The Brothers Burn Mountain

Home

Shows

Bio

Store

Videos

Photos

Poetry & Lyrics

What's on Our Minds

Fan the Flame

Press/News

Links

Contact

The Beginning of a Partial List of Influences...
Old bookcases standing up slightly crooked, loaded to the gills with disheveled shoeboxes full of old letters, newspapers here and there, old coffee mugs, baseballs coming apart at the seams, moldy magazines, old camping gear, knives in sheathes, swords lying on heaps of green canvas bags against the stone and cement foundations of the basement, painted white now chipping, broken transistor radio, black and white television with severed cord, coils of darkened rope, a bouquet of feathers my grandfather gave me when I was five, my fifth birthday, and a crumpled-up dollar bill....

The Road of Sorrow

I'm takin' the road of Sorrow
into the town of Bliss.
The fiery wind seals my lips
with a burnin' hiss.

And the rain will be a-comin'.
You can tell by the swallow's flight.
Sometimes things are better when they're wrong
than they ever were when they were right.

When right is apoplectic,
and doesn't stand a chance,
and bein' wrong and full of love,
down the road, we dance.

 

Three Flames

And a flame white as my flesh,
an inner pearl, a lit fingernail
on the candle of silence.

And a flame orange as the skin
of a ripe orange, fire juice of the tongue,
licker of darkness, minister of the mouth.

And a flame black as night's veil,
shadow's chamber, shadow's smoke,
nail on the coffin that six hands

of darkness hold onto.

 

Out of sight

"I've not been high.
You know that I'm
gone on three days
sleepless nights.

"I've not been low,
and am you know
gone by," she says,
"out of sight."

She waits for whom
the lightning looms.
Her head she lays
beyond the range

of darkened hills
the sunrise kills,
the fresh-mowed hay,
a twilight strange.

Gloaming wonder,
looming thunder,
the price she pays
for opening

her heart and eyes
to the widowed skies,
where spirits play,
she knows someone.

The Welcoming

Or if nothing,
nothing happens,
no one comes.
The wind blows
and no leaves fall.

If we aren't even sitting here listening.
If no flock of black birds
takes over the pine
in momentary rest and rapture.
If no rest,

and the rapture fades away
like vapor from a hot spring.
If no heat or cold.
If no blankets on the bed
slightly dishevelled

from last night's sleep.
If no night,
and day never had to come.
If no welcoming,
I might not be here.

 

Farewell Song

A wheelbarrow full
of mockingbird skulls
sayin' hello as we
hit the road solo.

Underneath everything
we weren't gettin' along,
but the connection
was still strong.

The hills passed by green,
a subtle power.
A farewell song leaned
and fell like a tower.

Sometimes it takes
a lifetime to part.
We've been together
and alone from the start.

A wheel barrow full
of mockingbird skulls
sayin' hello as we
hit the road solo.

The hills passed by green,
a subtle power.
A farewell song leaned
and fell like a tower.