sixty-one minutes ago, a stormy midnight;
I watched the clock hands join as lightning
struck my high pastures

only last month, a twister snatched a steer
and dropped it in my neighbor's stock tank--not a scratch
on its hide after a cylconic half mile ride

tonight I had no fear funnels would find my fields;
the distant thunder claps taunted me, reminding me
they have fierce fire, but don't always bring rain

I watched the clock, waiting for 13:02;
only last month, my wife hid with me
in our storm cellar, praying

I prayed with her, though I doubted
a god was listening, or cared; my entreaties
were not for refuge from the storm

instead, I begged the black sky
my woman would be saved from white
blood cancer--for a miracle

that was not to be--the almighty saw fit
to perform one for a dumb beast that very eve
but not for my wife of fifty years

she lasted until 1:01 AM yesterday
13:01 I strangely conceived; I had the lucky
steer slaughtered at high noon today

I'd let it rot in prairie grass, were it not
for her--she would not want it to be carrion
for buzzards, a profligate desecration

she would want its flesh to be
a feast for a family she did not know;
hands clasped, giving thanks

to the same god that saved it
but not her; I can't rest, I'll watch the clock,
waiting for 13:01 again and again

she has that lightning
might be clinging to your shoes
and you high step back
to her frightening moods
as they swing from the chandeliers
in your hell
where the light was always false
but the girl
can't tell.

get A Life, and you get hurt
like All The Other
Toys.
get some sleep, and it's worst
than All The Other
Joys.
'Cause the Nightmares keep You -
nailed to Your Loss.
and what's gone is gone.
but you burn
and you
burn

till you're lost...

a yellow flower
or two,

ones I can't name,

survived June's arid,
brutal assault

ant mounds abound; scorpions
aren't despondent

Timothy grasses, weeds
don't complain

always there are
mesquites

stubborn adolescents
unaware steer dung left
their ancestors here

this is not a place one
can walk barefoot

not even the Comanche
had such soles

I tried, but you
lashed out

leaving goatheads
and other burrs
in my heels

perhaps to
remind me

I bought you,

but I own
nothing

you found me
in a second hand store
on Lincoln Avenue

you bought me
for nine dollars and tax because
you thought I was a mandolin

you told Tryone, the clerk
who would sell me into slavery, your
wife always wanted one

you took me home to your
twelfth story apartment; I discovered
your wife was gone many years

but her photo on the living
room wall got to see me, and hear
your lament:

you wished you would have
found me seasons sooner--but my
strings were rusted even then

my last song played at a bar mitzvah
before your hair turned white, before
your wife's many colored regrets

you played me but once and didn't
like what I had to say--you tossed me
from your balcony to the street

I made the same flight your wife did,
landed in the same spot; yes, I suspect she was  
more a disappointed music lover than you

why do blackbirds
leave so many brown droppings
on my white mailbox, riveted
to a red painted post, planted
in green Bermuda grass, by
a gray asphalt road, under
a baby blue eye sky

Dylan is dead.
no, not Bob, you Philistine,
Dylan Thomas who implored us
to rage against the night;
so are a passel of poets
and penners, but not I

Emily heard her fly buzz,
well before her eyes shut; she
was a wee bit obsessed
with the reaper

Hemingway's also a goner;
guts enough to shove a shotgun
in his mouth--mostly I wonder if
he tasted blue gunmetal like I did,
and who cleaned his brains
off the wall?

nobody had to clean a red dollop
of mine, for the firing pin was askew
and all I got was a click, and a sense of shame,
and impotence more flaccid than
the one which put the barrel
in my mouth

hell, how hard is it
to **** yourself--I guess harder
than I thought, since I never bought
another rifle

so Dylan is dead
Em and Hem too, but you
are reading these lines without
contemplating your own demise
I suspect

after all, it's early spring
and a time of new things
clawing their way into the light
thinking nothing of the terminal
night -- but it's just a sun dip away:
ask Dylan or Hemingway, or even JFK
but I wouldn't bother the Belle
of Amherst

she would make parting
sweeter than sorrow, and she
never tasted the cold lead, or spoke
with fear or dread of the dumb
and the dead

she never murdered
men in black pajamas  
in a forest primeval...

