I carve away at the stone around my heart, searching for some hint of red…I know it is there.
Fear tickles up my hand, “careful, not too close!  Maybe you should stop, what if you nick a vessel!?  What if you bleed out?”

My hand stays steady.  “Yes” I smile, “What if I bleed?  Wouldn’t that be something?  What if I emptied out?  I guess you would suggest keeping my heart safe in this stone coffin buried deep in my flesh?”
I meet his gaze and he finally looks away shaking his head, “Don’t be so fucking dramatic, you’re like a 7th grade girl,  it’s not a coffin.  It’s just practical – its smart.  You’re crazy to take such chances with your life.”

My hand chisels away at another piece of the stone.  “Watch what you’re doing!  You’re being careless man.  Think! About. What. You. Are. Doing.  STOP!”

Its too late, the deep wine of my soul is already flowing over the rock and I feel the weight of the stone washing down and out the bottom of my feet.  “Goodbye my friend,” I say to Fear.

He is smaller now, shrinking until he is only ghost – only shadow – only dust of rock.   He disappears into the quiet darkness: “Goodbye.”

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We don’t like to sit with things in our culture.

Feeling bored?  Turn on the TV.
Feeling angry? Step on the gas and cut off everyone in traffic.
Feeling lonely?  Go clubbing with your friends.
Feeling anxious?  Grab a beer and a vicodin.
Feeling empty?  Surround yourself with chips and ice cream..
Feeling disconnected?  Open up some porn.
Feeling worthless? Buy something.  Pants, jewelry, plastic, whatever….just buy something.

We have an answer for everything.  We have an escape for everything.  There is always a way out; right?  I wonder what would happen if we sat with those feelings.  Ever notice how quickly you run from whatever difficult emotion you are having at the time.

I wonder what we would find if we took a day to notice what triggered reaching for another beer, reaching for the remote, or reaching for more food.

Last night my jaw was aching with tension.  I really wanted a beer or a whiskey and some ibuprofen.  I was supposed to go for a run but instead I was craving a movie, a drink, and a bowl of popcorn.  My jaw kept aching.  I was stressed out.   Money issues, cd sales, feeling like I wasn’t doing enough to promote my music, wasn’t playing enough shows, I should finish my book, fix the car and the leaking sink…etc…..etc.   I had promised myself that I would meditate for 30 minutes…..I reeeeeeeeally did not want to do that.  My mind kept racing from one idea to the next of things I COULD do instead.  Really wonderful things….

My Mind: “Hey lets get a nice glass of bushmills and sit outside”
Me: “No, I shouldn’t drink tonight.  I am supposed to meditate.”
My Mind: “Ohhhh Oh Oh what about we watch that movie you have been wanting to watch?  Huh?  Pop some popcorn, get a bowl of ice cream.  You’ve earned it!  Lets just veg tonight.”

Me: “No, I am supposed to be trying to eat healthy and I am supposed to meditate.  Remember?
My Mind: “Oh yea that is right.  I’ll leave you alone.  Wait, OH man did you see what your wife is wearing!!!  Looking pretty hot huh?  How about we light some candles, pour some wine and get her to roll around beneath the sheets huh?  Sex and wine?  That will clear the head huh?”
Me:  “You’re killing me.  Great idea but I am supposed to meditate tonight.  Ya, know, be still?   Quiet for 30 minutes.”
My Mind: “you’re an idiot”

I did not want to sit and just “be” with my stress.  Later when I reflected on the evening, I could not believe how many emotions and thoughts went through my head to avoid being still.  I finally did it and when I did I noticed how incredibly tight my face, eyes and body was.  I noticed that I was feeling overwhelmed and filled with anxiety.   As I sat there and noticed them they began to relax.  My jaw began to loosen.  My chest began to open.  I began to realize how tired I was.  Beneath all of my stress was a very worn out and tired soul.    I needed rest but the avoidance of my stress was doing the opposite.  It was making me try and do more and more.

My cravings began to subside and I could see them for what they were, just ways of distracting myself from the moment…..from the reality of where I was at.  When I finished meditating I had a calming talk with my wife.  I could clearly communicate what I was feeling.  She spoke to me about all the things I had done and had been doing.  She reminded me that I have a hard time just being finished with a project…..and relaxing for a bit.  That it makes me feel lazy when I do that even thought that is what I need.  During our conversation I could come from a place of groundedness, when 45 minutes before I was snapping at her and the kids and feeling overwhelmed with every request.

