Sam Shepard-Indian Summer

Tonight I’m pushing everyone away. I did it all day but tonight I’m vicious about it. I’m camped out by my favorite window and no amount of harmonica playing, rattle of dishes, laughter of voices from other rooms deep in this house can draw me out. The fading light is what I really crave. Cars with their headlights just coming on. Owls testing the fields. This mean streak slowly fades as the real black night rolls in.

I always get weird around Indian Summer. I’ve noticed this before. My whole organism feels tricked. Just as the body starts to fall in love with flying golden Poplar leaves. The smell of burning Madrone. The wild lure of Fall gets cut to the bone by Indian Summer.

I don’t want to be walking around peeling my shirt off these days. I want deep layers of Canadian blankets and fire. Red eye and fire. And dogs. And cold cold nights.

Santa Rosa, Ca.

22/9/80

from "Motel Chronicles" 

Sam Shepard-The Tooth of Crime

Look at me now. Impotent. Can’t strike a kill unless the charts are right. Stuck in my image. Stuck in a mansion. Waiting. Waiting for a kid who’s probably just like me. Just like I was then. A young blood. And I gotta off him. I gotta roll him or he’ll roll me. We’re fightin’ ourselves. Just like turnin’ the blade on ourselves. Suicide, man. Maybe Little Willard was right. Blow your fuckin’ brains out. The whole thing’s a joke. Stick a gun in your fuckin’ mouth and pull the trigger. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’re doin’. He’s my brother and I gotta kill him. He’s gotta kill me. Jimmy Dean was right. Drive the fuckin’ Spider till it stings ya’ to death. Crack up your soul! Jackson Pollock! Duane Allman! Break it open! Pull the trigger! Trigger me! Trigger you! Drive it off a cliff! It’s an open highway. Long and clean and deadly beautiful. Deadly and lonesome as a jukebox… Alone. That’s me. Alone. That’s us. All fucking alone. All of us. So don’t go off in your private rooms with pity in mind. Your day is comin’. The mark’ll come down to you one way or the other.

from "The Tooth of Crime", first performed in 1972