Shane

by | Aug 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs

Shane

by Jimmy O'Brien | Fires in the Belly

It’s been too long feeling sorry for myself.
It’s been too long with my life up on the shelf.
Sometimes wish that I was Shane—
shoot Jack Palance, and disappear again;
don’t have no one
don’t want no one
don’t miss no one:
living lonely with a saddle and a gun.

Some men just want to walk behind a plow.
Other men find a different way somehow.
Wish that I could be like Shane:
come this way once
and never come this way again;
don’t have no love
don’t want no love
don’t miss no love:
hell below and the stars above.

Shane, come back Shane.
Prairies dried up
it won’t rain.
You’re a technicolor cowboy I know
but I sure do hate to see you go.

Sometimes I look back and I wonder why
I can’t touch the ground or reach the sky.
Shane would come but he wouldn’t stay.
He’d empty his pistols and ride away;
don’t have no star
don’t want no star
don’t miss no star:
no destination is too far…

Chorus

It’s not easy living here this way.
I watch the sun come up and go down each day.
Sometimes it helps to ease the pain
to shout ‘Shane, come back Shane.’;
don’t have noone
don’t want noone
don’t miss noone:
not trying to undo what’s been done…

 

*Written by Jimmy O’Brien ©
(I’ve sung this song so much that it feels like a part of my life. Thanks, Jimmy!)

Somewhere North of Bangor

by | Aug 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs

Somewhere North of Bangor

by John Fitzsimmons | Fires in the Belly

Somewhere north of Bangor
on the run from Tennessee.
Lost in back scrub paper land
in section TR-3.
It’s hit him he’s an outlaw
a Georgia cracker’s son,
who killed a man in Nashville
with his daddies favorite gun.
It’s hit him with the loneliness
of wondering where you are
on a long ago railway
stretched between two stars.

Two weeks shy of nineteen
in 1992
she got tickets with her girlfriends
for that new band coming through.
She got tickets for the show ,
she said—”go on and have a night on town.
I’ll meet you in the morning at
Frannie’s Coffee Ground;”
but she met a backstage roady
from that traveling country band,
and now it’s hard to slow the pain that grows
inside a hurtin’ man.
I took one of Joe’s old Rugers
and the law into my hand.

I borrowed Lance’s Mustang
and a Mobil credit card.
I drove every pot-holed backroad
they’ve got in Arkansas.
By now there was an all points
on a Georgia crackers son
who left on Sunday morning
with his daddies favorite gun.
I heard the church bells ringing, pleading,
pulling on my soul.
I almost turned back—I couldn’t bear to go.
Twenty years of praying
and doing what I was told.

They played three shows in Nashville
and Johnson City for a night.
Two air-brushed old greyhounds
under marquee neon lights.
I followed them to every show
until I found the man
with a tattoo of Geronimo
on the back of his right hand.
I asked him about a gal he met
at Saturday night’s show;
she says that you get kind of rough
and don’t understand no.
I thought that I’d find out myself
just if that be so.

I heard you like to think
you lead your life out on the edge.
You say the way we live our lives
we may as well be dead.
But now that you believe
that you’re the God of your own land
you’ve got to walk a higher road
than any other man.
You’ve got to toe a higher line
and somehow make it real;
you’ve got to learn in disregard
to think hard as you feel.
He pulled his knife,
I took his life—
you’ve got to pay for what you steal.

Now I’m somewhere north of Bangor
on the run from Tennessee.
Lost in back-scrub paper land
in section TR-3.
No more an outlaw
than a Georgia crackers son
you will not play the renegade
trapped or on the run;
and you love the strange wild loneliness
of knowing who you are—you love
the way the patterns lay
stretched between the stars;
you know that when they find you
they won’t know who you are.

Joshua Sawyer

by | Aug 11, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Poetry

Joshua Sawyer

by John Fitzsimmons | Fires in the Belly

I doubt I’d ever have taken this road
had I known how fallen it really was
to disrepair: driving comically,
skirting ruts and high boulders, grimacing
at every bang on the oil pan.
I tell you it’s the old road to Wendell —
that they don’t make them like this anymore.

We’re bound by curious obligations,
and so stop by an old family plot
walled in by piles of jumbled fieldstone,
cornered to the edge of what once was field.
The picket gateway still stands intact,
somebody propped up leaning on a stick,
an anonymous gesture of reverence.
Only nature disrespects: toppling stone,
bursting with suckers and wild raggedness.
A gravestone, schist of worn slate, leans weathered:

Joshua Sawyer Died Here 1860

Another stone, cracked, has fallen over.
I reset the stone, and scrape the caked earth
as if studying some split tortoise shell,
and have keyed in to a distant birth —
His wife Ruth died young; so I picture him
stern with his only daughter, only child —
speaking for a faith which could defy her.
There’d be no passing onto when she died —
twenty-two, more words beside her mother.
Still these stones and fields you kept in order,
long days spent forcing sharp turns on nature,
accepting the loose stone and thin topsoil.

A Wendell neighbor must have buried you
whispering a eulogy which is as lost
as your daughter, your wife, and this farm:

—Joshua Sawyer

I’ve never been down this road before
I would like to speak with you of faith.

Don’t Let Go of Your Soul

by | Aug 11, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs

Don't You Ever Let Go of Your Soul

by John Fitzsimmons | Fires in the Belly

Sometimes yeah.
Sometimes no.
Sometimes it’s somehow somewhere in between.
Sometimes it’s somewhere that no one has been–
no, nobody, nowhere, no nothing can end.
So don’t you let go and hope you’ll find it again.
Don’t you ever let go–

Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Things they got ways
of slipping by unless you hold–
so don’t you ever let go
of your soul.

Sometimes, man I’d wish
there’d be snakes in the trees,
and I’d just keep this big space between them and me–
I’d say no way Jose’ that ain’t how I’ll be;
but between right and wrong there’s this large mystery;
it makes freedom so hard, so hard to be free.

Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Things they got ways
of slipping by unless you hold–
so don’t you ever let go
of your soul.

Sometimes when I hear that fate’s back in town,
and it’s working the strings of the prophets and clowns;
and you’re hung and you’re strung
and you’re brung and wore down,
and you hear, Fitz, man, don’t worry,
‘cuz here’s what we’ve found:
fate’s got a chance
when you’re soul’s out of town.

Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Don’t you ever let go of your soul.
Things they got ways
of slipping by unless you hold–
you cannot; you should not;
don’t ever let go:
don’t you ever let go
of your soul….