We were told to bring umbrellas,
to grin and bear it till we wept,
to hold out for the sun,
yuck yuck I want none.
For the reason we came:
we'd been told there'd be rain.

Bring the children,
call the neighbors,
cuz I want to see their faces.

Singing over the stove,
crawled into the oven for warmth
and boiled by the gallons,
yum yum I want some.
Oh why did we come?
There's been only sun.

Count your blessings and your pennies
and impress all your employers
and dress like no one's watching,
tsk tsk so self-conscious.
How ya feelin'? The usual?
Just act natural, casual, and cool.

Bring the children,
call the neighbors,
cuz I want to see their faces.

On the Highway, on the Hill–are We there yet?–
makes the Town look like a playset.
First time out in forever, the Valley looming,
the homefront receding, this van cruising.
Man, driving together in the mornin',
each waking with an industrial potion–
caffeine yaknow gets workers workin'–
celebrity talkin'–what We've all got in common.

It's the red heat I mean
to capture in rivulets.
My blood blues, too,
fuzzy pink, Juliets.

Burn the whole palette
and rethink your colors,
the impressions you're under.

**** score-keeping, thus
**** the goalkeepers.
Life requires only
earnest volition
to hum to life.

I'm so happy to be
right here now
Light. Mirrors. Town.
Poets 're comin'
and how's giving time
for paper where
Time's scarce?
Screens & buttons multiply.

Escape, expression,
eleven-eleven,
words and their meanings,
intentions and speeches
come running come screaming.
Supposed to mention truth n'
whatever I ever reckon to believe in.
I know you can't recognize anything
close to truth till you're sittin' in
your inner world.
And here one is, baby!

: a drunk collage: another "epic"*

Starting at the beginning,
letting the tilt of the backyard
lull me up then back down
in circles, to tell in turn
these stories. And so,
back as far as I know:

Story of My People
Tribes gathered and grew.
They counted the grains.
Depended on the seasons,
rejoiced, nay, transfigured.
Cults of the sun, of the earth
realized gods onto our plane,
they walked between
the beanrows.

Their features formed
and darkened, envisaged
in Our dark mirror mind.
And then faces had names
and they counted the grains.
Numerals and ocher lips
left pretty petroglyphs
but left the stone sculpted
in marble columns endraped–
Roman red over owl-blue–
but still the Bullhorns poke through!
That's me, the narrator among narrative.
Where my maternal starts
so far as I know, in the cult of Mythras,
a Taurus charging the boot of Europa.

Excuse me; I'm not a historian.

My father's people were barbarians,
I would think so.
They dispelled the civilized clout
and darkened the day and age.
Hail Mother Mary Hellen,
her whole family got burned.
A lesion across that continent,
filled with the church,
which took both my parents.
Then the American Dream.

My History
These gods and Names who guided and transfigured,
that framed my peoples, gave it to them,
I have forgotten.
Soon after seeing it all, I felt it all mundane.
Dismissed him as chaos,
left him so abundant
as to be given
not granted.
Now I sit and forget...
the enveloping leaves in the back,
the passerby from the front deck,
I remember yet!
But lost in adult perplexion
I fear that I've given up some ghost
who haunted my great journey
and leaves me on blank slates,
cyclical, again again, timelessly:
Myhistory:*

–First it was Death who so captivated me.
Like any friend, too, I shivered and cried secretly.
Literally. No thing really, nothing really.
–Then Love came swift, sharp,
unrecquitting, then unremitting, then spent.
–Then Earth spoke wonders and tremors
seemed God incarnate, Life this is,
gotrees growmy skull I don't know,
guess it don't come down to much more.
–Now music and the capture of the present:
Where am I? and what is this place?
let me sing you the questions!

But where is God in my voice?
I want rockn'roll and adventure
that can't be grace;
it's idolatry.
Maybe God really is dead,
you lose him like the holiday superheroes
or ancient mythoids,
age age into forget.

I could go anywhere cuz
I'm all about what America's all about:
her mountains, us people, and even her laws.
But when summer ends we'll have to go south.

Home, home is the same.
You drink, you smoke, you lust, you graze.
Leave the Northwest to those who smoke less.
What did we really leave there?
Objects in the mirror seem prettier than here.

My long-, long-, longlost lovers,
you all left this town, its haunts n' romps,
its sunspots and treecover to me,
and look at all the rocks I've found!

It's a lot of time
for so young to spend wisely,
but far to old to while.
If I waste it, it'll **** me.
And the dreams where fears live in,
and the women in them tell you,
"Don't stay."

At a good ole Rock & Roll show,
making sweet eyes at
some singer cat‒
her expression and attitude
is something I'd like to talk to.
Taking mean eyes from
some guitarist boyfriend.
Had I the gall to fight a man and his all,
maybe couldn't maybe can,
rake his all and take his woman.
Still too broke too have her like I'd hope.

This is why we're here, right,
to get away from the wives?
Gone fishing, out living!
Come back home to make my killing.

I could go anywhere cuz
I'm all about getting the hell out
of this downtown for motown and my life abroad.
When next summer comes I'll be gone,
Friends, with or without you along.

I-5 North
Three 70 mph people
cool, canine, and beautiful
taking our sugar,
our notions extreme
to regions unknown.

Keeping steady , keeping close,
keeping beat with silent toes.
No need to speak
nor could what with the wind,
burning engine, and pavement roar.

Something about the highways;
they got away, got away
from me, the high speed.
It's a power trip: the whole road trip
I know somehow'll be like this.

Starvation Creek Falls*
You can't hesitate
or talk out the fear.
There's a waterfall
waiting, all you can hear.
You make the jump
engulfed in the moment.
You won't remember it
or what it meant.
It's the shock, your shivers,
the color blue through your body.
Clear creek water
makes you straight ecstatic.

Your screen-glaring eyes,
they call it refreshing
just like the button
when the connection is slow
when pages won't load.
It's the shock, your shivers,
break your mind and for your liver.

This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
I never got to swim the backstroke
before Brunswick Basin bled
Lake Olympia from amidst her oak,
before Deer Creek went dead.

The streets'll burn, the bodies break
and the blood washed away by beer.
The streets burned, bodies broke
and we're still here.

Shadow people wander the sidewalk,
been here since the bombs dropped.
Never got no noisy television,
just watch the streets and shadows in them.
I'm pushing up just like daisies
and pulling them up for fun.
Convinced that I'm going crazy
from the trips that I get on.

Jane says she cannot get it:
"something hidden...back when children."
You're always looking for the road
where we used to drink too drunk,
where you look to have again
what we had so long ago.

Do you feel it coming?
on Earth His will be done.
Collapse a long time coming—
still nothing new under the sun.
Summer is for the living.
That's a bubble-bursted, sun-dried reason.
It's the end or I am fibbing,
still live up the rest of the season.

First came the flood then spilled blood.
Had anyone caught on of that to come
you know we'd never have let it begun.
But it had:
got you, your mother, and dad.
Surely there was nothing we could do
but hunker down, get a job, and rue
the day they brought us into
the Old World and buried the New.

I hear tell that downriver
the water gets warmer;
I hear tell that valley below us's
a hotter n' hell, body-ridden bowl of dust.
—
I hear tell that upriver
the trout they run thicker,
the water cooler, air smoother, and **** sticks thinner.
I wanna flee up that river
but I'm not that good a swimmer.

How do we know?
We think we're smart,
in fact we're geniuses.
But we're still sitting
and can't stop talking about...

This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.