a motel beacon breaking over open road broken lights missing letters a postcard rack speaking to the dead a medium in cheap gold crystal ball card table in a gypsy shack love lifted the breath and slid a phrase under it a seeing eye choir look hallelujah 1 i try to keep the policy simple exactly 12 7 of what i see i then sing or rap a strange impluse to be sure but i grew up on blowed tapes and bergman flicks sub ducting weeks in a terrent of dollar books and roxy matinees so it can only make sense that i m looking for a light to live between sleep but no over black water broke search burst in stale smoke no swan necked neon sign hanging burnt in the backbrain and if you evanesced in that old overhead spotlight right now there d be another in my shadow before the next beat hit i rap in the hush of space for the sake of sucking from the heavens one particle of gas at a time my body s fill holding out for one day when love may lift my breath and slide a phrase under it o hosanna all the while guided by the quiet light strained through wings strung in unfinished webs the light that coils spiders in death in vain to resist the gut thread of their own suspended forensics 2 people pass w g sebald died in the middle of this song new novel and all like king dipendra last june in nepal crowned in a coma and gone by morning and some number of self shattering palestinians sharded themselves in jerusalem a vietnam veteran hospital team mimes a game with phantom limbs cause hit head on or along in bed people pass piece by piece some jumping out of buildings some on their knees in prayer a string of shopping carts arced a strip mall headstone under an overpass in memory of one who froze a week before and in the highway swish of a midday rain glimmering like the thin bones of stained glass saints 3 heaven i don t know if i ve whether i m going to be able to preach or not i never know them things but uh this little weak man you re looking at i realize and understand you re blind baby blind from the facts of who you are and who you are in a molecular american sense is a dust extra in an empire s ruin rehersal and to cover one s eyes from oneself is inevitable they still pray for rains on the dry high plains while i ve been chipping my tongue on the tough shell of his name threaded fingers straining broken breath to a wordless burn the the bend of a crook of a neck meeting hands hiding palms and a blindness falls shining out from the daylong unraveling of the first light wtitch the white of the subtitles awash in sunlight sucking the date stamp and first words with it under the wide lens of a new day i m twenty four still the little brother of a reverend writing the bars out washing them away lying flat floating phrases skyward and once in a while even falling asleep smiling but wake up as if spilled out of a mid day matinee first eyes clutching for dark i take cofee and turn to a 25 the op eds where the letters begin editor what short term memories we have and the seeing eye choir s like look hallelujah 