I completely avoid music. My brain is still musical and it’s just too tempting to want to sing along or learn a new song. It’s also emotionally difficult to have to stop myself relating to music in the physical ways that I once did. If my voice did come back tomorrow, I think I’d find that my songwriting muscles have wasted away along with my vocal muscles to some degree.

Five-card stud, nothing wild… and the sky's the limit.

Are You Afraid To Die, Spartacus?

No more than I was to be born.

I sat down [facing a sleeping] couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants..... This is a musician's face, I told myself. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine.... This little Mozart is condemned.

Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing

The world is full of women
who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of 
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent 
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I’ve a choice
of how, and I’ll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it’s all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything’s for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads 
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge 
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can’t. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape’s been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it’s the smiling
tires me out the most. 
This, and the pretense
that I can’t hear them.
And I can’t, because I’m after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don’t let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I’ll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. 
That’s what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body. 
They’d like to see through me, 
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don’t hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.

Sunlight dances through the leaves
Soft winds stir the sighing trees
Lying in the warm grass
Feel the sun upon your face
Elven songs and endless nights
Sweet wine and soft relaxing lights
Time will never touch you
Here in this enchanted place

You feel there's something calling you
You're wanting to return
To where the misty mountains rise and friendly fires burn
A place you can escape the world
Where the dark lord cannot go
Peace of mind and sanctuary by loud water's flow

I've traveled now for many miles
It feels so good to see the smiles of
Friends who never left your mind
When you were far away
From the golden light of coming dawn
Till the twilight where the sun is gone
We treasure every season
And every passing day

We feel the coming of a new day
Darkness gives way to light a new way
Stop here for a while until the world
The world calls you away
Yet you know I've had the feeling
Standing with my senses reeling
This is the place to grow old 'til
I reach my final day.

Well, I'm lookin' at you
And I'm wond'rin' what you're gonna do
Looks like you got no friends
No one to stick with you till the end

Take yourself a friend
Keep 'em till the end
Whether woman or man
It makes you feel so good...

Yes, you think you're all right
But now you're lonely ev'ry night
Well, you need a friend
Someone on whom you can always depend

Yes, you need some advice
Well, let me put it to you nice
I said you need a friend
Someone who'll stick with you to the end

How can you have lived for so long and still not get it?

This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship - and dancing.

Hollis Brown

he lived on the outside of town

with his wife and five children
and his cabin broken down

well you looked for work and money
and you walked a rugged mile

your children are so hungry
that they don't know how to smile

your baby's eyes look crazy
they're tuggin' at your sleeve

you walk the floor and wonder why
with every breath you breathe

the rats have got your flour
bad blood it got your mare

is there anyone who knows
is there anyone who cares?

so you pray to the lord above
please send you a friend

but your empty pockets tell you
you ain't got no friend

your baby's crying louder now
it's pounding in your brain

your wife's screams are stabbing you
like dirty, drivin' rain

your grass is turnin' black
there's no water in your well

you spent your last dollar
on seven shotgun shells

way out in the wilderness
a cold coyote calls

your eyes fix on that shotgun
that's hangin' on the wall

your brain is a-bleedin' now
your legs can't seem to stand

your eyes fix on that shotgun
you're holdin' in your hand

there's seven breezes blown
all around the cabin door

seven shots ring out
like the ocean's pounding roar

there's seven people dead
on a south dakota farm

somewhere in the distance
seven new people are born

Men generally are not candid in seuxal matters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but they wear a thick overcoat - a fabric of lies- to conceal it, as though it were bad weather in the world of sex. And the they are not wrong; sun and wind are not favourable in our civilized society to any demonstration of sex life.