Two Fields Over

All lyrics by Christopher Travis, except where noted.

Museum of Useless Endeavors

One of these days where the rain falls through the sunlight

I turn for no reason, songs play in my head

I look up and see Virginia

Simple soft eyes, hands on her books

Rarely looks up; it’s solitary work

In the Museum of Useless Endeavors

And she tells me

They opened its doors, 1946, to the lost ones

Memories can’t disappear

No one knows I see her as a vestal of evening light

They sent her here to catalog the sea of squandered lives

Shadows on her face, across her eyes

The man at the microphone says they never disappeared

They’ll end up here

And she tells me in

Uruguay, 1975, shelves were flooded

The country was filled with lies

No one knows I see her as a vestal of evening light

They sent her here to catalog the sea of squandered lives

Shadow on her face, across her eyes

The man at the microphone says they never disappeared

They’ll end up here

He asks her, “Could our lives be in some of these pages?”

A man clears his place, but the waters return

Someone departs; it’s Virginia

Useless to cry, useless to scream

Look in the register, curate a dream

In The Museum of Useless Endeavors

And she whispers in

Washington, 2025, it reopens

And a country disappears

A country disappears

Elegy for a Pirate

For Ian Thomas Parks

Lyrics by Christopher Travis and Jared Matt Greenberg

From the desert to the sea

You gathered us to play

You’d throw your heart on stage

And it had to be your way

But you made us all believe

A new sound, the latest thing

And you had to make it ring

You could be screaming at the sound man

But loving, loving till it ached

Gonna laugh, gonna cry

Gonna make it you and I

The van could be our pirate ship

We’re gonna take another trip

You said get up on stage, what could go wrong?

You said life is for living so I’ll sing this song

You said we’re gonna do something never done before

And then made the colorwheel spin

You’d fill up the room with passion on your sleeve

Guitar would call out and your voice would decree

You said you know that I love you forever

Oh Ian, how dark were your demons?

You brought sunshine to the music hall

But there were shadows in the deep

Hazy nights or simple songs

Dissonance or harmony

Could make you smile or make you weep

But you had so many worlds

And you could keep us in the dark

When there was nothing we could say

And you were twisted, twisted in your sleep

Still have time, leaving soon

I’ll follow her to the moon

The van will be our rocket ship

We’re gonna take another trip

You said get up on stage, what could go wrong?

You said life is for living so I’ll sing this song

You said we’re gonna do something never done before

And then made the starlets sing

You’d fill up the room with passion on your sleeve

Guitar would call out and your voice would decree

You said you know that I love you forever

Oh Ian, were you hiding your demons?

Breaking in and out of our lives

Three years now, lay on the ground

Played one last song and wandered out

Might have smiled for all we know

And thought about another show

Were you planning one more show?

Were there chords in your head?

Mixing sadness with the waves

Took the music to the grave

And what happened to loving till it ached?

Gonna laugh, gonna cry

Gonna make it, you and I

The van could be our pirate ship

We’re gonna take another trip

Why can’t we take another trip?

Grains of Verse album

Anthropocene

The world of man

Is the white of the birch

And insects’ home scars, mold, and moss

Ignored at it spreads

Anthropocene, climb higher and higher

Draw your borders now

We’ll be gone by the end of the day

Heaven would not be the sky but lies

Beneath the surface of the lake

The rounded shell window and door

To the darkness of hibernating air

Anthropocene, climb higher and higher

Draw your borders now

We’ll be gone by the end of the day

[And our wars will raise the water

And our greed will pull down birch

Absent dreams were pine, oak, and aspen

You will pass, you will pass]

