It is 5am. Undressed but for boxers

                I join in the unvoiced burden
Of suburban detectives and cul-de-sac mystics,
And whomever else screams into a cloak
Their spells to cure insomnia.

I dream of the city-dwelling
fellow all-nite travelers,
envying their resilient hours’ darkly id,
their alley ways foot traffic car horns…
I can’t explain this impulse.

I know I know ‘The cure is sleep.’
But I think, ‘something more.’

   .  .  .

Hours expand.

My neighbor’s new rooster —-
He does not yield.

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

Hours expand
Out of their wrinkle-&-bind;
But I’ve yet to penetrate the cloak,
Or tap into its magnetic-field.

        like
        so many,
just so happened
so clumsily
        to touch,
tugging at its tassels
but failing
        to clutch

Before the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the blackbird wigs the veil!

Only my eyes
under an apex moon
can hypothesize
in a bulb’s-flash (!)
such extravagant design…

After the boulders roll & crash
The avalanche of balderdash,
                      etc. etc. etc.

Out of the rubble
the wrinkle and bind:
A head atop some shoulders
with eyes like fingers —-
                undercover,
         cigarette-stained,

Following his leads, out along the frays
of a magician’s cape, or a death shroud?
Silver-stitched
            geodesics,
                        some twine-gold ciphers,
         some…

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

And as quickly as does the violet
in the clouds above the hothouses,
it dissipates… hidden like an axiom…
The hood is lifted —- once again revealing
       The Dawn Sun.

It is in these moments ensuing
That I feel most strongly
Something has been taken from me.

.  .  .


Postscript

Where are the rats of which I was one?
What are they chewing on, now that day breaks?
All those secrets left out in the dark?

As Rockwell shades and the old Japanese masters
Etch the seconds, second by second,
               in the clock on my kitchen wall,

There is a Roman calvary thru the door:
        Centurions poking at the snack drawers
With their iron swords a-clank. Guests are still asleep.
O and it’s centuries until dawn!

The grief robin bubbles
     from *****, the sun’s blazed emblem—
           Morning comes in fits.

Scandent, white-blooming vines
     tickle gray’d limestone ribcage—
            This old house I’m bird upon.

People go in and out
      and the door is always shut.
            Who then, am I singing for?

My song is venom
     to visitors: Thee beware,
             I am a visitor here!

John was a sailor,
an now he rides the subway
-Aren't we all alone,
              an far from Home?

Constellations of Time
    suffocated, deadspace in my neural lapses—

                                               —still, I caught the fly
                                                             ­ with my hand.

Constellations of Time—
         and I am cowboy in the outer expanses of sanity

faithful cowpoke and Lenape murderer,
native lover, too,
dun American guru
       like john wayne defunct.
but when we speak like droogs,
       this be:
       America: A Detective Story

and I’m the dogged dreams of america:
Humphrey Bogart with his dame Liberty

No, I am Robert Mitchum, too.
Remember Philip Marlowe?


I once was america’s psychosis, and still am.
[I am
the soul who walked above
the soul who walked below;

Constellations of Time—
        like gooey cosmic spider webs;
[and I ******* hate spiders]
Fear of Death
…is being stuck, and
fear of that horrible cosmic spider coming home for dinner!

For,
I am
Monsieur Bonaparte’s Hollywood counterpart
who puts the war before the art,
but not the horse before the cart

DEATH

is where my story starts;
railroads,
like the spine of a country and constellations of time
–im on a plain–
ghosts in dust bowl clusters
reflect like
dust particles, like western stars, scattered—
and im on shifting razor planes and who do the math?

We opened our sores as long forgotten eyes

on the humps of our backs,high on the backs of memory’s rise,
[as targets at firing range; a scaly solution]

Soldiered as mountains, yonder
thru mountain pass, and again;

Obliterated bodies, and seaswallowed destinies
come to an end,
die along sunken dry keel of bloodcanyons echo, AHH!
                        [as other such scattered stories go]
,skeleton carriages strewn carelessly—from years above
        appear as bonepimples and dot history’s ridged, mule-like spine;

Messengers thru ancient highway passages: no water to be found,

but, like he told me,
‘WATER
is simply a state of mind’

What We're Told:
     There's 3 blind mice
                        but they're all helping each other to find their way
                                                                ­                   around the place.
What We Pray:
     There's 3 blind mice
                             and maybe there's a distant fourth that can see for
                                                                ­                           them, somewhere.
What it is:
      There's 3 blind mice
                             and one is pretending he has vision.