We need to stop running from ourselves.  We need to take the time to just “be” with the internal struggle that goes on in all of us.  I am not saying it is easy but I am saying it is necessary if we are going to be our true selves.  Sitting with painful emotions is not anyone’s idea of a fun evening but if we don’t sit with them they just continue to grow.  And our ways of escaping from them continue to grow as well…..more and more distractions are necessary. You see they want our attention, so the more you run, the more they chase.

Spend some time this weekend and notice when you reaching for more beer, drugs, porn, tv, food, stuff…etc and take a moment to find the emotion behind it.  What emotion in you is trying to be seen and heard?  Just notice it.  Even if all you do is name it.  Anger.  Grief.  Lonliness.  Anxiety.  Fear.  Notice it and give your kind attention.  It is time to sit with them, smile and hold their hand.

spirituality, trent yaconelli | 3 Comments »

Poetry Friday:  I love this poem.  I have used it for a few shows over the past six months.  Love this line “It is not the weight you carry but how you carry it” and the question mark at the end.  Love it.

“Heavy,” by Mary Oliver

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

spirituality, trent yaconelli | 4 Comments »

I really love John O’Donohue and his books.  He has a book called To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings that I really love because it brings back the idea of blessings in our lives.  We used to bless things in our lives.  We would bless a birth, dinner, a life change, a harvest, a hardship, setting out on a journey or many other things.  Human beings used to give thanks more, we used to ask for help more, and we used to say the things that need to be said to each other.   We give thanks now for a bonus or a new car but we used to give thanks or bless the food on our plate and the people that made it.  We used to give blessings to each other.  Since reading O’Donohue’s book I have used many of his blessings to start shows or when I have a gathering of friends.  It sets a mood or tone that I love.  It turns the moment sacred….or I should say it helps myself and others to recognize the moment IS sacred.

Recently I was asked to say a blessing for my dear friends Robert and Amy’s son’s bar mitzvah.  I really loved doing this.  I loved sitting back and thinking about what I wish someone had said to me as I went in to being a young adult.   I loved that Jake’s parents wanted blessings for their son as he sets out on the world as a young man….his own person.   Myself and their friend Sheila stood up to give a blessing for him in a synagogue even though we both are not Jewish but blessings do not recognize religious boundaries.  They speak to the commonalities and light in all of us.   I couldn’t find the right blessing in the book so I wrote my own.  It is below.  And because I love John O’Donohue’s book so much I have also added his blessing on Longing that I love and use often.  I really love that he took something like Longing and made a beautiful blessing out of it…..”blessed be the longing the brought you here.”  I challenge everyone to find a way to give a blessing this year or read one the next time you and your loved ones are gathered.

may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship -
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.

may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

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We have all seen it.

You are driving some road and suddenly there on the side someone has dumped a couch, a refrigerator, bags of garbage, a pee stained mattress, old broken crappy toys, or what looks like the remains of an emptied garbage can.  Who does this?

There are a few beautiful roads I drive regularly and there is one spot where you can pull over to let someone pass that routinely has something dumped there.  Some piece of waste that someone wanted to get rid of but didn’t want to deal with.  I picture them driving up in the middle of the night jumping out of their truck and with one big shove a small plaid couch is once and for all out of their life.  They run back to the driver side, get in and speed off.  Do they feel relived?  Guilty?  Ashamed?  Maybe all three?  Is it really gone for them or do they carry their guilt and shame with them?   We do the same thing don’t we?  But we do it on the inside.   We all take parts of us we don’t like, problems that we don’t want to face, truths that are just too bright to look at and we hide them away…..or more honestly we dump them and drive off.