I didn't see their spirits
ascending, in ribbons of light,
only rivers of their red blood
soaking the green ground,
yet today ravenous
for more it seems

why would she rage
against the good night, when
her carriage waited patiently for her,
and immortality, her vessel bound
for a light Dylan and I
will never see

rain like the crispy skin of pork
roasted over coals and the Philippines
while the living god pokes you
in the ribs... and the afternoon wanders off.
your soy vinegar is sweeter now
but you can't recall the moon's grief.
so amazing are the the nouns for " now "
but you can't have the Past virtues
of wonderment.
only the cost of a Joy
that your black slender smiles...
and the huge room
you moon from
nothing else but
the Truth

and a Lie.

I cannot teach a sparrow how to sing. but I -
can sing to a sparrow. but not of war.
stars are on my lips. caked in dust and Merlot.
a red stain upon the lyric. numbing the core.
I dread to do the thing that stops the heart.  but I'm
the pocket with the hole full of lint.
it never was, that I be nothing more than apart.
I am always close enough to repent.
should ever I stray to where the light
is Dark.

he stares
he covets
he loves
he hates

not only the elixir,
its anesthetizing allure,
but also its vessel

in which he can see
reflected, his hands,
his mouth

though not his eyes;
they reveal too much:

his last human touch
lambs on blood red fields of war
his mother gasping her last breath
his stillborn son

in this parley
his eyes cannot belie  
he hears screaming voices
in an empty, stone
quiet room    

the glass, then, will win;
‘tis an unfair balance; its perfect
symmetry, its solemn silence
the almighty alchemy it holds  

against him--his ghosts,
his hands, his mouth, all ready
to concede defeat

the tin can. there it is.... stalking the ditch at the side of the road.
the truck is broke down. but you haven't forgotten how to fly
and the open sky awaits the violence of your wings
beating against the curvature of space
cutting a hole in the up above
then descending like static charge
making waves that collapse at the heart of the Labyrinth.
staring at a tin can, lodged in the ***** of a ditch
at the side of the road.

and really getting into it.

all a'swoon in the peptides of our ivory
like mastodons marching delicate
or mountains of mayhem as a virtue.
an undesigned design
etched into the sphere of heaven
at the base of your skull
where the jewels to be found there
yammer the light fantastic
like sheets of chrome foam
through a funnel made of mint mist
and delusions of -
candor.

we mark the cave with our cellphone ping
and reap the things in the dark
that could brighten any room.
we have a knack for the impossible
but seldom sell glass beads to mermaids
we live in the kingdom of bent.
so therefore, the fork in the road is inevitable
and your utter lack of choice
a most universal thing.

songs will be sung about how we lived -
on the head of a pin... mending the fabric
of our isolation, and stitching the seams
of our bold stripes... where the whip cracked
and seared it's angry tongue across the back
of our forward thinking.
too engrossed are we, in the journey itself
to ever regain conscience.
we boil at room temperature. and we buy things -
that eat souls,
and have no word for snow -
that can also mean " cherry blossoms commit suicide"
and we sleep in the barn.

where haystacks bed down with stars
and you can still pick a lock
with a paper clip.
where all applause from the void-
visit like rain, all thunderous and good China
tilting on a blade of hope
in the very wheat fields of our daily bread
in the meadows of our irony.
where we salt the earth and continue to crop stones
in the spirit of our palace
wrought from years in exile
stacked to the roof of God's Mouth.
so He stutters your name
as clear as a bell.

and we shan't be consumed by surprise.

we will beguile.

perhaps
we were not meant to take this trail alone
perhaps we were

a few inches too far right
on the ledge--half the width of my foot
and I suppose I fell

and here I am, fine,
though I can't move my left leg or right arm
blood is in both my eyes

gravity's curse carried me here
and is channeling this scarlet stream,
from wherever it began,
into my field of vision

which, though red clouded,
holds the base of a pine, boulders
as big as buffalo, and a black bird

a crow I suspect, soon
to be joined by his brethren--to enjoy
the feast of me

my pain wanes, as do thoughts
someone will find me in this steep ravine
a hundred meters below the trail
two long miles from the road

perhaps
we weren't meant to do this alone
but I did, and I am here,
alone

save for the crow
and I can't help but wonder
if my eyes will be open when the birds
begin their work

or if greedy buzzards
will join them, to take my
flesh from bone

the pain wanes
I am sleepy, the lone crow
now a ******

their eyes are open
mine feel heavy--perhaps
I have the answer

closed