Dave Von Bieker

Indie folk to haunt your heart with small stories and big questions.

Goodbye Lunch

Today marks my last official day at my day job. Maybe any day job. It may be just for the next year until I hit the pavement. It may be forever. That all depends on how this works out. Before the success and before the failure, there is this day.

Train (a song sketch)

Here it is – the first thing I’ve recorded in its entirety in a few months. I used Evernote, which I use for song sketching, and has terrible sounding audio. It sounds gritty and old-timey, which just might work for a song about a train. Enjoy, and let me know

June

So here it is June Midyear came at midnight when no one was watching I’m marking seasons by swapping windows for screens Airing out the bedrooms of children who are starting to sweat  Nursing rake blisters in the shade of the tree that killed my lawn   I rake debris

In conclusion

Walking the back alleys along the river valley edge   I find I’m always drawn toward the flaking fence paint   the muted dusty blue of bygone skies across a garage door while the grey-rot white disappears into the oblivion of time   It is only after noticing the pull of decay

Brother

Missing after a frantic week I cannot find my passport This city won’t be letting go of me after all My brother says he feels betrayed That I would trade my sonic boom parks for his vast wilderness   Summer after summer he perches in towers watching for fires in

No Poem Haiku

No poem today But hope that I can redeem With two tomorrow

When We Talk About Love

“What do we talk about when we talk about love”?  Well there’s a good quesion but I may know a better one Why do we talk about love at all?    Why do we look in the mirror when we already know what we will see drawn to every magnetic

Life raft

I want to be the guy who pulls things off that should not work anymore poems that rhyme and stories with endings maybe even happy endings  sometimes   I want to melt butter in a saucepan Not margarine. Not microwave.  I want bow ties that untie and good table manners   I

The Last Metaphor

If animals were the first metaphor   What will be last?  How is our trajectory so different from our past?    Will there be any wisdom when we’ve rid the earth   of owls? Will there be any courage left when lions cease to prowl?   When elephants are long forgotten, lost as

We both know

We both know I could do better but only one of us knows     how hard I am trying   Maybe you could      convince me     ?

Brings Me Flowers

You say that God is love and of course you are right but don’t assume that to mean God is only love as if I were only fear as if I were only doubt as if I were only kind or only cruel   I am all of these at

How I Tell You

There are expressions that bloom much larger than thoughts can contain In some walled garden so they are transplanted to flourish as words   Language is a stream so small at times   and this expression is a salmon, spawning with the drive to swim upstream against current, seeking oceans   When language

All ready

The man in the most danger is the man who can be broken   I am not      that man   I broke      already and I am more alive for knowing it   perfect      love

Knit

If pain is such poison how can it knit us together like vein-bare hands of a trembling old woman weary with years, steady with hope   No, I can’t believe it Not warm, beneath this ancient afghan

They tell me you can take it

that you are strong enough and that your love won’t wear out in the knees they tell me to cast all of my cares upon you and that you are all powerful   All knowing that you know already anyways that I am helpless to resist the monstrous love of

Runner

You are running so fast that’s good   you take the lead on an inside corner that’s good   you pull ahead of the pack and taste the sweat of victory, salty sweet that’s good   You are running in the wrong direction   that’s not good   You hit a

When I Dance Now

All of those wasted hours pretending to be free Trying to unscrew your head from your heart to pry your spirit from  your flesh like some slimy oyster     pearls to swine   do you know-you must know-how ridiculous you look dancing under the weight of all those chains drowning out your

Truth

I am just going to come out and say it Then you are going to slap me in the face and we will both have told the truth

New language

I want to write a poem   using only language from the information age ultramodern glossy black vocabulary tricked out with glowing blue LEDs And stainless steel but all of the words that I could choose are deflated lifeless and ugly   megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte  data and nano processor microfinance, binary and

Grab a pen

Grab a pen while the mind is racing for the mind won’t always race it’s pace will slow and you will scratch a thousand tickets madly but never win So cater to the whims of this faithless friend who comes and goes as she pleases Miss Muse Because

We've got to ease our way into the light

‘We’ve got to ease our way into the light’, she said A throwaway comment while I was making the bed And the sun sneaking in through cracks around the curtains Gets washed away in tides of incandescent bright   I smear the sleep from closed eyelids And remember how hot

Equally free

You watch it fall slow motion terrified of the next inevitable instant   when everything ends and you are watching when you realize that no one else is watching   and there is no lock to pick   and you can just walk out into the waiting world   unbreakable or broken already equally

The best wine

It’s late and I am tired   but I still owe you this one poem   I’ve been watching what you read Apparently you want to hear about God and liquor stores Seems like you are the poet tonight   You’ve got me thinking on Holy communion   The first miracle

If there is still music

I click my signal, make the turn while my son nearly gasps  He’s just read that cars all had cassette decks in the past   There must have been some moment on some road when I learned, too that old cars had an 8 track – some format I barely knew

It is easy to talk about God

It is easy to talk about god when god is an idea like deciding where to take vacation or what kind of pillow gives the best support   Even better, let us talk about god as theory, abstract floating fleshless like relativity or the first particle that ever was   It is