We shove our anger, rage, shame, inadequacies,  faults, weaknesses and pain into a black garbage bags and dump them wherever we can.  Maybe the garbage bag we use is alcohol or drugs or maybe it is numbness or busy-ness but whatever we use we all do it.  The thing is it doesn’t really go away does it?  Those things we don’t want to confront or deal with are still there just someone else’s problem.  Someone else can clean up the couch or discarded refrigerator…right?  Someone else can deal with my anger, my guilt, my self hatred….right?  Your wife?  Your kids?  Your employees?  Maybe we don’t make the decision consciously but we do make it.  I have deep scars about being picked on and bullied as a child by some adults and other children but I learned to dump those feelings far away from myself.  Then I found myself getting angry when my sons showed any signs of weakness or being sensitive.  Why?  Because I didn’t want them to get picked on or hurt and if I didn’t want them to get picked on they needed to be STRONG.  I was ashamed of my own weakness that was still inside me tossed to the side on some deserted street of my soul. My garbage was not as far away as I thought.  In fact I was dumping it on my sons to deal with.  The more we run from things, the more we hide things, the more they own us.  I never dealt with any of my painful scars, I dumped them, but what I have learned is the things that we dump never go away they.

Picture you soul as a city, a bright beautiful city but there is one part of the city you don’t go to.  It is your dumping ground and because it is the part of town you don’t want to go to you spend all your time trying to drive around it, avoid it, ignore it.  But some part of our soul has to deal with it.  It doesn’t just disappear in a “out of sight, out of mind” sort of way.  We wish it did but it doesn’t.  Think of your own town or city.  The “bad areas” affect everything don’t they?  The people that live there just don’t stay there.  They come out to the affluent areas and rob you, mug you, or hurt you.  Their problems require you to spend money on police and alarm systems.  You can quarantine them off all you like but they still effect you.  The same is with our hearts.  You can avoid the garbage in your life all you want, you can dump it in the middle of the night and speed away but it will effect you.

So what do we do?  We start opening garbage bags.  That hurt that you are trying to cover over with strength and assertiveness needs to be opened and looked at.  That old childhood pain from abusive parents, the damage left from your marriage or an old relationship or the deep feelings of worthlessness you dumped somewhere in the corner of your soul needs to be picked back up and seen.  It didn’t go anywhere but if you spend your life avoiding that “part of town” it is controlling you and until you look at it you can’t be free – I can’t be free.  Jesus went straight to the poor, the lame, the paralyzed, the ashamed, the arrogant, the weak, and fearful and he looked at them straight with love and compassion.   He went straight to the “bad” part of town.   He didn’t turn away or ignore them.  Can’t we do the same with our own hearts?  Can’t we do the same with the parts of us that are lame, paralyzed, filled with fear or weak?  It is time for us all to start traveling to the dark parts of our hearts and take a long loving look at what we have hidden so deeply and start unpacking.

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So I know I have disappeared for quite awhile.  My new solo cd took over all my energy and I didn’t have time to write or think about writing.  The new CD is due out on Thursday.  Should be out on iTunes around the same time but you can go to CD BABY, if you can’t wait that long, and get it right now.  Just use the widget to your right.

Thursday I fly out to the Wild Goose Festival to debut my new cd. A great article that appeared in USA TODAY  on the event is right here.

Hopefully I will be writing more now that things are quiet.  I have much to say and much to be thankful for.  My hope is that this record speaks to all the spiritual seekers out there.  Many of the songs came from my own struggles and hardships with God, life and music.  Once you get the new songs please let me know what  you think and please pass along to friends and families.

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New Track that will be on the solo cd called Coming Back for More.  Check it out, let me know what you think.

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So things have been a bit crazy but I am finally getting around to updating my site and people on music.  I have been putting my energy to recording and getting a new site up and running that will feature my new stuff.  I have also been working hard on some house concerts that have gone far better than I expected.  After three sold out shows in a row I am beginning to understand that there is a real draw and need out there for them.  The shows mix poetry, music and conversation all in a storyteller type setting: no mics, no PA, no stage.  Just candles, wine and a layed back feel.  I am planning on setting another one up in April.

I am currently booked to play a show in June  in North Carolina at the Wild Goose Festival.  This is going to be an incredible show/weekend/experience.  3 days of music, speakers and conversation.  Should be amazing. Please click here to see what it is all about and the line up.

Birdwings

My birdwings record is coming along beautifully.  I have about 7 songs about 90% done.  I hope to record the other three in the next two weeks.  I will have a new website focused on my solo stuff up in the next week.  It will be at trentyaconelli.com

Here is a track called Boat of Stars. I posted it before but now it has piano, strings, vibey stuff.   Not finished but getting close.

