New Medium

1 - Invent It All Again

Iron bridges, melodic chimes
Things I made for you back then.
All these clocks are only marking time
Let’s invent them all again.

Folding chairs and building blocks
magic mirrors to pretend.
Seismographic data in our hearts
Let’s invent them all again.

Rocket arrows chart the motion of the stars you see,
Paper money on the go (go go)
Cartographic lines will mark the place for you and me
And we can change the things we know
Yeah, we can change the things we know

Climbing ladders to polar stars
Things I did for you back then
All these fires are only casting iron
I’d invent them all again

Folding chairs and building blocks
magic mirrors to pretend.
Seismographic data in our hearts
Let’s invent them all again.

Water mills conduct the rivers to the wider sea
lovers moving with the flow
Watch the compass mark the broken lines from you to me
See, we can change the things we know.
Yeah, we can change the things we know.

I’ll remake my works of art
I’ll reward your restless heart

2 - Limelight

From the Kid to the Gold Rush
You can see the Modern Times
From the Rink to the Pay Day
You can see the City Lights

From the Count to the Circus
I’m still here behind the screen
One a.m. at the pawnshop
I’m the champion in your dream

Gotta get to England
Someday I’ll get even
Washington’s a boys’ club cabaret
Cinematic treason
If Hollywood’s a kingdom
Jesters get their justice either way

In the park, I get shanghaied
In a prehistoric past
I get caught in the limelight.
So bring on the laughing gas

Take a shot at the keystones
take the squareheads to the queen
Water cures for McCarthy
Talking pictures, silent scenes

3 - You Know What I Mean

My patents are pending
For me to say what I wanted to say,
Your message confusing mine.
Technologies talking,
Hear them say what I wanted to say.
My parrot is mocking all of my
mechanical lines.

These instruments obsolete
Words are false industries
You know what I mean.

My printers are knocking
moving type into blocks into lines
and sidewalks are chalking signs.
But my poetry’s failing,
Can you see what you cannot define?
Are you deconstructing all of my
Derridean lines?

4 - Rewind

I’m on my way
back to the time, before we were wired.
I’m on my way
back from the light of switchboards and dials
back from chaos, rewind
I’m on my way
back from the time, of mainframes and lines
I’m on my way
back from the bright, and neon designs
back from cell phones
back before we were moving so….so

Summers, open the curtains
Mornings, I can recall
One string linking our houses
Tin cans taking the call
Sunlight, snapping the picture
clotheslines carry the sound
Augusts making the fiction
Your voice always around

Analog dreams, recording the scene:
we’re wiring the trees,
stringing the sky, to play off the light,
these wild frequencies
And dreams of defiance
the follies of science
can make you feel so . . . so

5 - Small Talk

Mapping out the Interstate
My finger prints a figure eight
We come around, we’ve seen this place
before.

And climbing up the empire state
you hold my hand and hesitate
A camera shot, we’ve seen this place
before.

We’re welded in gridlock
We’re watching the wall clock
All the literate small talk keeps us sane.
We work by the windows
Feels soft where the wind blows.
All the literate small talk keeps us sane.

In cubicles we simulate
A broken wall, a city state
We’re lost in files, we’ve seen this place
before.

A counterculture elevates
We cross it out, we can’t erase
a sous rature, we’ve seen this place
before.

6 - One More Crash

I wake up, I see the cracks in the walls
I think this building is gonna come down soon.
I step out, I breathe. I’m back on the street
I think this body has got to come down soon.
And in my machine, as cold as routine
I think this city is coming down soon.

Watching the light on the dash
Warning that we’re gonna crash
One last time let’s drive round again.
Now I see your face in the mirror
Fading like ruined careers
One last time, so drive round again

Postmodern and bored, exhaling with cool
like some hackers we’re gonna break through soon.
Exhausting and burning these gallons of fuel
I think these systems are gonna break down soon
And in my machine, if you’re my routine
You’ll keep this body from coming down so soon.

7 - The Cold Wars

See the wrecking crews go by
Leave a broken piece of you outside.
See the smokers out to breathe,
Coughing secrets as you start to leave.

See your words hang in the cold
Clouds of chatter from inside your soul.
Every story stained in glass
Starts to shatter on your way to class.

The cold is nice, when love is ice
Our solitude will warm the room.
We’ll melt here like icicles,
electric and lyrical
Our solitude will warm the room
So let’s never leave the room.

See the Blakeans on fire
campus poetry or real desire?
Elbows covered for the freeze,
I feel it coming with your Western breeze.

The cold is nice, when love is ice
Our solitude will warm the room.
We’ll melt here like icicles,
electric and lyrical
Our solitude will warm the room
So let’s never leave the room.
My lips still unused to you
chaps all come on to you
Tongue on the frozen steel
stuck like we used to feel.

8 - When The Book Ends

These days
the letter’s like a freeze frame
All the old ways
get cluttered in the bric brac bones of the day
Now the book lights
They flicker like the fireflies
In the long night
The xerox of our sheets bound back for the day

Will we sit like old friends
when the day of the book ends?
Will we sit like old friends
when the day of the book ends?

Feel the spine bend
the scanners light the loose ends.
When the letter sends,
Our voices become flash, like matches to flame
At your bedside
You’re reaching for the outside
In the long night
Our copyrights expire like fires in the rain.

McLuhan: Instead of going out and buying a packaged book...

9 - Kodachrome Earth

It fell into place
the whole earth database
Kodachrome shots
our astronauts were hiding
Nomadic tribes, networks and beatniks on the rise
We wore the pins
We thought the whole world would begin
to finally see that it’s
round round round
a tiny blue gem in the darkness gliding
round round round
borders and refugees barely surviving
round round round
civilizations and temperatures rising
round round round
Are we like gods or confused by the lightning?

If our Tesla coils
die out in the soil
batteries shot
And our dreams are caught declining
Mnemonic tribes, iConic complex on the rise
We shed our skins
We thought the whole world would begin
to finally see that it’s
round round round
a tiny blue gem in the darkness gliding
round round round
borders and refugees barely surviving
round round round
civilizations and temperatures rising
round round round
Are we like gods or consumed by the lightning?
Our memories are now on view
The ocean skies return to blue

10 - Changed

Changed
I feel changed
all unwound changed
Now.

Strange
voices strange
Hear the sound strange
Now.

Feel the ground shake
Feel the ground shake
Feel the ground shake
Now.

If every cell stayed the same
and seven years wasn’t strange
then we’d be just like our names,
but even those tend to change.

11 - New Medium

There’s a light on the floor
Shows your just out the door
In a Russian film we belong
like a gentle jolt of montage
where the mis-en-scene flies
back and forth into your eyes.

I can hear you writing
I read between the lines
I can hear you writing
in pictographic signs

There are shadows on the wall
in the caves where trains crawl
We can cut our indirect hearts
when the edits keep us apart
When the acetate lies
in the darkness of our eyes.

All of these memories collide
this is the medium tonight
you and me editing time.

I can hear you writing
I read between the lines
I can hear you writing
in pictographic signs