You say my name the way a bullet pronounces syllables in other people's mouths-passing through them on the way to profound exit into the air.
My
thoughts turn to you in the same afterwardly accompanying mess,knowing  
what has been
done.

Behind the barn in late afternoon
Uncle Ray lifts my brother
to the seat of a harrower
abandoned now
and rusted to this field of family
tilted and monumental
plunging its tines into memory
of broken earth
behind this life of the workhorses they were
My father and my Uncle Ray—talking
Scattered conversation
in hushed tones

...as skyscraping thunderheads
slashed through their heights
by arrows of fire
light the pumpkins
between hay bundles
of time golden

The
weight of the world sitting dumbly on
those fructose eyelids.

They, in turn.      melt into the mummified  
morning.

laying in the corner forever like a
favorite-shirt
ruined in the wash.
Every other stripe on you is stained pink
from
some cheap volunteer tee that ******              up
The whole load.

Each ray from the blinds
Takes some life away.


Searing past you- into the floorboards
with
quiet fury.

Time passes_
It shoves us down into compact spaces.
(but)
I thought of you
In a shoplifter's prayer.

(There is something left that evaporates out in the form of you)

I imagined you
Still.
But growing
Like
Crystal salts
Crusting up the pores of the earth.

Vapors fumbling upwards to rehydrate
My dry fingers_


We make decisions . that stick around.

We break off blisters. Rip little things that hang off our lips.
We take breaks before we need them.
Take too long to say
**** this.

Thoughtlessness.



Somewhere out there, they are screaming loud.

Somebody either cares or
Doesn't.


The marks on the carpet know better than
us
How to last forever

Somewhere along the way
I picked up a heavy load
of dead wood, a couple of degrees
east of East Tennessee,
a few bottles uncorked,
problem women, and another
woman, a child, and a mortgage,
all while I wandered down the left fork
of the wrong road like the red silt
in a river that has forgotten
its source, but enjoying the scenery,
the journey, and, of course,
the paths I tended to leave
through the high weeds where I lost
myself and my footprints so loud
I could hear them before I left them
on the ground behind me
like hollow dreams trampled down
beneath the feet that I follow.

that sweet husky voice of yours
while i come undone on the sheets
washing machine, detergent
i'm all gone

car alarm lullabies
harmonize with the howls
of the dogs next door.
I could paint every inch
of these beige walls, but
they still wouldn’t feel like home.

The familiar small towns,
On the way
To Georgian Bay,
Have gone;
Box store intersections sprawl
Where General Stores once served.
It's hard to find pie and coffee,
To watch the cows come from the barn,
Or comment on the standing corn,
Of a late September morn.

Last night I rode
that dark train
through the hollows
of my childhood
on the black wings
of a swallow fleeting
beneath the eaves
of long ago evenings
where bone moths
were breathing
their last breaths
while dead children
slept well up the hill.