Then only dust remains

I like listening to the sound

Of beautiful melodies

Ones I haven’t the heart to play

Ones I haven’t the strength to ignore

Mostly those that come in waves

After morning, noon, and night

You can hear them like catching

The glimpse of a shooting star

Barefoot atop San Jacinto

Bend Oregon or Williamsburg highrise

Naked in the ecstasy of flight

Knowing even as your approaching

You’ve already begun to disappear

Her Beauty Unfolds

How lively and cruel

Mother Nature can be

How honest her birds

Who chirp Chickadee

Her hawk soars majestic

Through winds over sea

Her beauty unfolds

Without you or me

A Song Once Sung To An Infant Under The Gun.

Today the time ran out

just as it had begun—

Hot water fills the tub

you swore you’d never become—

It’s warm and shallow now

cut servings for only one—

The echo down the hall, well

that’s just yesterdays love—

Now it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

Today the moon refused

to trade place with the sun—

Sidewalks full of people

but still you know only one—

It’s an impossible force

that drags you from yourself—

Now it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

I try, you know I do, to balance

fault lines and faith, the surgeons

steel blade, it draws a bridge between both—

It’s a symphony of simple things

that will seem eclipsed by the sun—

Cause it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

California, 2020

You just have to live.

Being sober’s

as overrated

as being drunk—

nobody wins.

You just have to live.

Join the party

When people are singing

laughing and dancing,

join the party, because

not every wallflower has it’s perks,

and growth, well

that’s up to you.

A kick in the head!

I will always be curious

and allergic to cats.

Ain’t that a kick in the head!

Simon’s water.

Even those tiny violinist’s know when to stop playing

and when to start singing the bridge over Simon’s water.

Topanga Beach September 5 2020 Day Dreaming

I play my part as she sings me to sleep

Taylor calls for me from those stairs in Italy

I’m walking by a pay phone on the beach

Reminders from the East and a girl named Cicily

Talk me into circles out of reach

Send letters won’t you son to remind us what you’ve done

Don’t be a stranger call us once a week?

I buried what was left of my heartache in a trench

On that lonesome stretch of sand I was released

Now Bret he reads the lines in the background of my mind

There’s no one in this room to hear me sing

When journaling in thought feels like a raven’s claw

It’s Taylor who sits calmly next to me

The grass rests underneath her cheekbone by the sea

While chemicals channel flowing dreams

It’s 8am in August while I pour the gin and tonic

Listening to the ocean’s cresting wave

The cobblestone in Rome for which once walked me home

Now Cicily I hear her gently speak

There’s no such thing as time, if you believe that then that’s fine

But darling I’ve got no tears left to weep

I did my best to please the priest listening to me

Still Lucas rest assured me of my grief

I didn’t have to sail to France to find a girl to dance

I just went out every night for one last drink

So now as Taylor calls to me from those stairs in Italy

I pick her up once more from memory

I play my part as she sings me to sleep

I pick her up once more from memory

I play my part as she sings me to sleep

Through the air vents of my room

I’ve known a many artist in my day, say

Today old friend you come to mind

And how for a short time, your voice divine

Scratchy and old, though, you and I know

Age is just a number and it’s you who’d show

Me this: Dear, Gavin Heron Vante

Who needed a place to rest his weary head

For the night I offered you some bread

Where that night you had said, Ah man!

I haven’t seen this show in years, mind if I watch

Married with Children, Amen! Amen!

Then later I’d record you playing all the chords

I always had wish I could, watching your fingers

Slide and swoop through Sloop John B

I tried to sing harmonies but who was I kidding

Aloof in my eagerness to know everything and all

You had to offer and more, more, more I cried

Singing, drinking in the night like two old friends

Because we were in fact just two ageless nobodies

In the effortless night of somebodies

Giving me your time, cradling my wine

Looking through old photo’s now

I can still feel your spirit sing softly through

The air vents of my room

The next morning of course, saying farewell

Dropping you at Austin’s Coffee

Collecting your bicycle and taking the trash out for a buck

Needing my fix of early morning talkie

That I’m sure no one ever really gave a hoot about —

Now I hear you’re out of the Coma

That took you too soon like a phantom in the night

You were right when you told me

To take it easy man, oh man, Gavin Heron Van

Where there is no plan there in lies the plan

I now know the meaning of that age old saying

Those were the days, good sir, I give my praise

Sincerely,

Dave

P.S. There’s a place for you here, always