the love and romance.
the years lit by artillery.
the wars.

the men did these wild things. these great grand expressions of love and survival.
they’d damage themselves, bleed while moving furniture.
wood splinters better painted red wet warmth.
they’d notch together plum-cut bricks into
crenulations or walls or cathedrals.
home built.

the women: of an ancient woven fiber
and/or old energy, they’d battle serpents into dark and drunk loneliness.
she conspired for a happy life.

death by the meadow.
old woman remembering young woman and
young man,
now old man approaching.
the world forgets, but we will always have eachother.

remember us youths in proto-revolution.
we didn’t believe in what we did.
we lived a lie.
all america.
dreaming and soap opera.
daytime television blastulas.

the wars are fought early, and fierce.
the wars are won and lost on highschool dancefloors.
highschool blacktops. blackboards. breathy
kissing.
spectral codes of light.

and we bloom outward into livelihoods and
incomes.
timelines.
trenches to crawl from shell-shocked and screaming ****** ******.
or not.
but yes -

the world is built on blisters and scar tissue.
nothing is untouched.
nothing is unwounded.

“some say love is a burning thing. that it makes a fiery ring.”

so kiss her.
or don’t.
and always regret.
always bike home thinking.
always think of love.

she’s in a parking lot somewhere drinking cheap wine,
balancing on the bumper.
he’s on the river somewhere drinking cheap beer,
balancing boulders.

a dog sprints by and forgets all heartache.
he is happy.

the town and the people and the job and the dreams.
the nothings
and the everythings.
and the little life this is.

to slipstream years gone by.
one fire in the sky, or another in the hills
just west of town.
something said about the smoke.
we take a weekend to spool through the story of your folks.
film cans or video cassettes,
or home re-sets. rewind.

words and faces scrawled in a tome of note.
spoken little memories,
little mysteries.
stories to tell no one.
stories to tell those who will listen.

the boys with dirtbike brothers.
the brothers with drunken fathers.
the fathers with dead wives.
the wives with ancient mothers.
the mothers and their children.
and the children living well enough.
living calm, then free.
far away, then close.

an empire.
of highways and histories.
of songs and the souls they swing.
of old money/new money,
betrayal on the horizon.
blacktop jamborees and assassinations.
driveways and nicely neighborhood lit-upon lawns.
well-trimmed trees.
a never-ending tree of lovers,
grasped and gasping for the sky.
listen and wait.
for the sun to kiss the moon goodbye.

                              [a family and their dog.]

this chrysalis.
this coincidence that is us, on one good gust.
from heart to hand to sons and daughters.
synchronized to die and revive and imbibe along the ride.
a tableau of animalia.
feasting and sleeping and awoken
by the wide little world all around.

“we are fires in the night. let us bathe you in our light.”

to the young privateer.
the captain kidd & his bought n’ taut gang of holy bluffs.
they bribe and imbibe and swoon on the dock-way looking for a quest or two or three
to dream and bury their doubloons in island guts like little mysteries. little sundowns
over a rixdollar indian ocean.
let them take a turn.
destined to mutate from private to pirate, the kidd, like blackened rotten wood.
******* frigates.

the ship:
with her bob and sway. she is, the adventure.
& her song is calling out for a rapturous few,
for men ready to die on the highwater mark by glory or fire or dead glorious sun.
so they put her brass and bough to seafaring days,
the sweet galleon, barely wet, yet
completely riffed to voyage.
she is
from the shores of london. built. designed to kick 14 knots under a full sail blast.
& she will bite.

she’s in calm waters.
the kidd savvy toothed and butterscotched, he awaits the big show,
engorged to set forth the play like wily ocean dervish &
they do.
they do proceed with benefactors coined and crunched on postulations of pirate death &
pirate gold. reclaimed honor as they say. the hunt for pirate teeth.

& with official pass and parchment, high-throne approved,
king ***** III stamp & sealed,
this voyage is.
this voyage is and forever was, hereby charted, to recover said stolen goods.
to reclaim thy warrior vanity &/or vengeance.
to noble this **** with pinched loaf, like now.
set sail. now.
1696.

