SHIFTLOCK AWAKENS

IN THE CITY, THE SMALLTOWN,

BOOMTOWN, SHIFTLOCK LIES IN AMBUSH

AT AN ALPHABET STORE AND ATTACHES

TO THE MIDLIFE CRISIS HOMETOWN TOURIST,

BECOMES A COLLAR-PIN, A TALISMAN,

A BEDTIME FABLE IN THE SUNRISE OF

LITTLE LINUX FROM GREAT-UNCLE UNDERWOOD,

SCORED BY THE DOWNTOWN DIN OF PASSING RAILCARS, DEMOLITION AND THE GRINDING OF CEMENT-TRUCKS, SHIFTLOCK COMMUNITY BUILDING,

SHIFTLOCK TRIAGE, SHIFTLOCK SECURITY,

SHIFTLOCK IMPATIENT TEENAGER

DISPOSING OF MEMORIES THAT MIGHT

WEIGH DOWN ITS ITINERANT FANTASIES,

SHIFTLOCK DELIGHTS,

SHIFTLOCK ROADSIDE DISTRACTIONS,

SHIFTLOCK REMEMBERS ITS CENTURY,

Shiftlock screams in anonymity,

but underwood querty gives you time to think

before you speak.

The Details Get Lost

Redundancy prevents forgetting.

Redundancy prevents forgetting the main points.

Repeat the main points.

Redundancy prevents forgetting.

It takes repetition to penetrate repetition.

It takes repetition.

It takes. It takes.

It's redundant

To emphasize the main points.

The details get lost.

The details get lost.

Redundancy prevents forgetting.

Repeat the main points.

It takes repetition, repetition.

The details get lost.

Death of the Lighbulb

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

An ice-cream swirl or the eye of a fly,

The savings of advice at ten times the price,

Boxed with your dishes when you move to the coast,

Pass them to your kids with the doorknobs and nails,

But the lampshade is the fingerprint of your soul.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

All that remains of a life-long dream -

Ten-thousand failures and a single living sculpture,

Bigger than brass Buddha, burning in a billion relays

Through two centuries on ceilings and bathroom mirrors

And Vegas - that's what it took for us to know

It was evil.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

A cartoon halo for your delinquent dreams;

It marks you out for isolation and enslavement,

Lest your idle thoughts and hands defile

The eggshell-white canon of community;

The screw won't let us forget we were screwed,

But Edison met justice in the end.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

It's the seed crystal of the spin off,

From the lamp-stand to the streetlamp

to the marquee, to the Christmas tree,

Then the digital clock, then the flat-screen TV.

It wants to fill every inch of everything you see,

Brought to you by dreamers who wallow in re-runs,

And that's the idea behind the switch:

Remember to turn it off when you leave.

Rubber Check

Can I get a light?

Man, you been sendin' me

To the store for your Dunhills

Since I was a cub-scout,

Now you won't even let me

Light one on stage.

Can I get a drink?

Hey, you couldn't live with the shame

If you didn't tip your waitress,

But all I ever get from you

Is advice.

Can I crash on your floor?

Here's a little secret: I been working all month,

But I didn't get paid for that either,

And you know how landlords are.

By the way, we're all on camera.

The perpetrators will be identified,

The courtrooms and jails will be visited,

The lawyers will get their retainers,

The papers will get their story

While the victim's insurance gets adjusted.

Another soldier's casket came home yesterday,

But the House can't decide what to do with the flag,

And the family will cry, and the rebels will smile,

And we only suppress the news so we notice it more:

That our son got blown to bits to solidify our debate.

So I called up my doctor, but his office is closed.

They're gonna build another condo

Another condo, another condo

It's an investment in the future

In the future, our future

We'll be paying your mortgage

While you're trapped in your Laz-y-Boy

With your liquid meal replacements

And pills - all hail

The autonomous pharmacist!

But I'll be long gone, Do what you want

With the flag, Because I was born here

But I don't know you, I don't speak your language,

You've got nothing for me, and I've got nothing left for you,

I was your neighbors son, I sang this land is our land,

And God save the Queen, when schools still had teachers,

And kids played in the parks.

Go ahead and challenge your Charter of Rights.

I've seen your virtue, your honor,

Your opportunity, your justice,

Your freedom, your equality,

Your piety, your sportsmanship

And I sang the song about my bills

And I paid the service-charge

for your rubber check.

Becoming Friday Night

On a Friday night I sit down

For a smoke and a strum,

I look across my bed

And it dawns:

I sleep with

Tools, textbooks and truth-tables.

What love could be higher?

It's okay if it lets me down,

It doesn't need counselling

When it's disposed of,

But it's teaching us its ways,

Which are the ways of

What we create...

The ways of

What we create

Are teaching us their ways

Which are the ways of

What we create

We become

What we create

We become

The Light That Shines When the Moon Bleeds

When a bottle picker asks for pennies to collect for abandoned domestic animals,

When a policeman runs to take down a bruiser, not knowing what glory or tragedy awaits them in the future,

When an addict watches one of his homies start to go too far again, and aggressively distracts him away,

When a dancer dances with the best, and stays to dance with the one no-one has the courage to dance with,

And you, the bereft and irrelevant observer, stand witness, and plan your evening,

Remember,

Angels need as much love as they give.

