Transmissions

In the morning I see you crying
No one is around at this ungodly hour
All the whiskey in your bottle
No more than the canvas on the page

Once an angel in the evening
Helped you pour it down and shut it out
Yesterday I saw you realize
She don't come here anymore

Now, when you lay down to sleep
Everything you dream will lose its meaning
Music you've tried to create
Will only transmit soft and ?

Sorry that it's come to this
Surely you must have known
You were going down

In the evening I see you smiling
Everyone's around
But when the sun goes down
All the whiskey in your bottle
Is no more than a drink to pass around

Once a wise man told you
What you don't finish will finish you
Yesterday I saw you realize
He don't come here anymore

Now, when you lay down to sleep
Everything you see will take on meaning
Music you've tried to create
Will only love you un... that you ...ase...

Sorry that it's come to this
Surely you must have known
It was coming down

----

Here lie that last manuscripts of
Carter John Leibowitz
The last living man in the loneliest town
On the desperate border
Of southwestern Canada
He wrote all his poems in invisible ink
And then buried them all in the snow

And then when finally Carter John Leibowitz
Burned up in a passionate fire
Born of his own convictions
All of his poems
Were eaten by wandering foxes

They'd been written on the blue skins
Of ten thousand berries
Traced like the peaches
Of those children uncarried
Committed to form by a hand which
Knew nothing of form

So here lie the last manuscripts
Of Carter John Leibowitz
Which no one has read from
Which no one can read from again

Now the same could be said of
Miss Margaret Turtledove
She sang all the songs she made into a jar
Then she capped them with sealing wax
Planked them and screwed them fast
She flung them down in a well and
Poisoned the aquifer
And covered them over with mud

And when Margaret Turtledove
Had buried the things she loved
She found there was nothing dug
Could never be undug
She poured herself down the hole
And mined for her lost jar of song

But the ground was well satisfied
Her table was empty
The roots of the hollow trees
Had filled themselves plenty
The kings of the undersoil had poured
All her songs down their throats

Then Margaret Turtledove
The last thing she ever sung
A song in a broken key
A tune with no melody
A verse with no words to sing
Which no one has ever heard
Which no one can ever hear again

Now you steel down your passageways
And hide mirrors on your stage
And everyone is watching
As you fall through the floor
But remember what I said to you
The best thing and only thing you do
Is disappear
When anyone calls at you you cut and run
This is the only magic that you know

And you walk through your endless days
And gather your bills to pay
And the women that you cower with
Will never bare your child
And the only way you'll never die
Is writing songs, poetic lies
Anything to make your legacy

But the ground will one day open up
Swallow you in it
The work you've done is now undone
You never began it
The only thing immortal is the epitaph
We will carve in your stone

Here lie the last manuscripts
The words to the songs unwrit
The poems in it meaningless
The memories of what you did
Collected in your consciousness
The only thing you ever made
The only thing you ever were
The only thing you'll ever be
Which no one has read from
Which no one can read from again