“**** them navy yachts at greenwich, the thames be ours, boys.”
slap *** and flick thumb toward those armada sons,
& as tribute
smoke balsam herbs on the starboard side for the mother she and the father be.
but for this slight,
this dishonorable silly ****,
one third of adventure’s men are pressed into service of the crown.

[continue.]

the adventuresome few, petty crew and crows.
steal the heart and mother-meat of a french ship. steal everything onboard.
steal the ship itself.
& on her way to new york, new boon, pure and entered into the new world.  
there are new men bought in the american port,
good men and odd men of long criminal legacy.
a small black vicious quartermaster. he’ll do.
a murderous preacher gripped by stars and celestial patterns. he speaks spanish. he’ll do.
another type of holy man and a wild drinker too, embattled by demons on the port side. sure.
plus the dock-boys destined to **** for fruits of exploration.
this is the way of the son of a gun.

the boatmen jockeyed. she is
the adventure
prancing the vertebrae of atlantic and beyond. cape of good hope, she
breathes easy out here on the wide tide and float.
out here on the vast blue this. she
evolves
out here. loves out here.

pirates.
the hunt for pirates or the lack thereof. she leaks.
she rasps into the years on. and on.
the kaleidoscope hallucinations of sun and moon, sun and moon, and moon and sun
forever.
the strait of bab-el-mandeb.
& there
she plunges into darkness, into the stars seen from and through a periscope formed
by ancient hominid lineage.
seen but untouched,
in dreams. the kidd, reluctantly lime, admits to his madness.
madagascar.

malaria and cholera and hell break the boat by the throat.
& thrash.
to be organic is to be ruled by a shadow, or entropy.
the mouth of a red sea.
one third of the men will die here.
simply as insects crushed and brushed off deck and into to her great spate of agua,
the mother gush.
her earth.
body.
father,
hear his whispers in the mirage.
the ancient mariner, the ancient holy ghost riming down there.

in destitution.
in a rough and soggy life squeezed and making men weird or violent or both be ******.
the kidd goes cold to hot sweating noxious.
turns pirate himself
out of sheer hunger.
out of sheer need to eat.
sets the boys like dogs upon a frigate of east india company men,
or french *****. either/or/or/either/or.
he & the boys are in a madness swirl of sun and heavy guts.
cuts to spill blood
or gold. this tender bit.
lip bit
& tested.

captain kidd fractures the skull of a deckhand named moore,
for bad attitude and giggles. moore gets death.
chisel on the deck.
& to think we are all troubled by some primal trauma.
some dumb thing called death, that is.
men starving, men dying, men falling in the vast black that is that eternal void.
dream of women and riches in the meantime.
fortunes.
1698.

savage kidd, cool kidd, cool spit
off the edge. to think of the once soulful idea of these paradise days
& trip.
savage to cool.
the two divine modes of a survived man.
a ghoul man, or aging man.
& to keep control of his crew kidd sets them upon the quedagh merchant;
a 400 ton armenian hulk chalk full of gold, silver, satins, and muslin. ‘tis *****.
renames her: the adventure prize.

madness quenched for now.
charmed for now
& on the horizon are fragrant times. blissful distance.
but robert culliford,
with his mocha frigate. this man, this suave pirate lord, his vengeance act.
he had stolen kidd’s ship years back, &
the captain opts to cut his throat.
take the mocha.
keep calm & carry on.
to paradise.
to dream of her cool warm beaches and fruit forever, peacefully thinking.
so that night they two drink together in good health, and in the morning
most of the men defect to this other man, this other ship, culliford.
other dream,
other captain of true buccaneer effect.
act 3:

13 remain in the galley firm.
this is the house adventure.
& she is burnt alive three days later for rot and ill repair.
but she was fun,
& a *****.
a stitch of old woodwork given-in
& crackling with the eyes of her crew seen in fire.

kidd steps the pond to caribbean times with the adventure prize, toad toxins
& high on the jungled shore.
he trades that colossus, flips her for a sloop and seven little chests of gold.
little bellies.
the island-gut doubloons to bury.
dream, remember?

