Here, Now, Always


1.
Here, now, ends another summer, half a world from Mozambique.
Here I touch your tender cheek, you who are my love, my timer.
Here we make our carnival, spirit-filled and sexual.
Here, now, I’ll start thinking slimmer to the warm tones of autumn’s viola,
And the leaf hues of its orange crayola. Be here now, with me, calmer
Than the hands of summer’s embalmer, as autumn winds begin to hammer.

2.
Here, now, I’m the lucky winner of autumn’s merciless unloading.
And though I feel our time eroding, there’s still time for me to play the sinner
With you whenever we can sequester an hour or two, this fall semester.
Here, now, always, I taste the gin or bourbon of your flesh that’s dripping
Into touch with autumn, whipping at our backs and at our inner
Beings. I’ll be your beginner, here, now, always, until dinner.

3.
Always, you have been my honor, bubbly sweet as diet cola,
Nourishing as a bowl of granola. Now, though, I’ve become a gonner
Into this autumn wind, decoding impulses from our cells, corroding,
Humming like a piano tuner. Here, now, always, this antique
Oneness makes me play your geek, stumbling forward with your banner,
Here, now, always, in the manner of some lone long-distance runner.

4.
Be with me here, now, sooner than the sound of this unzipping,
Nearer than this autumn nipping at our heels as summer’s crooner
Fades into the mystical distance like a testicle.
Be with me here, as this nooner makes me your enraptured jester.
Autumn plays the ripe ancestor to our flesh, grown closer, vainer
Than what it was and all the saner than this wind, its entertainer.

5.
Here, now, always, we shall enter into touchings we can’t speak,
In English, Babytalk or Greek. Here, as in a Harold Pinter
Play, we move by autumn’s goading toward each other’s arms, foreboding,
Traveling toward some sucking center. Be with me as the Victrola
Of time runs down like the Enola’s gay propeller. We’re the inventor
Of our love, the experimenter, its fuel, its victims, its tormentor.


Words and Music by Galen Green c 1986