Light. Once there was light. Voices. Once, before the dawn.

And love (oh, that too?), but then there were lies, and that wasn’t the same, only a facsimile

STOP.

At the same time as my heart stopped beating

In the exact moment the clock struck midnight

And my jeweled slipper came off

-

“So, I guess I’m not a princess, anymore.”

“Are you kidding? When were you ever?”

-

Never certainties, always the half truths

Your soft whispery lies that fall like wet snow on my skin and stay there

That mold my heart into a shattered, swollen- nothing.

STOP.

Birds are flying in circular patterns, unable to find north

I hear their calling, see their wheeling shapes

The sun is sharp and cruel, the day is cold

I don’t want you.

-

Feathers brushing through the branches of pines

Downy soft but insubstantial

I am standing on the edge of the canyon in my boots, my feet crunching down snow,

And I shout

All I hear is echoing nothing, nothing, nothing

…nothing

nothing.

No one here but me.

-

I was crying, but no one noticed

I was hurting, but I didn’t want you to see

So I froze my tears into diamonds

And I put on my heels and my game face, and I went out to the ball

Visiting the city again
Heat and people
Stuck in the mud like bees in the honeycomb
Sweet crumbles of ugly smells and lough laughter
Faces that change, revolving doors
A wad of cash dollars held between thumb and forefinger and a man who shines old white businessmen’s shoes
These things with my own eyes
An elevator shaft and descend, trembling, rumbling into the darkness
Pumped through the veins of New York City, arteriol branches expanding beneath forever and ever
In their blues and whites and pinks, color to hide the stench, ties and laces and gowns
Shot upward into the heart of Time Square, off-Broadway lights flash, trademarked sunglasses go on
Some people live this way, oblivious to poverty, stuck in the certainty that everything worth having costs something
Deem yourself lucky to spend too much money on bad art, and celebrate it in its wake
Good food, fattening hands and thinning out the pockets
Unhappy people with thin lips who drive back to their homes in calm suburbia
But inside the monster, the stomach never sleeps
Acid, digestion, ingestion, preconceptions, lurching
Always wary, always awake, the inhabitants of calamity calmly proceeding with the everyday
And every man’s bread is few men’s peace
The pieces of this dark heart
Scattered manyfold through old brick apartments with rusty fire-escapes and upscale Manhattan buildings that scrape the sky
Heart beat, thud, it’s been numbed to 
The thing is, when I go the city, something in me believes that
Without spending money I could have the best time of all
The steamy taste of all this seedy wildlife, you see?
Jungle homegrown, more and maybe less than we’ve known
We’d rather play safe, but I’d rather be exploring then walking the lily white line between mediocrity and hypocrisy
Instead of waiting in line for opera tickets, walking along the river
Tasting the sweat off someone’s back in a smoky club
Good Jewish white girls in big city aren’t allowed to live inside the mind of the crocodile…
Good food, good wine, good town
A revolution in taste- steamed, boiled, fried, thrown down in the dirt and kicked around a little
Spat on, drowned in sweat, pig-roasted
Seasoned with old metrocards-and a jeweled man in a turban wailing a refrain:
Home is never far away

me on guitar and vocals