Slipping Into Wood Notice Here are some songs I wrote once riding cross-state toward Towville deciding that things were upside down and I was tired of living like I always had you might say a little brain fever and a lot of urge to get out on the road and talk a bit.
Local Lines Well there are buses and there are buses but the worst kind of bus is this old yellowdust country local where the riding Unloved know there’s nowhere to go except maybe to the factory or that job in the bank to yes you tight lipped old lady you yes ac-kneed bake shop girl floating to Towville like a dream and Oh Hell Shit its all been said before about that Unhappy Unloved Stuff that dries up song and so I looked out that window to trees and snow fences the barns bare as hunger the greyboard shacks of the poor so fine grained and weather polished rough on the thumb and sad as the blues sighing wind-creaking wood lovely wood as sweet as home.
Bus Station Story, Platt, N.Y. Best one I heard lately was about this rich guy up in Towville a banker I believe whose fairy son got mixed up with drugs and breaking into a tire shop with a notorious black local fairy who called the arresting officer Gorgeous to his face all night in the can until the banker’s son found himself in a junior college that admits no black fairies under any circumstances whatsoever but a well-hung economics professor will always do in a pinch and so back to the Towville estate in full shameful banker’s view playing one summer day in the fields observed with his sister and tying daisies for her hair.
Driving Through Platt Hey there Mr. banker insurance jaycee man skip please that egg special at the diner because there’s something about a big curtain of shade drawing across a flat field in October so beautiful something leaving your life that you want to cry for joy at those big blackbirds loping toward the telephone poles and ride with me at least to Towville please those blackbirds loping like puppies into the shade drifting drifting to where we can start again and talk like friends.
The Mayor of Newark Here’s a little song about this here Omnybus which forbids drinking and smoking and talking to the driver while Itself is in motion but seems by god to have no control over that pea-jacketed gentleman in the rear who has pulled out his gleaming white cock and is telling no one in particular that he doesn’t care if you are the Mayor of Newark but have a little chew on this instead.
Parksville I love these don’t you left-off towns these tumbleweed things fallen off the thruway into soaped windows and motor car fields where the old ghost Chamber of Commerce meets in the one tavern left to sing the song of Old Days in the crony air and shit whether it’s jew baiting nigger hating of plain old stubbornness floating in the nineteen forties these fish for the moment have found their water.
Between Town Blues There’s nothing nicer than singing the blues years later riding the route that hurt so round the bends where the same old houses appeared and appeared and appeared yellow-boarded loose-shuttered now painfree comfortably sad as black crows its crooked TV antenna chill winds and the first big egg splats of rain hitting the windshield.
Slipping Into Wood You know I don’t want to make too much of this bus ride or get too serious for a day but just sing and let a few thoughts wander into here and there slipping into wood and out plastic to the natural world of things set and heavy weaving downward like a feather brushing against it because it is a beautiful morning on the side roads and on the parked cars and on the abandoned creamery and on Love and on letting loose of such a serious face and on oh yes especially that.