i am in some lovely place called santa cruz

already a few gigs behind in my writings

i struggle with myself

feel myself falling apart in this whirl

i am here its 4 pm in the afternoon i walked round n had a meal

bored listless stateless sleepless

sometimes wondering what it all means

and why am i anywhere i ever am?

the music the words the conversations

meeting and greeting and sweet talking em

not feeling too hungry despite everything

nice to play on an empty stomach

people i say i look good

but inside my anxieties multiply

everything always needing so much attention

i try to remember all i forget

immune to california i remain hermetically sealed

my life speeds up and ebbs away before me

minutes like entire aeons

days like a beat of a hummingbirds wing

onstage energy is rushing to me at least

onstage i get healed for a while in the noise of it all

i get caught up in it all

the sound and the lights

i can’t remember much of it now

i feel a deep detachment coming on

look out as a stranger

husbands n wives IT guys n girl drummers

the old woman and the young boy

the hospitality lady and the nutty stalkers

the old friends and the merely curious

someone you used to know

someone you hadn’t met yet

the ears ring on

the eyes blur

the voice falters

the dream coalesces

the good times in kodak chrome seen as from years away

the bad times frozen in over saturation on the screen in yer mind

all the pain and the junk and the lies and the tears

all the twists and mists and sisters i shouldna kissed

all the gigs where i really came on like i was big

all the halls that made me feel small

our bus hurtles along through outskirts of towns

i dream of the remote and inaccessible  things

the things i can’t have

the things no one can have

the things that are now all lost

i dream of the things I’ve been told

as they all try to come true around me

i am lonely in this crowd

the air is incredibly still

the temperature is perfect

a night off in nowhere