It came out of me like the first puff of black soot coughed from the lawnmower the first time it’s started up every Spring.  A little dirtier than it should be but it came out and that’s better than expected.

I haven’t written any real poetry in two years.  I’ve written crappy pop songs, but I haven’t had that exhilarating feeling of being possessed, running to the piano and transcribing words that just come out of nowhere.  Well, I know where they come from, but it feels like blasphemy most of the time to give credit to God for something that’s still so obviously flawed, incomplete and totally human and messy.

And I’m talking funny again – all metaphors and adjectives and adverbs – do you notice?  That’s the kind of stuff that gets you sitting alone in the cafeteria you know?  And it feels good to have it back for now.

If you write songs and you’ve ever wondered what a “professional” songwriter’s process looks like, here it is.  This is all I got down before the window at the back of my brain closed and the words stopped streaming in.  What I’ll do next is figure out if I got these lines down right, in the right order, or if they belong together at all.  Then I’ll fill in the holes – like the entire second line.  I’ll replaced the worn out phrases with more unique ones – like the first line.  I may choose to keep only one of these couplets – like the third set of two lines – I like those two.  I’ll try to figure out what this song is about because when I started writing it down, as always, I had no idea.  And I may decide there are three or four songs here and not eight lines for one song.  There may be an album here for all I know.  And I may wake up tomorrow and decide it all sucks and throw it in the trash. I’ll figure all this out later.  For now, I have eight lines that were fun to funnel onto the page.  Here are the lines, followed by a picture of the actual page:

Been runnin’ like a man on fire

———stinkin’ liar

My tongue is silver but my heart is rusted

Keeps tickin’ but it can’t be trusted

I woke up in Africa

Like every politician rock star does

My head and wallet always full of cash

Turn me ‘round, burn it down, burn it all to ash

To keep you out of my head and the writing process I’m closing comments on this post.  No offense but I need to do this alone without encouragement or discouragement in the room with me.