There are widows of winter lying in the sidewalks’ teeth,
and the children sell small coins to the saints beneath the overpass.
The radio croaks a tired sermon about profit and relief,
while the sky folds up its newspapers and lets the night pass.
I walked the avenues with a pocket full of apologies,
held back the dogs of rumor and the census of our fears,
and I found a rusted chest where once we kept our melodies —
it opened on a whisper and it rained the last of our years.
Bring us a new summer of love, not the cheap kind bought with noise,
but that old dangerous weather that melts the iron out of men.
Bring us a new summer of love, where brothers learn to borrow joys,
and the songs stop being silence and the knives stop being friends.
There is a woman at the window knitting names into the dawn,
she is counting every absence like a rosary of scars.
The soldiers on the tele-vision wear their victories like pawned fawns,
and the poets keep their counsel with bruised and fevered stars.
If mercy were a currency, we’d be bankrupt by confession,
if longing were a fortress, we’d have leveled every gate.
Yet someone in a doorway strikes a chord — a small, stubborn obsession —
and the sound walks through the city like a bell that won’t abate.
Bring us a new summer of love, not the cheap kind bought with noise,
but that old dangerous weather that melts the iron out of men.
Bring us a new summer of love, where brothers learn to borrow joys,
and the songs stop being silence and the knives stop being friends.
I will trade you my last argument for a map of the horizon,
I will sell you my good manners if you teach me how to kneel.
We will barter with our loneliness and baptize our little treasons,
we will learn to make the simple vow the world is too ashamed to feel.
Come down where the gutters glitter with the names we used to fear,
come down where the lovers whisper underneath the city’s tongue.
We will stitch the old, torn anthem, line by trembling line and tear,
and raise it like a flag upon the roofs of everyone.
There are echoes in the doorway, syllables unpaid and raw,
and people keep their promises like animals keep faith with dawn.
The mayor signs his paperwork and blesses every law,
but the gospel is an alley and the altar is a lawn.
If you ask me for a miracle, I will teach you how to whisper,
I will show you how to stand in line and offer one good thing.
We will harvest all the ruins, till the silence till it’s crisper,
and we will learn the ancient language of the simple, sacred ring.
Bring us a new summer of love — let it come like thunder soft,
let it come like rain on rooftops, let it come and not be late.
Bring us a new summer of love that lifts the broken off,
let it come with no pretense, let it come with no debate.
If only for a season, let us be redeemed by touch,
let us be forgiven by the small mercies of each breath.
We’ll teach our children songs that mean a little more than such,
and pray the city wakes to find the world has kept its faith.
Track from the EP "Shaken Or Stirred"
