Two Note song of the small hours

There used to be a time
I would sit out on the picnic table in the front yard
drinking beer and playing guitar late into the night
there was a big tree in the corner of the yard then
that was home to a small black bird that sang
some times till three or four in the morning
I could hear him all through the summer
While I lay awake in my bed waiting to be killed

And sometimes I would notice him on the telephone wires
under the street lights while I drank
and played and thought of death
While the fireworks went off over the skyscrapers
and he would chirp this little two note song
over and over like a heart beat
keeping me alive
and we became sort of uneasy neighbors, uneasy friends,
lamenting companeros during those hot nights
under the street lamps burning.

Each with our home, each with our
song to the passing world
And we shared that unknown truce with everything,
while the rage in me rushed
like a killing flood tide devastating a city
its murderous fingers gently ebbing away
from the redrawn coastline

I dont sit out there much anymore,
now the big tree has been cut down
Im inside tending the few little things
that are beginning to grow again
I dont hear the two note song
of the small hours any more
Or maybe Im just not listening

These Others

The roots show through the dying earth
that you were once born
Yet still remain dead
and these empty tombs
These children turned
into industries for profit
become lies
Told to the queues and queues
of people waiting for bread

these bulldozed streets
These light poles
These traffic lights
and wives
These sanitized kitchens
These forests of metal
these cairns of brick
growing ancient
These new ones,
these shiny ones
These shuttered windows dont lie

These frontiers
that are kept in chains live on
in distant tongues yet unspoken
by suburban kings
and women,
Loved and beaten
children dying at the nipple
suckle currency from
suicidal traders and bombs
that till the soil

You cant write poems
about suffering
when you're numb
Anaesthetc becomes
as compulsory
as violence and revenge
in these nicely paved
and manicured streets
These roads
littered with bottles
these gutters washing
away boredom and disdain
from the eyes of houses
and the mouths of teenage drunks
These concrete tongues
waiting patiently for their meds

These nations
these armies
These foot soldiers
of the economy
These generals
Building skyscrapers out of bones
These kindly nurses
monitoring the fragile veins
of the stupeified
For slaughter
These naked prophets
with their heavy sighs
Are not like these others

Enough

I bought some cornflakes
and some milk
Came home and lay
on the couch with a blanket
Art is sometimes not enough
to make you feel alive

Nor the wind
nor the trees
nor the damp ground after
a heavy rain
is enough sometimes