but the men-of-war are after him now. the privateers & hunters & devil’s dogs.
the men he once was.
men of marked death.
& he is now some pirate, some forthright bandit
settled to **** or be killed.
some sad kid.

first: buries that treasure up the coast of america.
oak island rig.
cherry rocks of the maine bank and *****-trapped pit.
the hunted.
they catch him on an inlet ****, and sail back
to london to be tried for crimes against the crown.
the high court of admirality.
1701.

they hoist and gibbet his body with worn chains above the river.
not for piracy, but for ******.
the ****** of that strange deckhand moore and his giggle.
kidd’s bones
suspended there for three or more years at the mouth of the thames,
as warning
to the perverse travails of a criminal lifestyle on the highwater pond.

drunk woodland children, we
ask so many questions, we
firefly skin. the picnic table beneath
our lamps, our ouija board, our girlfriends
next to us warm and laughing.
stories:
we tell stories to scare eachother
before descending into our tents
on the outer darks.
sweet night nothings.
& everythings.

i’m consumed by dreams of you;
somehow running;
somehow ******* my way out of my own inevitable
death.

a lady bug wing half-yanked and humming.
wind scorpion.
mosquito
in the early morning buzz, and i roll over
to see your puffy little sleeping face ::: sunlight there.
limp beyond the tent and zipper.

we eat mayo sharp cheddar salami wheat sammies
& take acid.
everyone one else goes on a group nature-hike,
but i stay behind
hallucinating of my dead mother in those sequined clothes she used to wear.
::: we play scrabble and talk,
until she leaves.
like love.
like guitar strummed chords and many hydrations later –
my tribe returns,
with fish.

the girl i love.
you/she roll joints in your lap,
in my lap,
in a chair and i mirage
the faces of everyone through glass &
slosh; through campfire
& lemonade.

cracked nose &
watching moose beside the river,
on video,
he cocoons himself
in room and drug elementals.
boy pupa.
boy biking thru fog
& urban light.
city mystics, city-wet faces.
primates.

he works the grill and grins
in back. lollipop jar.
he pours grease into trap or teeth of great beast.
bucket cathedral.
corpse of bird,
decomposing in the alleyway ravine.

he packs luggage for the exodus
to northern california.
wicker owl
burning in the woods on a solstice
drunk, or moon.
the fire & the girl & his tongue to her neck.

bathe;
drain the dirt and blood of weekend off
to porcelain.
combed hair.
to appear in the lawn of withered fruit.
he wheels his father to the zoo. the old man
is bent beneath a blanket and tapping his fingers
for elephants.

who is this
husky?
shedding luck and fur
down by the horizon.

town tips in snow
& breathy-fog.
the mountain tips and prays
on bowed-knee,
to daughters in pursuit of happiness,
& trees.
she’s out there looking for the best in mother
madness.

a horse’s bangs, sprung
moon to ridge
to purpling autumn-seared fields four days lit.
this ease into living,
carousel,
carnival of lights
& love.
the rolling of a family unit.
the sound and punched beauty of it.
like when we were birds, or kids, or
humming the sun
strummed hills.

          [ catch a dream. ]

open your little eyes, bear cub.
see small pools of sulphurous heat
& repeat,
let go the smoke to breathe.

girl swirls dreams in her drink.
boy spills ink on the carpet.

they swing below an oak;
laugh and dream, kiss and consider.
their feet curl, intertwine,
touch along the fallen leaves.

in hands and time
is the condensation of what is said to be true love.
only they don’t know.

later that night;
they drink and cuss, they fight and ****.
their feet curl, intertwine,
play at the end of the sheets.

they warm.
boy writes librettos,
girl reads them,
together they cook delicious dishes.

girl disappears into the distance,
one day.
& boy spirits away,
to the elephant burial grounds.

days,
months,
years later, they run into eachother on the streets
of a northwestern city.
smile mostly,
say not much.

boy has his poetry.
girl has her *******.