Is this where it happens?
Is this the where
and when?

On a bus going through
nowheres stocked with burned-out houses
and Chevys idling on empty axles?

I have passed so many of them,
that I don't know
when it'll stop;
all this quiet and oblivion.

Cotton is everywhere,
it's on the ground;
in the ditches,
all brown and soggy like
wet hairballs; in the wheel wells,
the rotor tiller;
the SNAPPER'
the squash;
your wife's *******,
tingling her constantly;
the speedometer,
the pulled pork,
collards,
mashed potatoes
and most definitely
the gravy;
it's in the eyes,
makes them red
and explosive,
it's in the dark loam
and gloam; the unwashed streetlights,
the blue dark
and even bluer
lampposts in the middle
of fields black as oil;
the pink sun,
white clapboards
and redwood siding
of that burned-out homestead;
the cotton is everywhere;
thrown up by the slaves;
a ceiling made just for
February lovelessness
as I pull on my Marlboro
and crook my arm
like the cornices of a power station.

This is a place where you can see everything coming
from far away;
a place where people come
to leave;
a place where people pack in the middle of the night,
and wake the children
while it's still dark out,
hoping for hope in the cholera
of a sunrise
and the 5 a.m. Greyhound;
this is a place where there is no flea
market, just a strand of people
on the side of the road
a table and a parti-colored distress,
while their kids play in grass lots;
this is a place where factories are built,
clandestine factories; factories with no
signposts, and no barbed-wire fences;
this is a place where there is always something green
in the tilled rows crowding up against the road,
not necessarily growing,
but maybe the signs of an arbitrary decay;
this is a place for old trailers and rust tears;
telephone poles more than a stake in humanity,
communication rather than introspection,
redemption more than salvation,
revitalization more than pleasure,
insight more than hope,
promise more than dreams,
this is a place where a father rushes up to the bus,
pushing the kids,
as he ushers his wife on board,
the little children hopping up each step,
as he says
"Get on, and we outta here."

This is a place where families don't have belongings
where you don't belong to anything.

This is a place you can leave easily,
because it is a place with a name
you can't remember.

The farmhouse is bracketed
by two loaves of fire;
in the night the house looks like the face
of Satan; the black void of the nose;
the house: vacant and shut off.

The two loaves burn beside it
through the night,
eating the stars and all the time
in the world.

A Tom and the thousand others
sleep in the foyer; closed off,
held in
by a tootsie roll the size
of a block of wood
used to keep the door closed
and the screaming
within.

Sometimes the cats slink out the windows
and make circles around the loaves;
silhouettes of fur, shoulders,
and contemplating tails
that swing and arc
through the night; it looks
like there are cats at the feast,
and they have brought the snakes
with them.

I spike my Koolaid,
with *****,
and pour in
too many blue packets
until it is black and icy
and whales of clotted powder
bob at the surface.

I am trying to close this gap;

trying to bridge this form,
and break your reflection
hovering at my hips.

But
in weeks
or just a few days
I have lost you.

The carcasses float to the bottom.

I get drunk
and fall asleep
to a singing blue tv
calling me to the deeps.

Your eyes flower
out of the black
into the dark blue
and ice
petals.

I climb the rough stem,
cutting my palms
and bleeding from my cuticles,
just to say to you
that you are beautiful
up there
in the night.

'Night babe
are what my lips
say to your eyelashes.

'Night babe of the black womb,
tiny body,
and hair like hydrogen fusion,
I hope that I have not said anything
that will make you blot your eyes
and stifle your lips
and enlightenment
from me
forever.

I hate
that your peach lips
are still
peach;
all that glitter
still to
eminent on your skin
both before and after
I laid you down
and played in the cosmos
of your belly button.

Stop calling me at night.

Can you hear me?

Stop calling
and reminding me
of the wilting fronds of flesh
on your lips
and the groves of light
on your abdomen
still too
fresh to me.

I have begun to say your name
too much
with
too little
to bare.