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I have about 10 days to reach my goal of $5,000.   I am about $750 short.   If you have not pre-ordered my Cd PLEASE do so now so I can continue recording.  I need about 40 people to pre-order the CD and then my project is funded and I get an extra 5% added to my budget. Click here to pre-order www.indieagogo.com/trent

Started tracking some violin recently and adding piano soon.  Hopefully I can get some tracks with violin up by next week.

Here are two updated versions of some of the songs I am working on.  Light that burns inside has pedal steel on it now.

Light That Burns Inside with Pedal steel

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Come Again – clean track

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Wished for Song

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New demo track.  Thanks to everyone who has been so generous and pitched in.  Studio time has been wonderful andproductive.  I also put on a house concert on Saturday that was sold out and I was able to perform many of my new songs. Amazing Violinist Duane Whitcomb drove down from Oregon to join me and really added to the evening.   The vibe of the room and the crowd was magical.  Having a room full of people who really really want to hear the music and are dead quiet was a wonderful change for me.  I am used to bars and clubs.  My friend Robert Ethington opened the evening and really set the tone with some wonderful new songs of his own.  You can check out Robert’s stuff by clicking HERE.

This is a love song I performed on Saturday that I wrote about how often the hard trail we have to journey on,  all the failures, mistakes and misteps, is exactly what we need.  All of our experiences on this road are valuable.  The “bad” relationships or the moments when we feel we are lost; all help us get to where we are going.  All help us when we finally do meet the person we are supposed to be with.   I felt like a mess many times and often felt I could only do damage in relationships.  It is only looking back that I see that every mistake or difficult relationship was preparing me…was teaching me…was changing me to be ready for the love I have right now.

Hallelujah

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A video from the House concert I just did…..God is Music.

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I am putting together my solo project and I need help.  Please go to this link to get all the info you will need. www.indieagogo.com/trent

For years, while a member of the band Five A.M, I have been trying to create music that speaks to not only people’s hearts but their souls.  As the band begins to close the door on it’s career a window has opened for me as a songwriter.  Over a year ago I was somewhat depressed as I began to realize Five A.M. was not going to rise to the heights I had wanted.  In the midst of that winter more and more songs began to pour out of me.  Not rock songs but simple – sparse songs that pointed towards the struggle of living a deeper, passionate, and spiritual life.  It was music I have been writing and setting aside for years, but was now ready to come out.  At a retreat in the mountains of Oregon I ran into an incredible violin player, Duane Whitcomb, who opened up these new songs even further.  I played  a few solo concerts and found that this music resonated people.  I received emails and had long talks with strangers who were moved by these new songs.  I was asked repeatedly where my music could be found and purchased but I didn’t have anything.  After many, many restless nights I have decided to do something I have a hard time doing…..ask for help. I don’t have the money to record, so I am asking for people to pre-buy the CD or give more, if you feel so inclined.  Click here for details.

To get a feel for the kind of stuff that will be on the new record, here are a few demo tracks.  These are songs that will be on the record but still in demo form.  Just me, guitar and vox….one take.  I added an early demo of me and Duane.

Boat of Stars

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Come Again

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Carry You Home with Duane Whitcomb on violin

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5 a.m., Five A.M., music, trent yaconelli | 11 Comments »

I turned the corner on to my street and something caught fire in me,  I needed to push my body as fast as it could go.  My legs stretched out before me and the world got quiet.  I could hear only my breath as I struggled to break through.  To break through what,  I don’t know.   Maybe I needed to run fast just to show myself I still could.   I passed my house and finally slowed to a stop. I walked past my house and looked through the windows.  My kids were asleep, a single light lit where my wife was quietly working on her painting.   I have always loved those moments when all is quiet and I am just an observer.  Seeing my house peaceful and still makes me smile.  I walk further down the block and sit down to stare up at the moon and steal a little more silence for myself.   As I sat on the curb panting, feeling the cool air,  I notice voices drifting through the air.  They rise then lower, then rise again but I can make nothing out.  One of my neighbors who spends all of his time in his garage avoiding his wife passes by me with a friendly, “howdy” as he walks his dog for the fourth time today.  I wonder if his marriage and life is really that bad.  I have watched his garage expand with a couch, then TV, then weight room, then hobby table, then dog bed/play area and now circling back to bigger LCD TV. Maybe a twin size bed is next followed by a queen size.  It is interesting to me that so many of us spend so much time working on our outside as our insides rot.  The further his marriage disintegrates the better physical shape he is in.

