There isn’t any color in Syracuse

The houses are as gray as the clouds from Lake Erie

So I hitchhike down for a weekend in Soho

For the price of tolls get the blazing Appalachians

Then stumble on piles of felt die-cut shards

Connecting the streets and the gallery walls

and the silence from the steel drum bowery fires

on the ground on the ground on the ground

Far down below the foam is lace filigree

the eight-foot waves boil but we’re too high to hear them

the cliffs of Big Sur are tall gates of heaven

the smell of wild anise and mint in our lungs

as from the horizon slides a white felt cloud sheet

connecting the ocean and the gallery walls

and Merrilee’s hair tumbles like waterfalls

to the sea to the sea to the sea

Peach-colored gleams under sodium lights

the streets of downtown Atlanta are frozen

as we turn out the lights of our four-person business

making software to sell the whole state of Geor--gia

Well, deals among friends aren’t always heartfelt

smiles and glad-handing, liquor and boasting

landing in the rusty Philadelphia streets

sleet like a wet smoker’s hack trails the car

blown awry, blown awry, blown awry

Hold me now as if we’re wrenched by a river

Kiss me like we’re sharing one taste of oxygen

Close your eyes, imagine we’ll never touch ground

falling falling falling...

The cars are parked the length of El Camino

Meredith’s fused to the phone and her friends

Robin is sketching another cartoon book

And Merrilee notices change in the air.

Pour us another blood red zinfandel

Just one more hour and I’ll darken this monitor

Weaving montages of pictures and sounds

I know when I see and I feel when I hear

Throwing I Ching diaries, gestures to oblivion

toss away toss away toss away.