I'm leaving you today
read the words on the page
and forever recited inside her cage

she tells herself its nothing
nothing but a tear
but when she takes a step
nothing holds her here

There's an apparition in my mother's kitchen
reads the paper before work as if nothing's missing

Street lights ignite
Adam pulls up a chair
he cracks a can then leans
over to share

Jack Smith was canned for the tattoo on his hand
They tried to make him understand he's just another man

the Ghost Ship slips off into the night

I've been holding out for so long
unsure of what is right and wrong
to suppress or to confess
the impulses we all possess

Rotten trees stand gracefully
where ancestors of little means
plowed the Earth and laid the seed
birthed an American Dream

I'm sitting as I listen
to my disquieted heart

sitting on a train
soft silent sighing
shrieking tracks
slip beneath smiling

hard land bursting out
from northwest to south
as many storms as droughts