything and I mean everything 
food and cars and Broadway plays, running water and airplanes and a phone 
but it still hurts to get out of my chair 

I was thinking about early humans, practicing their lines,
While they lived on the ground or on straw on the ground 
or in caves with straw on the ground
how they must have hurt to get out of their chairs, or thrones, whatever

why do women wear so much damn makeup? 
like they are in the court of Louis the XIV, rising from thrones
stammering for love on stage
what if we piled up all the injustice of meaningless suffering 
like stacks of pennies it would reach the moon 
or go around the earth three times 
like everything that is too much to count, 
we’d have to stand on our chairs to count 

we would need to remember 
when hurting and rising from our chairs
to love one another 
because seeking meaning and purpose 
is the stage on which we hear played 
the music of life which is love. 
Yes, rising from thrones, or chairs, or just from the dirt on the ground
Gasping for the lines, we are illuminated by 
Peaking eternities…the music of life…love

   I was a dream, I am no more
I was a child, I am no more
   I was a father, I am no more
   I was a friend, I am no more
I am, I am no more
It is I, a dream, I am again.

	













That’s the Me

That's the me what that's the me how that's the me a lonely stranger riding desert palms amid ensuing mountains that's the me taking the switch backs climbing and sage brush in the flats that's the me digging for gold under the Joshua Tree its frickin hot out here but no tax man that's the me where's the you in that's the me that's the issue that's the real issue there's no you in that's the me oh crap I'm supposed to be digging for that's the you under the Joshua Tree I was digging for acceptance and love and meaning that's the me I was digging for family and love that's the me but it's dry and barren under the Joshua Tree it hasn't rained there is no life and no life that's the me and nowhere that's the me and no time that's the me and relationships suck that's the me now that's the me I did keep digging and I did find some anger and bitterness now what do I do with that and truly, I tell you...with all my heart....that's the me. 

Moving Closer

The dentist is serving red wine spritzer in the spit cup thingy and drilling my teeth 
Would you like us to numb it 
No I am already numb sitting in the chair 
Wearing a level II safety vest in case there is any high speed traffic 
Running through the back office  
Sun glasses in case there is unexpected sunshine in the drilling chair 
Which is like a four wheeler taking me anywhere but the whipping post 
Now there is a nasty analogy 
Whoa like I am a slave tied to the whipping post 
A road worker getting drilled without Novocain  
Like a surfer on the beach having a cocktail 
Oh now wait… we need a bartender 
Yes an emotionally gifted bartender 
Not too busy to mix platitudes with peach snaps 
Yea…like a numbing bartender 
But there is this woman jamming her fingers in my teeth 
This guy with a drill 
I'm sorry I can't make this go away no matter how hard I try 
The sound is a screeching epiphany of pain 
Announcing reality like the fingernails modifying the arm rest 
Then I realized I could drown out the sound with a giant subwoofer like 2000 watts 
So I moved closer to the sound
Closer still and I built this speaker box and put my head in it 
I move closer and there is droning bass 
I move closer and there is fidelity
I move closer 
Would that I moved away 
I move closer and there are booming Upanishads speaking to me from the grave 
Righteous architecture pleading with me to come home 
Soliloquies in timber tones emanating 
I move closer… really now… picture a middle-aged dude walking around, sorta angry 
With a sub-woofer for a brain spewing subsonic instructions to the world 
A world that is deaf to all but the rhythm, while succumbing to tempestuous tyrannical repetition

	Alexandria Shimmers in the Rain


The summer song rattles with memories of a plane crashed
 in front of me on the 14th Street Bridge 
a man with a mustache saved a freezing woman in a dress 
from drowning in the ice cold Potomac 

There are prostitutes on 14th Street singing 
but there are no songs about it 
there are gays up this way and circles 
they bring us around to street lights and infantile arguments 
benevolent administration and parking tickets 
boots on my car like boots on the ground 

Alexandria shimmers in the rain 
like a sullen winter romantic waiting for spring 
while the Birchmere resonates with Judy Blue Eyes 
riding her bike to Mt. Vernon 

at the end of the runway 
there are hopes and dreams that the plane will get in the air 
is there another place in the world 
where two jet liners have crashed so close together 
separated by generations long gone, 
praying for an anthem
silently humming the desolate tune of indifference?

at the Pentagon there was a nasty black hole, 
a hole of death and destruction 
a black stain on the walls and the end of several dreams 
I saw it smoking 
I saw too the pictures of thousands on the fence in Manhattan 
never so lonely a fence about a hole 
many dreams died there too 

we move on 
we move on into slick rain-soaked river crossings 
remembered by the living 
on this bridge 
and the rain-soaked glistened roads of Alexandria become the song 

Father’s Time


 I see the tools on the floor 
A gray glob of man straining
To wring from the beast a mechanical peace
But it's hard to stop clouds from raining

Will we have lunch today?
Are you too busy?
Engines and light, oil and wheels
A flying man's notepad

Ratchets and rainbows
Colors and clouds
Power and symmetry 
Tiny deaf crowds