One of the many activities employed by the members of God Street Wine to pass the long hours spent each week in the van is the writing of poetry. Poems written in the van have a special unmistakable flavor that makes them different from poems written anywhere else in the world. This is because a totally seperate set of laws governs reality once you get inside the GSW van.

For this reason we feel that "van poetry" should be considered an entirely new literary genre, which remains for the most part unexplored. The following examples should be seen as fledgling first attempts at explorin g this new and exciting mode of artistic expression.

We heartily encourage others, especially other bands and anyone who spends a lot of time in vans, to try their hand at this exciting new activity. It's more socially redeeming than Slander, more creative than playing "Ghost", and may someday make you rich and famous.

The authors are identified by their initials: LF - Lo Faber
JB - Jon Bevo
TO - Tomo
AM - Aaron Maxwell
DP - Dan Pifer
MW - Michael Weiss

*A quick note before you begin. This page represent a piece of GSW history. This was all taken from the year 1992. The Chevrolet Van, in which all of this was composed, is no longer a part of the GSW family. This very van (which by the way was given to us for the rights to the album "Who's Driving") was in fact a total and complete lemon. This van sucked ass. It was replaced. By yes, you guessed it - another van. This new van was a Dodge van. As far as I know, there is no official record of van poetry from this vehicle. Except for the poetic frescoe which bestows the ceiling. This I hope you will all one day see (it is quite exceptional). To give you a hint it is merely the words 'I hate this van', written out well over ten-thousand times, in glorious waves and patterns and majestic twists and turns. But as time marches on, this van as well, is out of the picture. It now rests in our driveway and awaits purchase by a person who might need this sort of vehicle. Our next tour will be our very first tour in which we get to spend these lonely hours on the highways of America in a tour bus. Ahhhhh.....But we shall always be able to look back at those hours upon days upon months upon years of four wheels, two seats, four benches, garbage, stink, and having to stop every half hour for someone to pee - by rereading what we created in our little metal jail on wheels.

* Another quick note: The above, written by Bevo in 1995 or 1996, is correct in spirit but extremely inaccurate in the details. The van in which all of the "Van Poetry" was written was the original 1986 Chevy Sport Van (which IS, by the way, the van pictured in the accompanying photos). This was NOT the van we got for "Who's Driving" which was, in fact a 1990 Ford Econoline and was indeed a "lemon". The Chevy Sport Van was not a lemon, though it did die a heroic death after driving across much of Colorado spouting blue flames from its exhaust pipe in 1992. Furthermore, the van in which we frescoed the ceiling panels so memorably was a blue Dodge van, which came later--when we released "$1.99 Romances" in 1994. For the curious, yes, we still have the ceiling panels, though the van is long gone. -LF. 1999