I’m back from bright lands: Tucson in spring, the air wild with sun. A country of such sweep. Sabino Canyon crackled with dry spring energy as my girlfriend led me to the low streams. Everywhere crisp with the season’s turning. All hues vivid, every green saturated to pulsing.

The desert is so honest. There is no hiding. Across the desert nothing interrupts the sweep of your eye but cholla and scrub until spike of peak or range. Along a mountain: a scatter of saguaro, little else. It’s a terrain too naked for secrets.
   

I’ve lived in New York for five years, so I found that desert openness unsettling. Life here is rich with alley, shadow, nooks for skulk. And secrets. This is a land of compression and dwelling folded in upon dwelling and endless chambers of discovery, some forgotten, some concealed. Packed buildings lean in like endless members of committee and I’m the child caught up in their robes & ceremony, comforted by all the density and drone. Lost among cold fathers, mothers. Their squeezing machinations. Dank & dour. I love them.

But Tucson I miss your open palm. As much as I’m made for this place’s pocketed fist.
   
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

The Warm Coward

My paused rain, my
paused and gathered rain,
my ceiling-lake of swords,
held cloudburst breath
hungry for gravity’s suck,
for plummet & quill
like flags across my back
or glass tines –

You’ve trembled all my life,
waiting to dip, draw up
my veins’ ink
& feed me overdue script.

I could walk the rest of this hill
without calling your
late lash down, toss into town
ahead of clouds’ glower –
duck dry in some motel:
the warm coward.
   So I won’t. 

   But I won’t
Beg for shower.
I’ll keep your freeze,
step all over your endless shadow.

   
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

I’ll be collecting different writings here about depression and anxiety.
   

4-6-08
   

Cull & Flight

Sun-blotting span,
slow & sure like
cloud-shadow on
naked desert foothill.

Then the grinding talon,
the pluck from your post
like calyx culled from stem,

hooked through nape,
winged slow & lazy like
mosquitos rich with freight.

Sleep through all flap, swoop.

Now descend:
set on feet again,

or tucked in nest
to take tiny, blind
beaks to breast

   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

I’m going to be posting more of my music soon here on snailcrow. I hope to have a new cd out of new material within two months or so. In the meantime, here is an older song of mine called “Face Like Glass” which I recorded under the name Buried Branches:

      Face Like Glass

All vocals/instruments/recording are mine. I used a digital four-track, a guild acoustic and a yamaha keyboard.

Lyrics are here.

If you like what you hear let me know. I’ll be setting up a paypal soon where you can get cds of my material with handmade art/lyrics (each cd will be different).

Take care everyone,
-snailcrow.com

Eggtooth Cicadas

I would live my life in a field of eggs.
Thousands of beak taps and scrapes
muffled to murmur narcotic.
I’d live for that sea of blunted click.
Through my shell I’d almost see shapes.
I’d peck up holes for arms, palms, legs.

I’d put up drapes before I’d beg.

   
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

All Trunk

Focus all feeling as if in a leg,
Ghettoize it, pen it in,
until the chopping jettison.

Focus all feeling as if on a bough,
herd there your beetles, bluejays — like cows –
until bark’s unseen, then let sink saws. 

All trunk, immobile.
All column of calm.
All torso, noble:

a psalm; something
embalmed

   
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008