Dreaming Like a Parade
I dream like crawling over a parade
Passing by loud, blaring instruments
Getting sections of music and sound
I climb up the front of float-cars
And over the traveling wonderlands
To get snippets of performance taken
From my past day, ripped from my
Fantasies of what the future could be
Or my tragedies grotesquely displayed
In full, vivid, unavoidable technicolor
The voices are loud and everywhere
Repeating chants in a background roar
While the people in front of me scream
Words that are different every time
But come down to the simplistic queries:
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN?!”
Yet when I try to get the meaning,
When I try to find my way off and escape
The parade is nothing but gibberish
I escape one vignette to crawl through
My regret and just climb onto another
Over and over again in repetition
I try to avoid the mistake of staying
But every time I try to go I end up back
In a different twist of the same screw
It never quits until I grow too tired to sleep
Upon which time I am far too tired to wake
I lie in bed staring at the sunlight squeezing
Past the blinds to mark up the ceiling and ask
“What am I doing here? What is there to listen to?”
The Untrusted Dark
March has chill nights to go out in
Enjoy the crisp, starlit spring air
At least if you can go out at night.
I used to cruise alongside the beach
No city stars but quiet ocean breezes
A way to focus before the lion’s share
Of work in light of tomorrow’s sun.
At least when I could go out at night
In the crisp, spring air of March.
Now in the foothills, barbed fences
And animals running loose all over.
Wild dogs and coyotes sniffing about
Out here in the wild, desert dark.
A crystal clear sky but no haven
In which to enjoy sparkling light
Nothing to do during the day either
Everyman’s choked of every dull cent
To lavish on unknown employees for
Oiling their business day with ease.
No room for the unknown in the day
Any bit of waste is a true loss today.
Nothing but pre-packaged guarantees
Only the right labels and warranties.
And where are we going in this nowhere
With people broken out of old packages
We are the unknown to these businesses,
The vast dark in which beasts lurk.
Maybe I will walk in the March dark
I’m a coyote in the light of this town
Lets walk in the starlit air tonight
Either way we’re desperate to survive
Lets play wild dogs in the sunlight
And bite the hands that abandoned us.
