The swing set chains squeal  
as if they are themselves children,
strange rusty old
children
playing anxious,
screeching
games.

Shiver, trees.
Turn your silver skyward.
The air sighs,
sighs but feels nothing.
These things are natural.
These things are alive.

The rainbows are next.

They are made of
the colors that belonged
to the flowers
before the thunder came and crushed them.

It crumbles.
It dreams.
It waits.

A little bit of its old face
has become visible
now that the newer parts have
crumbled away.

Those new parts were put on it like make-up
on hardened and aging *****.

Some nice ladies said it would be better that way.
They said it would be more dignified for her
and for her children
and for everyone, really,  
if the hot obscenity and blood
of her quick, easy childhood
were obscured with wrought iron
and pastel colored paint
and flowers
and fountains.

But then the nice ladies all died
and we decided not to do that anymore.
We saw her with her glammer and sharp edges
mostly worn away,
and we saw her with our own eyes
and we saw that she is
finally what she really is
and she is genuine
and she is truly beautiful
and we love her like this.

She has some
fresh, young drunkards
with fresh, young haircuts
and lots of fresh, young
optimism
who stand out and starkly contrast
the deeply lined, rotten old *******
who hold out the torches,
for all the good it does.

It’ll hold.
They say it’ll hold
inside the cool, dim cafe
as they drink
without
reason
or need.

And the pain-wracked,
wretched old things
are also there,
and they
drink more
and  they drink
much better.
They’ve had a lot more practice.

And they wait.
And they dream.
And they begin to crumble.

Don’t look too closely.
Don’t see.
Fools see.
Fools look for such things.
Fools celebrate these things as if they are immune
to the cold, black river
to the dry, coughing crypt,
to Lethe.

Don't look too closely
at the places you intend to sleep.

It really isn’t worth it.
Not if you like sleeping, anyway.

Remember, some line up.
Line up and wait for their own day in hell.
They scream for victory.
The far away deep, lost heart places that  
dry up fast when cowards are left to tend them.

Accelerating, gnarled prizes, metal and tubes,
wires and guts and brains that smoke the sun's color,
losing it in the pitch of the rainbow-slicked sludge.
Up, up, and away, a dark celebration in song, something
shouted gleefully at the sky on the way to the gallows.

Desire, hate, and the teasing, fatted, greasy greed,
they all feed the Black God's Mirth, they'd better.
They'd better know he'll consume them as quick,
when the hard, cold mud-water fist envelops them
embraces them, makes them still again.

Don't waste your deep song throats on a trivial Godsson,
humanity-theif or cracked up narc, discarding dignity
as quickly as you give it up. Don't do it.
Give him breathmints and soap and humility, please.
He needs those.  

Don't take anything that isn't yours or can't be sold
quickly, easily locally. The bedroom path is
strewn with flowers no one loves
You are worth a little revenge now and then, get some.
Talk??? It's cheap ****. No one's buying.

Voice always waiting, waiting, wanting.
The stars are real but remain unused,
Unused and unhurt.

I saw wind and beauty wrong
(the arms should have been longer)
Wonder understands Miss Change lovingly.

It takes feet to stand.
The moon lies and memory matters.
Come, sit, watch the bad words with me in darkness.

Sound person.
High earth.
Ask the song fingers for something less boring.

We just like love,
And time and life and heart and
Something to be different, new today.

Feel the day
Way away, so far away
That day the thought train lost a good man.

Spirit never dies but neither
does it always return just
because we
need it
to.

Fill your heart, fill it as full as you can.
Fill it with memories most warmly hued
and remember them well
in all their glorious, sweaty,
kindly brutal
minutiae.

Remember each drop,
each bite,
each individual dust
mote dancing
the still, hot, sunlit
February
Thursday.
Remember how different
places all have their own
unique elusive
smell and how
it is impossible to describe this to anyone
who has never lived
anywhere else.

Fill your heart with all those memories
of the best kind
of home grown hell.

Fill it until its tears are forced out.
Fill it against the long, cold dark of parking lost.
Fill it against mysterious hate.
Fill it against misery and mud and hard
frozen
bottle
glass
lies.

Fill it so full it can't ever sink far down.
Burden it with buoyant stories
and weigh it with
hypnotic winter flame.
These are the things of which
the cold terror to
victory apocalyptic will be born.
There are no second prizes here.

Fill it with the certainty of the worn places
where the chairs met
the table
each night.

Fill it with the truth of
the gnarled and sun-warm roots and
the indisputability of a Beetle motor accelerating and
the violent pirouette of each spring
and the ozone smell and
the way wet wood screams at the sky and
the way the sound
hits all ears the same
regardless of
their color or
what side of Line Avenue they’re from.

Remember what line you’re from
and to hell with the rest.
You must mind your own.
There’ll be water
if God wills it.

You are never too far lost if you still know
your father’s face and can still remember
getting milk from the tubes
in the
silver metal cooler
and the red cookie jar
lid as the
adults smoked at the green kids’ table
and everyone mostly had blue eyes
and red hair and there was always a phantom killer
lurking  
right beyond the only hope door
before you were ****** into the mirror
world and
*******, but
kids sure do have to make some
rough choices
before nine o’clock.

Keep remembering and when you remember,
remember even deeper
remember in yet greater detail and
practice that remembering until
you
ARE
the dust motes
the milk tube
Thursday
roots
sun
until you ARE each drop of sweat
until you ARE the phantom killer
and the red cookie jar lid
the straight line of smoke rising out
of the ashtray and
the motor and the
scream and the
ears and
you ARE all these things
and you ARE
and you can’t really say where these things begin or where
you end because you’re not sure that
anything really does end or
begin
anymore.

Beginnings and endings
haven’t much meaning after
everyone has
shown their cards and the worn places on the chairs have
met the table
one
last
time.