these are the great days........

These are the great days:

I’m at her house

It is very comfortable

It is very warm

It is feminine

yet creative and bold

She is very beautiful

And charming

And has a baby

Who is also beautiful

And charming

And together

Her and I drive around

In the day

At night we drink wine

And gin

And beer

And vodka

We play music together

Every night

The conversation is engaging

Her cooking is tremendous

We make plans to conquer the world

She worries we’ll stop making art

And I tell her not to worry

Because there is no other way out

of this boring sterile world

I think she is skeptical

But trusting

And I am trusting

And like any man

With a beautiful woman

Feel blessed to be in her presence

And though all the hell

I’ve been through

In the recent past

I don’t feel trepidation

Or fear

As we let nights and days

Fall from the calendar

And I don’t fear

Us

Ever stopping

The creativity

Or the time between us

Or what people will say

Or contentment

Or boredom

Because I know we’re both

Too crazy for that to ever happen

And I’m going to strike the iron

And stoke the forge

And fan the flames

For these are the great days at last

And I never want them to end.

Wake up:

You wake up

On her bed

Its nice and warm

The traffic drones outside

She lays beside you

Her long dark hair

Always looks perfect

You trace the outlines of her face

With your finger and

Move in for a kiss

As she continues to sleep

Watching her for a few moments

Before slipping out of bed

Down the hall to the bathroom

And then into the kitchen to make some coffee

As you wait for the water to boil

You wonder where she has been

All this time

While you were in the madhouses

The factories

The dead end jobs

The other women each seeming

To be more crazy

Than the other

And all those horrible nights

Those lonely nights

The ones you got down

And prayed

For mercy

For tenderness

For a lover

And then those aching minutes

Between drinks

In run down bars in other cities

Some days raining

The window beating a pitter patter

Of sorrow as the water

Streamed down

Some days sunny

But you still in the pubs

Escaping the heat

The sweat

The dust on your brow

Sweat streaming down your back

Sipping shitty beer

Praying you don’t end up like the rest

Where was she all that time

Between the dark and night

And it was her eyes

You saw hope and promise

Brilliant as a star cutting

Through the darkness

Saving you at last.

Shacked up:

We had been shacked up

Up six weeks solid

Day in

Day out

On the road

Town to town

Doing whatever we wanted

Just traveling

Doing gigs

Taking hundreds of photos

Of our journey

Living the good life

She brought her baby

I brought our guitars

And our car was sometimes smelled

as hungover

As we were

But we didn’t care

We had moments of clarity

Moments of desire

Moments of laughter

Moments of tenderness

And vulnerability

And we didn’t care what the world thought

We weren’t alone

We had each other

And that was all we needed

To hold back the darkness

The gossip

The boredom

The envy

The hate

Of a small town

We had finally started to escape.