If you believe in a beginning
And you believe in an end then
I could be somewhere in between—
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking quietly on the edges of some
Murky swamp.
But if you don’t believe in a beginning
And you don’t believe in an end then
I could be nowhere but---
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking waist deep in the heart of some
Murky swamp.

You can see the lights form anywhere
I you didn’t know how to say when then
Theres. Said the city when you get drunk
If
When where Iraq vet couldn’t but be there
Yet said sorry head down bobbing b
***** b ***** road road the once liner
C snitch couldn’t quite catch when
They said only see snitch said if
Rich r say r can not be but r sway
Couldn’t say but if are we went
R own way then then only say
What you wand and the love though
Keep strong thought though through
Window with smile then bile but
D gone and dez gone said when wrong but
no **** and no wrong zebra is but gone and
**** game when no name is sure game but slay
nah nah if you laugh in cough cough "
parade say sa yong man
young man man you gone to far
blat vblaat

I came to you returned as a cloud though
Your arrival is as persuasive as a cross, soon
Snow will fall like needles from the purple
Boughs though in fall I know your principles
Are pressing. Soon I will be a memory
And cold light will crawl across the valley;
Cold light will die and
Soon roads will lead you home again
Somewhere warmer if I could take you
With then I wouldn’t hesitate
I came returned as a cloud and you
You were like a tree in spring
Ashen grey with bud and tears
Though not shaken

you wait
but should not
you be gone? you
bird with red wings and
black feathered body
with territorial sound
so strange should not
you be traveling? toward
the north, to find a mate
it is already march! Has
not the light told you
"you must be gone now!"
why? have not the signals
from without changed you
within?

but still even tomorrow
you may be gone flying
swift in the breeze, following
your instinctual soul and me too
me too my friend
I will be close behind, waiting no more

It was the whisky
eventually drove the eye
Wall to destruction.

Maybe I will listen to Chopin
One day and fall asleep do you
See the far stars on the near road
In early October? They are elk horns.
Dreams of rockets, bugle streams
Melvin at the pool table again
Beyond the eastern boundary
Of the reservation Germans who
Can’t speak English even say
How did we get here? They count
The time with each breath each
Sip then Blake’s lot a burger doesn’t
Sound so bad does it?

If I could make this landscape into a point Of light I would
Like trying to grab the stars so gracefully tiredly they would
Even say again go

First I inhaled the sky
And then I
Closed my eyes
Adjusted my spine
And started
Gathering pine nuts
Beside the cinder
Cone. Then I hid in
The shade and
Read Whitman’s pages of
Unknowing beauty
Standing and sitting and
Crying then.
Walked back as if hollow
More like floating
And there he was following

Behind me I could only smile
Looking back
Fingers full of sap eyes
Like volcanoes.