Directions From a Madman

Frank Stanford

Tonight you better listen because I am going to tell you
What you always wanted to hear.
All you bad hombres better take a deep breath.
I shit you not.
This is the night of nights.
Take a chance on love.

Old friends making up after 200 years
Of the fine and high lonesomes
I've seen my days.

Years now I've been walking these goddamn hills,
No telling how many lies.
The love spreads its shade into the valley of your gut,
A houseboat fled to its dead-man.

The love gets shed of its hard ways,
Making a bed for a stranger.

The coast is clear on my love.

Each dawn love is a captain
Without a ship.
The only instrumentation
The sad and imaginary
Sound of his voice, love with its own
Words for music, the low light
Of a fairly good star.

Love can be taken for a semaphore.
SOS, the man is wounded in his sex.

You run off into the ditch of your past
And love spins like a wheel.

An old man comes by looking for pop bottles,
He finds your love.

Evenings a young girl arrives on a tractor
To brush-hog your love.

The mouth of your love is dry,
Nowhere to roam.
Your love is in the heyday of its youth,
A sorry bastard.
Your love works off in the hills like corn liquor.

Some say love is the light form of the moth,
Others say the dark.
I say a cat always tries to cover its own shit.
Who can say about love?
There's no telling when love can have a spell.

When you were young you said you never had any
Time for love,
Now the moon no longer tows at your blood.

Your love may lie lost and deep.
You may have to hire a water witch
To break a stick
And hunt for your love.

The first day of your love
You can bag your limit, four pairs of mourning doves.

Your love goes to the centerline of the branch
But you desire all the water.

There is no way of knowing
What I tell you about love is true.
Go by the signs.

So many men try to go down into
The shaft of their loves.
They dig into the lode of their love.
They come out of their mines,
Sick to death of their love,
So much for the limping men
Heading home with a shovel on their shoulder.

The house with no woman breeds lice.

Summer nights you draw
Blood from your love, bites itching while you sleep
Alone, without lotion or a fan,
Pain becomes your lover.

This won't last long.

Never you mind, by and by
We keep returning to the early days of our love,
When it shivered like a lake.
We know what shines from the mountain now:
The roofs of chickenhouses,
Sad birds on their way to Taiwan.

Our hearts slide off the beds
And prowl down the hallway,
Looking for another door to enter.

Like a boot on a clutch,
My love is steady
Motivating through misery or mystery,
Hitting on all six.

What you go and have in the night
Is strictly your business.
Keep it on the road.

Finally, scared to death,
You account for your worthlessness,
And the loving to death
Of your own spitting image.
You're glad to know there's enough money
To put your love through school.

For soon it will be time to go
From the one love to another,
Time to buy a home on wheels
And honeymoon until death.

Then our love comes back to us
In strange clothes,
Her breasts ever so fine and high,
Our own love ready to betray us.

I have outlined love for anybody's book.

I have compared my love to the lazy
And to the crazy girls of years past,
To a faithless truck, to a spell, a moth, and a bottle,
To the hell bending moon, if you could tell,
And to a captain - if not a ship,
And in ways you'll come to know not too soon,
But I have never compared my love for you.

Ginny Stanford