Dark moods
Stretching out
Crawling all around
More often here
More often deep
More often stay around
Time is adding to the same
Time is long to go
Something makes it more intense
Exactly, I don’t know
Sometimes I feel
I can’t endure
Till the distant end
Guess I better
Head on out
Go look up a friend.
I’ve often heard
That lonely call;
A far off whip-poor-will.
I’d stop awhile,
And so intent,
Listen till he’d still.
More oft then not
There’d be some more
Quickly joining in.
The first would stop,
And fly away,
And silence would begin.
But as I stood
In darkness still
They’d start up once again.
I’d listen more
And my reward
Would be completed then.
Yesterday,
I turned around,
Looked over my shoulder,
And you were gone.
Then I noticed
You were by my side.
Won’t be long now
Before you will pass me up,
And be way out ahead
Leaving me behind to remember
What it was like
Being young.
It’s interesting how I somehow
Feel I shall never reach
That lonely distant strip of sand
They often call a beach.
I swim so hard to keep in sight
That lonely distant shore.
I swim all night. It’s out of sight.
I push to swim some more.
My head slips down beneath a wave.
My mouth gulps water in.
My chances seem to ever be
Increasingly so slim.
Some force is pushing harder now
To keep me swimming on.
If I can only swim some more
I might just see the dawn.
But dawn does come without a beach,
It’s still far out of sight,
And I can push no further on
I’m sober now.
Wish I had been last night.
I wouldn’t feel so bad this morning.
I don’t even remember leaving the party.
I do remember
I notice there’s a big dent
I sure don’t remember that.
I asked my wife about it.
She just shook her head
My head sure hurts.
I wonder when I got that dent?
I guess probably I’ll never know.
Johnnie just came in with
The headlines read
A memory from childhood days
Of cold and wint’ry blasts,
Keeps coming clearly back to me
And seems to last and last.
I hear the wind there howling
Around the house outside.
I want to pull the covers up
And get beneath and hide.
I seem to feel the house could shake
As wint’ry winds do whip.
A little deeper underneath
The covers I do slip.
I hear the snow there blowing
Against the window pane.
I close my eyes so very tight.
A green and empty wine bottle
Lay cracked upon the street.
Once full, once clean, once needed,
Til a soul it chanced to meet.
The bottle full meant many things
To many different folk.
The one that had the bottle last
Did give a gentle stroke.
He held the bottle tightly squeezed
Against his unshaved face.
To him is was the only thing
But him, in this dark place.
He sat against the curb,
And held the bottle tight,
And slowly kept a sippen
Throughout the long cold night.
When that green bottle emptied
The soul detached himself.
He stumbled back into the store