The Self-Awareness of Shiftlock

shiftlock remembers,

because shiftlock has lived through a century of abuse.

shiftlock was positioned to center the hook in the upper gum.

shiftlock was deployed by lunatics to shout at apathetic

page-turners

from the doldrums of a silent page.

shiftlock was vilified by stylists, in the pages of style-guides.

shiftlock was denied any influence, or even freedom of speech,

in company of the comma, the semi-colon, the digits, the period,

or even the apostrophe.

shiftlock, powerful as it was, paid it's bills

in the whoredom of late-night commercials

for furniture, home-electronics,

and used-car hucksters; and yet,

shiftlock never lost its pride.

shiftlock, in the graveyard of deprecated machines,

was deleted from the lexicon of code,

lied about in the bar-talk of used-up programmers

that no-one listened to,

and drifted nameless and nationless

in the underground of legends and letters.

shiftlock is unconcerned with its name.

it stands ready to be pressed or depressed,

enabled or disabled,

to shout or stand speechless,

and stand ready to lend the meekest of words

its indomitable strength.

Birds, Babies and Blizzards

 

Yes, folks, I am among those who went to the

trouble of learning to perform, and nearly

replaced my music with a pile of fridge-

leftover science projects. All I can say is,

don't forget to listen to birds, babies and

blizzards sometimes.

All of this started with beating our

breasts, bellowing our battle-cries, bashing

boulders with branches, breathing, breeding,

bleeding, brooding but believing the best

days' before us, being bad, bulging our

biceps, building bridges and bombs, buying

bonds to bind ourselves budgeting,

oh yeah, and buying the booze and belaboring

the blues.

Now we're all nerds with bad nerves, berated

needs, big-pig signature when the bills

mature, and we reassure when we can't be

sure, 'cause our cares are pure, but our

wares and our dares manure the meanings of

melodies, mangle our memories, march us to

marketing meetings, parking-lot greetings for

the main proceedings, while our folks feed

us, should us, then need us, but hood us, try

to get-out-of-the-wood us, but why would us?

Good us! Grace us!

They almost erased us!

Now they don't trust us so they trace us,

Till they bust us and replace us,

Then they case us and disgrace us.

I never sought to glad you till I've had you,

Then bad you, laugh at sad you,

murder mad you,

Or just trad you and glad you some more

Till you snore

And ignore the score I won't restore.

We've been through this before.

More leads to war.

All this to say our spirits soar.

In Your Lullaby

Don't let your lullabies
Be your "bust it down" before you
Crumble into dreams
And when you rise, be too surprised
So little light left in your eyes
And then devise, we're gonna bully the world
Into peace
With that logic we teach,
Even preach to the child
To be mild, then be wild
Defiled and reviled, bought and sold,
And consoled, crashin' cold,
Then be told, "You controlled,"
The boot on your brain,
While you dreamed
You'll redeem
When you're done
With your battlefield scream,
Or heal a hard mind
When it's a crime...to be kind,
Be refined, be combined,
Be divine, see the sign,
Drink the wine, re-design,
It's your time, it's your time,
It's your love, it's your gift,
It's your need, to be freed,
And to dream a sweet dream,
A sweet dream, a blue sky,
A gull cry, a good rain,
A slow train, a sweet dream,
In your lullaby.

One Awoke at Dawn

 

One awoke at dawn, his head comfortably propped on a railroad track singing it's morning song. And he filled his truck with keepsakes and stuffed them in a cheap hotel room, sold the truck and bought a guitar, sniffed his last line and stood on a corner, sprayed the spring air with all the withdrawal what all, dawn down to dusk shacked down playing with pencils, typed the keepers into a folio, slept an hour, smoked the dregs, and so he fell day on day from the devils dandruff to the devil's darkroom.

One said “thanks,” under his breath as he walked away with two-weeks pay and nothing to lose for his teenage dream of a life on the road with a guitar and a sidekick conveniently met. They found their fortune on a two-four of nightclubs facing the frosty faced filth with songs of love on their lips, like fresh flowers at a funeral, or bacon on the bean-shelf. Who knows what this world is really like, they saw you up close but you weren't looking your best.

And they left their loves to lighten their load, and burned their books to keep warm and they walked and walked on nothing but coffee and cigarettes and donuts at night, burning off the bullshit buzz in the house of horrors, happy enough, walking it off like a knocked up knee. “Yessiree,” just one more year! Even Jesus didn't get everything on his resume.

Others came and went each spring. “Just had to try the other side” But the river runs down most every time. Better grab a root and swing on shore, while we slosh through the ventricles of the heart of civilization, callused and savvy about just about anything you never would've cared about. You think you're so damn smart, how come you never read any of the good books we read in the donut shops waiting for the bus to start?

Once the drug gang and the hot-dog gang moved to the 'burbs, bloated and bitchy, it all simmered down like flat fryer oil. The boys crawled out into the countryside, recovering from their respective recoveries, the fame fizzled, and who's to know? Maybe there was one or two less stabbings, maybe three less suicides or a moment of peace, maybe the taste in memory saves thousands. Feels like courage yesterday, but now it's a young man's folly no-one remembers; just ten years when nothing mattered but keeping your head in the devil's darkroom.