In an attempt to make it easier for you to enjoy them, I have put together this guided tour. The pieces are grouped loosely by subject matter or "type" of treatment.
At the bottom right of each of these pieces there are "next" and "previous" links that correspond to the order they are listed in this guide.
I have added some short commentaries (as much as I hate it when people explain their songs or poems - the work should stand on its own!), but I hope I do not "over explain," or spoil their personal meaning for you.
Arcs of relationships
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| Love and its substitutes are by far the predominant subject matter for the writer in any era. These selections all relate to love and relationships. They are grouped by where in the "arc" they fit. |
| Excited about getting into the mess: |
| Butterfly | The anxious wondering about a complex situation provokes worries about raw wounds arising from strong emotions. |
| Breathe | Comparing the delights of new love to nature's beauties, I bet that's a pretty damn original idea, eh? But I like the poem. |
| Eukaryotic | A strange little inspirational ode |
| Miss You | Everyone misses someone from time to time... |
| Double Dare | ...even if it has elements of the forbidden... |
| Nobody Knows | ...or is entirely in the imagination of the melodramatic neurotic who has the fixation. |
| You | The soulfulness of the newfulness. |
| Struggling with its imperfections: |
| Jealousy | More about people messing with each others heads while searching for love incompetently, this is also the kind of thing people do to each other and pretend to themselves that it is love... |
| Somebody Else's Well | Where you been dipping that bucket, eh? |
| Lamenting the disaster it can become: |
| You Must Be Crazy | . . . to still be seeing me. |
| Crash | Folks, I was not in a car crash! This is what's called "metaphor." Or "analogy," or something like that. Using unrelated imagery to express something, to add a dimension to it, anyway. |
| Choke | I'm not sure this one is actually any good, it might be a little pretentious - but I sure meant it at the time! |
| Good Love | I finally wrote something that works as a straightforward 12 bar blues! To be sung with gusto, feeling, and grit... |
| Touch Me | Part of an unfinished suite, which will someday include the "I'll miss you when you're gone, but I'll be glad to see you go" works |
| Watching it as it walks way: |
| Alone | We play both kinds of music here - Country, and Western. |
| Lover's Waltz | |
| Waves of Memory | A gentle but sad reflection on the minds processes. Written while driving towards a non-existent guitar lesson, after which I watched a giant whirlpool in a parking lot with strangers, and a beautiful rainbow. |
| Impressions | ("of a Sunset" is the full title) |
| Moonlight | Written while driving home on a moonlit night, imagining things I knew to be happening. I had to keep singing it to myself the whole way home so I wouldn't forget the words. Starts out sweet and pretty, but even the cloying romance contains within the seeds of the painful turn it takes. |
| Choice | A difficult poem that was supposed to be written as a letter - to a lover who left for another and tried to stay in touch. |
| Time | Complex, repetitive, a bit abstract... but is it any good? |
Lust and Sex
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| I prefer to separate these particular pieces from the "love and relationship" section, because they are simpler, more direct, addressing something more like a hobby than the complexity required to sustain it. |
| Lemonfishbutter | Those magic moments where lust turns from frustration into gratification. |
| Are You Ready? | Hehe. |
| Sex | This almost belongs in the section above, but heck, it is called "Sex," isn't it? |
| Sleep | If after sex comes sleep... then what, or who, comes during sleep? |
Sweet Little Things
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| Kisses | An "adult nursery rhyme," I think. Very pretty. |
| Fear | Aaaaaw. |
| Alibi | So what if it is furtive - it is sweet as well. |
| Night | More complex, but still a nice read I think. |
Understanding Life
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| Little pieces about people, place and things in an attempt to uncover the realities that drive them. |
| Happy | An odd way to phrase a question, but I liked this when I found it in a stack of papers of mine. |
| Trust | This started as an instrumental, a melancholy piece... and then some words fell into it. |
| Little Girl | Maybe not the best work, a bit too clumsily "political," and a bit outside my own experience, but interesting nonetheless. |
| Waiting | Doesn't this make you want to ask me what I was doing at the time? Hell, nothing, sometimes you can write about things without being in the middle of them. |
| Stillborn | The idea that got away. |
| Escape | I awoke in the middle of the night, and a phrase came into my mind. I got up, and started writing and this "prose poem," or "spoken word piece" was the result. |
| Choices | My big hit single about decisions, free will, and pathetic behavior. |
| Lived In | A poem about the accumulation of life experience and memories. |
Impressionism - Mood and Space
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| I think these are the most difficult sorts of poems to make work, and also require the least explanation when they do. So many people try to write about their "feelings," and don't actually tell you what they feel or why. Attempts to capture a mood in words are not easy, but it's fun to try sometimes. |
| Silence | Ever feel left completely alone, or worse? |
| Drainstorm | :"drainstorm, dreamstürm, gauche-mière":
That's what it says in the index under "description" for this rambling piece. Post-apocalyptic rambling with a "beat" flavor - but you could have figured that out for yourself, right? |
| Ghosts | Midnight madnesses come to take me away. |
| Grey | I especially like this one. Even the somewhat pretentious way the words are placed works, for me. |
Abstract Impressionism
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| A style of writing that sometimes amuses me, represented more in my songs than elsewhere, involves an attitude, a slant on life, that I try to express in rather oblique ways. The imagery is often surreal, and the statements extreme. Here are a few pieces in that vein. |
| Hunger | The first song I wrote. I once made up a "storyboard" (I think that's what they're called) for a video for this song that re-interprets it as an anti-war song, sort of. Hunger... romance. Yes, they go together well. |
| Shambles | This started its life as an answering machine message. Certainly some grue for you in this one. |
| Exit Wound | Another of my favorites. I wrote "bodies piled up all over each other/even people you thought were blessed" a few days prior to the deaths of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana. Go figure. |
War
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| We Have Won | Written during the Bush (senior) reign. Ninety percent approval ratings are hard to maintain. |
| War | Written during the Bush (very junior) reign. OK, what's with this family and their need to fight these kind of wars? |
| Unbelief | I know what I mean here. I wonder what you think I mean? |
| Northern Eyes | Ghastly imagery, easy to come by when war is the general subject. |
Difficult Material
love - sex - sweet - life - mood - abstract - war - difficult |
| These works tend to be a bit strong in their political or philosophical themes, which can be dangerous in an attempt at poetry. That's why they are here in their own special section. |
| Mirrors | Experimenting with the "feel" of self consciousness, the reflections and layers we find inside ourselves. |
| New England | Oh boy. Pieces like this are why I created the "difficult material" section! There is a vision here, an askance view of the world around me and the culture I find myself immersed in. And some pretty harsh judgements offered about some of it. |
| Drugs | Uh, I did not realize that this was a "poem" until someone wrote me and said they thought it was one. I guess it must be, then. |
| The Promised Land? | This is the other poem that required adding this section. Another diatribe about the corruptions of religion in the service of materialism |
| Believe | Let's throw away all that comforts us, and see what we have left. Rock and roll! |
