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   SONGS:

1. Paths
2. Everybody Has To Say Goodbye
3. Angels
4. Boy On the Beach
5. Hope
6. Melliflous Matriarch
7. Things That Could Have Been
8. Brilliant Sound
9. Night
10. Phantom

PATHS

How should I tell the story? Do you like a happy ending? I like it when there is some ambiguity. Maybe a few twists and turns, with no final resolution. No direct route to the end, but the path leads you near it. You like stories about the triumph of the human spirit. This is my story. I'll try to tell the truth. You think I should have a certain responsibility to let the best be revealed. I have a stripper's sensibility that the most compelling is that which is concealed.

EVERYBODY HAS TO SAY GOODBYE

Everybody has to say goodbye. That is what I've been told. Everybody has to cry. The black beast has you in a hold. Those button-brown sands, slippin' on the wet stones. The woman is so tan and so alone. I'm tired and old and no one knows what Adam will do. Can you see, the Wildebeest pays for his deeds? The Wildebeest collapses in fits, he stumbles through pits, he has first aid kits and Medicare. Mount Tabor is open for the show again. Set me free. I've done you wrong. We'll fall in love. I'll be the soldier. You'll be in distress and you'll let loose some tears of contentedness. Open your mind. The mountains, the fog, the hills. I'm a fool to kill. Blood stains on the door. I'm not angry anymore.

ANGELS

Drink some water. Angels cry. Angels tell you goodbye. Massage your shoulders. Sail on high. Do those hills look like white elephants? Does a man have a duty to his country? Does a woman always dog a man? Do you care for your brother? Do you love anyone but your mother? I'm a fool to kill and the Palladium is a sad place to die. I look at the Lion's head and ask it why? Red Sparrow, golden fleece. I dreamt I married a baron's niece and we were so good together. She had skin of the rarest tether. She had a jacket made of pleather and we danced on the beaches in the South of France. Is there no love stronger than the love you felt in your dream for a lover you have never seen? Looking for the rhythm of the voices and the way that love supposedly rhymes. We are driven by the ideals forged at a young age and forged by people we no longer know.

BOY ON THE BEACH

The boy is sad. He wants to go deep into the backrooms of his mind. The summer at the beach. The beach house, the hot tub, the bikinis. He wanted his memory to be a film. And it was. But film distorts heavily over time. It deteriorates. Applause, please. Give me some of those piano licks. This is not a safe time. I am fearful that our nation will be blown away. I don't want the easy path but I don't go astray. Is that the last outpost of intrigue? The last outpost of home? Somewhere, far away, on the outskirts of civilization, there is the outpost where hope is infinite.

HOPE

Do you want to penetrate the outer walls of hope? Walk along the beach. Walk by the lighthouse. Watch for ships to pull in and gaze above the trees. There is an outpost and you can check in and claim your money. There is a mark of gold on the horizon. Remember the quotations, the situations. Apocryphal predications. Bluebirds, jaybirds, red-tail hawks. I will make my map to discover the past. I will be responsible yet be sure to fight against the made seasons. The birds in apocryphal flight against the dying light. The verdurous nights. Through the wet moons. Through the tangential flights and into the eye of the soldier's plight. Goodbye to the black. The Black Beast is always near.

MELLIFLOUS MATRIACH

The melliflous matriarch saddled the flowers in the golden garden. She saw him coming down the hill. He was the aggressor and all stairs descended from his apex. The suns set behind the mountains. The day was bright. Sweat came dripping in bold beads down his forehead. The eyes were firm. The eyes were strong. And at the end of his life, he let out a sigh, feeling forsaken, and vowed, "The time will come." And, like most of us, his life was not a validation of his ideals. And, like most of us, he had fallen short of his goals. No one who is young and mellifluous, whose ember is bright and new, can change this. What is there left to say? He had grown. The bursting bulbs of eternal youth, the bulbous, bursting blasts of the ivory tower were behind him.

My love, there is no difference between right and wrong. Self-deprecating, self-effacing. I pity those souls. Is there anything more to say? I hopped in the car and drove away. How many people suffer for expressing their most heartfelt sentiments?

THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

It ain't nothin' but a bunch of time. Time is behind us. Time is in front. Mary keeps time by the clock on the sun. Time that could've been means nothing at all. We deal with the time. We do the time when it calls. There was so much music left to make, you saw someone that looked like you on another day. Perhaps an alternate path you could have taken. Give me something I can hold on to. It seems so simple. Maybe what I'm looking for is right around the corner but there's no guarantee.

This is for all the things that could've been. If we hadn't been busy. If we'd fit some time in. But no one makes up for the time they've lost. And you live with the choices you've made.

BRILLIANT SOUND

Such a brilliant sound. The orange-peach sun and the Bordeaux moon. When Pete was gone the night went gray. I'm sad that he went away. And I wished the whole world heard all the things he had to say. But the whole world can never be trusted and the price is too steep. All the pretty girls will remain asleep and I'll remember to wake. We lost the soft, sad edges of the summer lake.

NIGHT

The night was dripping black and it was deeper than the sea. Look at all those rats staring back at you and me. It is deep December and my soul is like a flake of snow. Where it stops, no one knows. And this here, too, is a precarious pose. The wailing party, where deck-hands scuffle and fill their hearts with dust. It's savage and it is coarse. The way it greets you with no remorse. You're blind to these other hearts. I'm blind, of course. Write it on paper and it will be born. In the deepest part of winter, like a flake of snow, falling to the earth. Born at 24. Make a song. Bring it to perfection. The babe on the brilliant beach. So balanced and so real.

PHANTOM

A phantom is whipping through the shadows. He stepped out. This was the night when he was he really alive. Other had grown cold and careless. Below the skies and above the clouds. You're never going to use the gifts you possess. Is this the truth? The water plug blows and the sprinkler sprays Mary's hair. I think I might go crazy. The scenes on the mountain. The scenes in the bar. I see you in the willows. I feel the sky. Lookin' into the blood-red eyes. The winds blow. The phantom wants something concise, my friend.

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