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Port Land




Why I Don't Write Music

I can only suggest what the world needs now.
one thing that won't make the list is another song where tomorrow rhymes with sorrow.

Sometimes when I sit and stare out the window it looks like it's raining, even on clear cloudless days.
I look harder,
it rains stronger,
Then, lifting the blind, I'm confronted with a warm day,
in the distance,
three folks sipping wine, puttering in flower-beds, and digesting monthly statements.
No rain.
Yet in my view, rain continues to tease, continues to streak across my eye's horizon, continues to tempt me to write a lyric.
No rain, no song.

I wonder about things like holes in my Jeans. First the pockets unravel,
the small one for change is most vulnerable, Five years to wear through the knee,
even a thin wallet takes out the rear right, and then the bottom of the right front stares back.
While I consider the comfort of another pair, someone is paying twice the price for a new pair with holes worn like mine.
Pitiful.
At 2:29 am I awake and finger the grain of my past. Crimes compacted decades ago, horrific as a poisoned river.
Train whistle,
tagged boxcars sneaking and snaking,
Train whistle sounds again, this time in questions:
What if only one language existed?
Would that make any difference in how anyone lived this life?

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