The words that were drifting through the air are now louder and rushing to my ears.  It is a young couple who recently moved into a rental.  She is pleading and accusing at the same time, “Do you remember!?  Do you?” There is a long silence and I picture him saying nothing as he sits on the couch and she paces back and forth.  ”Do you remember all the things you said to me?  Do you remember the promises you made to me!  DO YOU!”  There is some mumbling.  Whatever she wants from him, he cannot give.  At least that is clear to me as I sit in the audience quietly listening.  I feel sorry for her.  She is angry, hurt, madly in love, yearning, pushing and pulling all at the same time.  She doesn’t realize yet that it is too late to get things back to how she wanted them.  She doesn’t realize yet that those beautiful things he said to her he probably meant at the time but he made a mistake…..or maybe things just changed.  They can’t go back to the beginning, they can’t go back to the nights of long talks over wine and making love until morning.  Those times were beautiful but we can’t stay forever in those places….people change….love cannot be stagnant, love changes or dies.

He emerges from the house with keys in hand, walking slowly towards his car.  The door opens and she is now rushing out after him, “What are you doing?”
He stops in the street and turns to her, “I’m leaving, you told me to leave.” He is quiet when he speaks and seems sad and confused.
“I know but….I didn’t think you would.”
“What do you want? I don’t know what you want from me. I’m trying, but I don’t know what you want. I’m trying. I am trying.”
They stand in the middle of the street;  him looking confused, her pacing and occasionally biting her fingernail.
“I want.    I want you to keep trying…….Its cold out here……I want you to come back inside.”
“Ok.”

He slides his keys back in his pocket and they walk back to their house with her in the lead.   As she opens the door I see him with a bowed head, place his hand on her back as she walks in.    She stops to enjoy the warmth of his hand on her back for just a moment more and then walks in.   I feel somehow lucky to have seen this;  the drama of life spinning out in front of me, these tiny moments of heartache, grace and redemption.   As the night returns to its silence I stare back up at the moon and I think of God watching us from above.   I suddenly realize that he, just like me, would love to step in to change things, to help, but he knows just as I did watching that couple that their drama had to be played out.    No wisdom I could have imparted would have helped or been heard. They needed to feel love deeply and joyfully, take it for granted, damage it, revive it, fight for it and finally learn to nurture and care for it.   Who knows what is in store for that young couple…..maybe they will make it, maybe they won’t.  The moment that mattered, the moment that matters to love and God the most is the moment when we say, “I’m trying.”    We might fail and fall over and over again but the words “I’m trying.   I’m doing the best I can.” are the words we must keep deep in our hearts.  Because if we don’t we might as well quit right now, we might as well move our hearts out of our soul and into the garage. You don’t need to be a saint.     You don’t need to be the cutest couple or parent of the year. You don’t need to have the perfect house or the perfect marriage.   You don’t need to be the best at anything.  You simply need to try and to keep trying. No matter how lost or alone you feel the only prayer you need, the only prayer God yearns for is, “I’m trying lord…..I’m trying.”

faith, spirituality, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

What is it about patience that makes it so easy to talk about but so hard to practice?  Maybe, because saying it takes action.  You’re actually doing something when you talk about or say “patience”.  Your actually doing something when you write about patience as I am doing right now.  I like thinking about it, writing about it, counseling others about it but what I hate, what I absolutely disdain, is to practice patience.  Why?  Because  it means I am powerless – it means I do not have control.  It means I have to trust; trust in something beyond myself.  I don’t like to do that.  Very few of us human beings like to do that.  We like “grabbing the reins” or  ”bull by the horns”.  We like taking control of our destiny.  But what does patience ask us to do?  - nothing-  It asks only for us to be still, trust, and let things go.