Our skirmishes are boats

Our battles a fallen limb

Our stabbing knives

Let bloody syrup flow

Anthropocene, shout louder and louder

Break your treaties now

We’ll be gone by the end of the day

And our wars will raise the water

And our greed will pull down birch

Absent dreams were pine, oak, and aspen

We will pass, we will pass

Anthropocene

You will pass, you will pass

Anthropocene

Looking at a Photo of My Father on Stage

Thick sideburns from the 60s

Run the risk of being shaved

When he meets her

She thinks he’s wisdom and age

As he mandates and directs

Virile reminders

Son and daughters at home

Memories, black spots

On future’s sun

And his freedom is the drive

Is the smell of black paint

On plywood and cigarettes

And that his boy doesn’t know

That a carpenter’s square

Is not a toy

Chorus

A handful of churchgoers

Reluctant upward climbers

Store clerks, a baseball coach

Fashionable farmers

A local politician

He dreams, dreams

Of their expression

He sees them in the grain

Of a cottonwood planted

In the side yard

Whose roots dig deep and find

Clearer waters family ties

With softer edges

Chorus

We Have

Almost thirty years we have

Walked while winds have followed us

Into trees, our hands let go

Under branches as our home

Meeting up once again

Walking on between the gusts of life

Gathering seeds, we walked down

To the water watching how

Waves so different and the same

Kiss the children in our hands

We let go and they took root

Along the banks beyond the sand

Faith we’ve always had in the rain

To bring our drink then to refrain

Love I’ve always found in your eyes

Pull me in when I start to float or to unwind

We know that the cliffs are there

They have fallen and come back

Watch the oak trees lose their leaves

The water will erode the edge

Cut a path of sweet descent

And undercurrents push us on and on

Chorus

Just this year I said goodbye

He still lingers in my eye

Pureness of his disbelief

Just to stand beside me now

Memories try to pull me down

You breathe for me and someday

I’ll breathe for you

Chorus

On Leaving

But we had planned, meet in the woods

To fish and sit and fish until

They went their way so we’d move on

The boat would drift and we’d recall

We planned to drive, to sit and drive

Till we arrived, to talk and drive

Till we arrived, we’d move on to

Something else

We had planned to eat and drink

And eat and laugh and laugh and sit

And then we’d sleep, sleep and dream

We’d dream with loons, wind, and waves

We had planned to walk around

The lake and stop where the small stream

Feeds the lake and does it search

For something else?

But I was not there

I was so occupied

Always planning to be your friend

Be running too fast would I

That you left without me

And you can see, close your eyes

You sit and close your eyes and love

You love your wife and then forget

Hold your son, he slips away

Your daughter’s smile can’t recognize

Son gets up, you close your eyes

You call for them, screaming now

Where have they gone?

But I was not there

I was so occupied

Always planning to be your friend

Be running too fast would I

That you left without me

And they say you can’t find your son

And they say you can’t find your wife

And they say you’re crying and scared

That someone will take away the self

That you also, you also cannot find

I’m like a child, I’m in your class

I watch you teach, your students say

You care so much, they’re ready now

To go with you, to understand

I’ll close my eyes, we’re in the boat

Across the lake, you raise the line

The time has come, release the fish

And you have found something else

Something else

Beyond the Literal

Beyond the literal

Let me fall away from words and into silk

The salt of you

Deaf to literal

Breathe your skin, taste your air

No pattern, no code, no grave

Nor the visual

Let your eyes be only soft to catch my fall

They don’t recall

And no more temporal

We have no name to frame our time

No paint to cry this color, this place

[Tonight, I cannot find the story, or was it even here before? So many symbols, rules, same anger, same interruptions. I believed in words that in the creases of my wanderings settled into thick skinned convention and dried sweat, coughing up dreams of critical inquiry that translated my history and were translated by her story until they became real. The kind of canvas that protects us from the rain won't hold heavy colors and will rip open if the ground is too sharp. If this line of questioning repeats and revives what was lost, then perhaps we will drip back in.]

Beyond the literal

When the sun will wash the script beyond our reach

We close our blues

Move past the literal

And run through walls to see ourselves

Swim in all directions as one

Rainy Lake

Up here it’s not about the human

It’s not about our bodies and it’s not about the land

Up here, the world is upside down

The water is our sky, it’s our heart and it’s our hands

The island is just a floating cloud

Humble to its accomplice, humble to the waves

The cabin bows to shifting winds

The island bows to waters asking for another day

We’ll breathe deep so deep

Your swells, your swells

Your rhythm in our heart repeats

Your swells, your swells

No verse would contain your extension

Words like vast, deep, cold, dark, crystal, or flow

They can’t approach your soul or your being

Words like power, width, or current they can’t begin to know

You live with no demons or dimension

No human hierarchy will ever be inscribed

You’re so much more than poems know

Your language was a song long before our time

Chorus

And where dust paints cracks of barren waves

Some close their eyes and pray but the clouds will never change

Up here, they move with every breath

Who am I to swim through you, your fish upon my plate?

