Baby Love

What happens to love
Like this in your eyes
How can it be smothered
By the high tides of time
This love is the fountain
That flows from the source
This love is a mountain
Where rivers change course

This love is a miracle….

You laugh and the years
Just roll back inside
You laugh and the light
Rolls from your soul to mine
This love is incessant
How can it be changed
This love is forever
This world is deranged

Next to Nothing

I know next to nothing
As soon as I see you there
With eyes beckoning full of fire
Turning me to flame
I am next to nothing
And you wear your skin so well
It was all I ever wanted
To take you in my arms
I once knew most everything
But once inside your charms
I know next to nothing
Next to nothing I know well

All the Martyrs Have

So much they want to do
So much they struggle for
But all the martyrs have
Is the moment and the war

We see them with their halos
We give them all the floor
But all the martyrs have
Is the moment and the war

It’s a sad ironic tiding
In a heartbeat to the moon
They leave here in the morning
They leave us far too soon

They dream of new beginnings
They hold so much in store
But all the martyrs have
Is the moment and the war

I hold this withered flower
For the one that I adore
But all this martyr had
Was the moment and the war

It’s a sad ironic tiding
In a heartbeat to the moon
They leave here in the morning
They leave us far too soon

It’s a sad ironic tiding
In a heartbeat to the moon
They leave here in the morning
They leave us far too soon

Midwest Law

Here on the plain
Where sky and clouds
Negotiate their deals
On a daily basis with the farms
The farmers are just witnesses
To the justice Jesus brings
Their crops a strange currency
That cannot bribe judge or jury
And suffer retribution
In drought and deep in frost
Summer is sometimes succor
But it too can be swept away
When something else is hidden in the wind

Somewhere in This Darkness

Down upon the bayou
Where the river meets the sea
There lived a dark eyed maiden
And she was the world to me

Lips more sweet than honey
Hair that flowed and shined
She was the watermelon
The juice, the seed, and rind

Now somewhere in this darkness
That the floods have brought to bear
Is a lady who is floating
In my mind and everywhere

Stomping Cajun music
How it fiddles with my mind
Ever since that blackest season
That did catch us from behind

Not without a farewell
Was her musk taken away
And not without a teardrop
Am I singing this today

Now somewhere in this darkness
That the floods have brought to bear
Is a lady who is floating
In my mind and everywhere

Ford's Theater

Abraham Lincoln
I am with you in the theater
I am keeping the killer at bay
I want you to stay there laughing
I don’t want to see it end that way

Abraham Lincoln
They say you saw it coming
In one of your awful dreams
No one ever sees his own downfall
No one ever hears his own screams

Abraham Lincoln
I cannot bear to relive this
I am barring that door for you
I am the companion you were seeking
I will never let him through

Abraham Lincoln
I see what could have been
Even as the moment is at hand
Instead of hallelujah
Is this scourge upon our land

Spring

Of all the forces of nature
The most incomprehensible is spring
Irrepressibly surmounting the dead of winter
Resurrecting love and laughter and light
From inside the underground encasing tomb
I can’t remember being leafless, loveless, seedless anymore
Spring is here
Loins and sweat and fire overcome it all
Blaze through the dark night
Yellow over black
Spring is back
Hooray