Five days a week, I wake up stuck
and fall back asleep where I started from.
Can you really "slip" into bed alone?
1.
lead a man to the altar,
never make him kneel.
I lead 'em to the club,
remind 'em how to feel.
Son of a one-time new age healer
and a door-to-door Book of the Dead dealer.
Who would've thought;
the dancefloor packed by a guy
who can't even recall his dreams.
Teachers do the Toss& Turn. Last Indians do the Toss& Turn.
Step-moms do the Toss& Turn. Exes do the Toss& Turn.
Daytraders do the Toss& Turn. Zapatistas do the Toss& Turn,
Widows do the Toss& Turn. Everbody: do the Toss& Turn.
2.
Hold up, there's been a strike at the dream plant--
seems they're demanding a new routine.
Until then I'll lie alone, toss and turn
like a broken wing.
An Oakland wind in a "Frisco fog
when a neutral sun in the city beams;
God made all my mornings on
a secondhand Hollywood smoke machine.
A poor man's fall: an East Bay spring.
Sometimes in life the set writes the scene,
and if you've ever helped your girl
move out of your house,
then you know what I mean.
The watch-dogs knell, the bus brakes wail,
they turn Oakland on at 7 A.M. every morning
and then off again at twelve.
Q. What can it mean when the walls read:
"R.I.P. Dream"?
A: Nervous... breakdown!
This is how you do the Toss& Turn
cross your legs, cross your arms,
turn on your side, now the other side,
uncross your legs, uncross your arms.
Theres nothing more pointless than a pile of crosses.
Listeners, critics, concerned fans:
Show me my dischography and I'll sign the apology.
A follower and his bedroom pens,
led by chance and sedatives.
Tear me down, then build me again
in a world with less to lose in the end.
You might call it some type of faith withdrawl,
as fade-ways therapy happens to involve
watching headlights break up bits
of peeling paint on a borrowed wall.
Me and a futon? A tw-ply fault line.
(Now that's a thought to snap the spine of a pillow.)
Poet's wife? Huh. Where though?
Waiting outside in line of tomorrows?
Tying a night's worth of sheets from the window--
trying to break out the blanketed barrow--
ain't no way to find a why to wake up.
These days I make up as I go along,
but all that I meet are mouthing same things.
I like they know the song, like it's always on;
laugh track in the can and they laugh along,
like our lives are lines out of failed sitcoms.
Cold lampin' lightless in my private dark,
and if dark don't rhyme, we'll make it black.
I hold a face the way a pane of glass
on a store holds those in cars that pass.
Toss and turn 'till my skin falls away
in folds, holding my own face flat.
I keep a keg of sleeping pills on tap,
and do the Toss & Turn.