We swim across the vein of your currents

Lead our children into you, drop them in your arms

But you know you can take me if you have to

You know my stroke and when I breathe, your grace that I move on

Chorus

Paula

Paula, we’ll cross at Otay Mesa Road

Hunger behind us, see your sister’s eyes when we go

Flying away at Otay Mesa Road

15 September, your children wait for you below

They said you’d never try it

50 feet to climb it and come down

But only you know how the pain can feel

Never looked behind you

Just looked to Siempre Viva Road

Paula, they dream at San Ysidro now

You’ll lie still without them, they try to find asylum

Eyes filled with tears at San Ysidro now

Sun dips below the steel, shadow stripes upon the road

Chorus

Corporeal

In this language

Anger and vision

Visible anger

An escape

Ignites the flight

Of my flight

Willing wheels

Of contest

The tumor grows and occupies

Smell of images codified

Tranquil symphony erupting

Gospel of PCV

Psychosis wanders corporeal

Feasts on artificial blood flow

She grants his acquittal ephemeral

And he crawls back into himself

Master of irony

Rhetoric of power

Words may belong to you

When you’re asleep

You awake vindictive

Throw the words back at her

Your liar elected

While cells decay

Chorus

This one day

When speech is silent

Her hand is mine

The water runs clear

Float down with you

Eyes within you

Pause and remission

Nothing to hear

Psychosis wanders corporeal

Feasts on artificial blood flow

She grants his acquittal ephemeral

And he crawls back into himself

His Eyes Rain

His eyes rain / wander through water

His eyes rain / my arms his boat

His arms weeds / wave towards boulders

His arms weeds / my heart his soil

His new mouth / cathedral organ

Chords combine / rise and fall

Asks his mother something I’ve never heard

Words that have never met

Never at all

Could be floods on the mesa, hail in the valley

Sandbags up to the sky

Fear could spread from pitchfork to panic

The fisherman doesn’t know why

His eyes rain

His feet fish / flip into water

His feet fish / create below

Toes that grapple rocks in the river

His feet fish and the current they know

His hands soil / warm as they dig down

His hands soil / seed and sow

Fingers pull something that’s never grown

Food that we’ve never had

Never at all

Chorus

Moment to Breathe

Temples or poems may chronicle fears

Flow of crisp breath silence of years

No picture of beauty or suffering sight

Or feet in the ocean will dampen this light

Forest particles, industrial will

Over the cliff, escaping to build

Fingers of sunlight bask in her heart

An existential return to the start

It’s a singular cave, marvelous song

Nothing inside and no one belongs

Careless descent, fragmented pain

You’ll know who you are when nothing remains

Ineffable light

Fall into greens and blues

Ineffable light

I’ll close my eyes with you

Accept the empty emotion of words

Exposure will dry them, they’ll never be heard

But we found our shelter, we’ll come back for more

Alone together inside this door

It’s apocryphal silence, the taste of the mint

Softness of anger, bitter repent

It’s balance that tempts you and fragmented pain

Our moment to breathe is when nothing remains

Chorus

The Peach Fields

They plotted and planned at school every day

They’d meet to continue the game

Out the gate with their bikes, dirt paths led to fields

March blossoms, late sun, a pink sky

At the peach fields

I can read your mind

Will you always meet me here

Two fields over, down the path?

Will you always meet me here?

We could leave for years and come back

One mother sent her boy with a kiss and supplies

A time to come home, he’d forget

The other still driving, back late again

But she knew where he was and she smiled

At the peach fields

Will they hold my son

Will they feed my son

Chorus

And here we are, so far away

Your parents gone, my father rests

Friends in pieces, children fly

But we can’t leave them this world

The way it burns, and yet it shines

The water boils, and yet it flows

Our eyes are open and yet we return

Machines and money

They’ve torn down the blossoms and fruit

And the boys they have grown, live far away

But the stones from those trees lie deep

Chorus

At the peach fields

I can read your mind

At the peach fields

I can read your mind

In Simile of the Wind

She understood nothing of her rise and fall

Nor the mismatch of breath and speed

Other than it felt

Like yesterday and tomorrow

Were sand

And if her being the wind is a hackneyed metaphor

Then let her be like the speed itself

Like the strength or misdirection

In simile of the wind

That circles back upon itself

As her lungs ride bareback

On grains of verse