My wife loves to garden.  I on the other hand like to watch her garden….and play guitar…but that is another story.  But while I watch her toil and work the soil she exerts a tremendous amount of energy preparing the soil and the land and then once she has mapped out just the right places for everything she spends days planting, watering, fertilizing…etc.  After months of this there finally came a time when I was watching her moving about her garden calmly only to occasionally crouch down and peer down at the wet soil.  ”What are you doing?  Planning your next move?”  I asked. “No.” she replied.  She continued to walk in her garden.  ”Uhhh…..well then what are you supposed to do next?”  I shouted out to her.  She smiled, “Nothing – I wait.  And see what comes up.”  There are times in our lives were we must work and toil and struggle.  There are times when we must shove our hands in the dirt and plant seeds.  There are times in our lives when we must be diligent and water and keep a close eye on the seeds we have planted.  And then there are times when we are asked to do nothing – to be patient- to trust – and to let go and see what new gifts arrive.  Some things we hoped for will not arrive or push their way up out of the ground but that is not our choice….that is not in our control.  I think of my wife at harvest time, completely joyful at what comes up.  She does not worry about what doesn’t.

I have alot to learn from my wife’s gardening.  I have alot to learn from patience…..but not right now….right now I have too much to do.  : )

God, trent yaconelli, trust, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

There is a song by the Wood Brothers called Postcards from Hell that has been going around in my head alot these days. If you get a chance definitely check out their last two albums. Great writer. Anyways, I have been playing the song Postcards from Hell on the stereo alot because I love this line in the chorus “I got a soul that I won’t sell and I don’t read postcards from hell.”  It speaks to me right now in my life.

Yesterday I came home beat tired with a headache.  I threw my bag in the closet and put my head on the kitchen counter and rested my eyes when I heard this little voice behind me.  I lifted up my head to see my son Easton working quietly on a project on our coffee table.  I hadn’t noticed he was there.  I couldn’t make out what he was singing at first but then as I listened to his tiny two year old voice I could hear him singing, “I got a soul that I won’t sell.  I got a soul that I won’t sell.  I got a SOOOOOOUL that I wont sell.”  Over and over he sang that line.  He looked up at me and gave me a big smile while he kept singing as he went back to work.  I thought to myself if I could get him to sing that line in his heart his whole life my job as a parent would be done….then I thought….if I could get my own heart to sing that every day I think I would be a better human being and closer to the light.  I wanted to say something to my little son as he sang, I wanted to warn him of the people and the jobs and the lies that will some day ask him “how much son?” but not today.  Today his little soul was teaching mine a few things.   All I could do was kiss his head and say the only words my heart would allow, “amen”.

Listen 

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I know a man who sings the blues
Yeah he plays just what he feels
Keeps a letter in the pocket of his coat
But he never breaks the seal

Set up in a bar room corner
Playin’ for tips and beer
People carryin’ on and drinkin’
You gotta strain to hear

I’ve seen him playin’ some old cheap guitar
But he could play on pots and pans
You never heard a soul so pure and true
It’s flowin’ right out of his hands
He can sing sweet as a choir girl
Or he can sing a house on fire
I’ve seen him callin’ up the angels
And use a breeze for a telephone wire

And if you ask him
How he sings his blues so well
He says
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
And I don’t read postcards from hell

Says he came from down in Texas
Playin’ out since he’s fifteen
You can hear a little Chicago
And a lot of New Orleans
Hean take you on a freight train

He can take you down the alley
He can take you to the church
He can walk you through the valley

And if you ask him
How he sings his blues so well
He says
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
And I don’t read postcards from hell

I’ve seen him sleepin’ in a doorway
Maybe livin’ outside
On his back just like a cockroach
But he ain’t waitin’ to die

And if you ask him
How he sings his blues so well
He says
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
I got a soul that I won’t sell
And I don’t read postcards from hell

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To my faithful readers: I am still here, just don’t have anything to say these days.  I have sat down on a regular basis to write but nothing comes.  I am writing lots of songs but blog posts have been elusive.  I have a bunch of drafts but the energy is not there to finish them yet.  So many thanks to all of you who keep coming by or who drop me an email saying you miss the posts.  They will be back eventually but for now, for some reason,  all is quiet in my writer’s mind.   I will posts some songs this week  ~ T

trent yaconelli | 1 Comment »