Omaha

Omaha

so i sang a song to the night
i was hitchhiking thru Omaha
i wanted to paint pictures with my words, my slippery, tiny voice
instead i howled at a silhouette of the moon

that was rising up from the truck stop billboard

illuminated by the neon flicker of a sign reading

"Showers"

the moon was advertising swiss cheese.

it was really a tear drop that stopped my well poised poetry
it slipped down, down, into another American town
a wet tear on a torn white gown
a silhouette of the moon against another blue jean swoon,
filled with closet junkies, christian flunkies, truck drivers and hussies
flippin their faith at the moon
cause Jesus ain't supposed to be of this world
so you flip him around a lot i notice,

wear him out,

a t-shirt blanket,

covering the soul of middle America against the dark vast night sky.
Jesus ends up as the conversation cap on many an indulgent point.

so you win,

a sigh.

i guess his tears never became sand, like all of ours

dried up against the ravages of time

he lived on in minds, signs, books, crooks, and prayers.
you say he never howled at that gypsy moon.
or did he?

i like to think he howled as good as the rest of us at least.

Omaha is flat, like a guitar sounds at 3am, after the dew settled
after the cold soaked past the sunshine that was soaked into the grass
after 200 hundred headlights come round the bend back there
and snaked ahead, daring the next sway of the road
daring life to take you away....

i watched them go by from my guard rail bench. sipping water from a plastic jug.

Nebraska is America
tears are America
gypsies are America
but the moon is haunting the earth
and she isn't only America
flashing this land back a smile on a mountain rack
chasing ripples across a midnight lake
its quite a scene to overtake.

well, i had big big American dreams
i tried to build a boat to sail them in
but everyday i wake up, and i see the wood lying there
the shell i built wants to float, to be cast out, it knows what it was built for....
but the water would only come in thru the skeleton
sinking swiftly and soundly to the bottom
without the flesh to keep the wet out
it would be home to the urchins and sea grass
you see, like all artists, my dreams need a body
a body to be on the earth, of the earth,
dreams must have a birth, so they can at least be able to Die properly, please .....
so i can rest with them, instead of being driven across this continent by these haunting voices,
visions, dreams,

repercussions,

a dancing skeleton of what could be ....

artist onward go.

so everyday i wake, and it starts to seem like the same day, replay
my jeans a little more worn, my spirit a little more torn
my hands covered in ash, makeup, hair dye,

tiny cuts, that become calluses, that become my skin
white rings where my rings rest round little fingers of unrest
white life where something was supposed to unfold, untold
white noise like dissidence,
in the space where melody was supposed to guide harmony

and i slip on into the night.

a guitar pick dropped in wet grass.
its lost, again

maybe it is the way the prairie waves wash me clean
clean like the gypsy soul that tramps and rides across Nebraska
Omaha was a passing flame, a stolen kiss before i climbed up high
to ride across the prairie into the white noise night of life.....