it's all down hill from here

it's all down hill from here
the battle is over
it's all a pill you wear
to take over and over

i left you all my notebooks
and video confessions
my young faced rock star looks
and monday night sessions

then went to the river
slipped into her open mouth
sank into her barefaced body
in the crooked cradle of the south

it's all down hill from here
this song plays over and over
i was born an alien,
an airborn rover

i've disengaged from the bar chat
from your barn feed stover
i've retired from your ranks
from the ship of your stern drover

and it's all down hill from here

moth

i see you flapping at the light
you've brought your fragile troth
the residue of your love song
your soul's champagne and froth

i see your micromovements
your salivation for the broth
that separates your tiny island
from the horizon you walked across

i make out the outline of your body
camouflaged against the cloth
laid out to plate your supper
a meal to acknowledge your loss

you've given all of your beauty
your strings of poetry and moss
that you've strung from all the branches
in the paper shapes of moths

medicine

to remember the feeling of dirt and dance
i crawled into your farmer hands
your unsheltered earthworm romance
before the war and corn in cans

to remember the smell of swollen rain
i bottled up your december pain
then set it in the window's frame
til it was set free again

to remember the freedom of an unshoed foot
i came and found your flat tar roof
a fist full of banjo, a line well put
caked in my ears like a chimney seeps suit

you gave me medicine
you understood
the faces in the corner
the rotting of wood

you gave me your medicine
you knew i could
in the sea of madness
deliver my good