Danny Callahan

Green world, love the chloroform
Front porch in the thunderstorm
Controlled chaos, confused energy

Stop reading the weather charts
Stop counting the playing cards
There's no system, there's no guarantees

That the love you feel you carry inside can be passed
But you try, I know you do, you still talk to your plants
Ask "How are you getting on, alone?"

Some wander the wilderness
Some drink cosmopolitans
Some cull science, some glean astral planes

I can't tell where the canvas stops
Homesick as an astronaut
Just keep drifting but still can't explain

How the love we feel we carry inside can be passed
See a brother in the gutter you reach out your hand
Ask, "How are you getting on, alone?"

What gauge measures miracles?
And whose heartbeat's electrical?
We feign sickness with our modern joy

But even western medicine
It couldn't save Danny Callahan
Bad bone marrow, a bald little boy

But the love we feels he carries inside can be passed
He lay still, his mother kissed him goodbye said, "Come back.
Where are you going to alone?
Where are you going all alone?"