Cloud came no closer than that,
but I tried.

Emboldened and primate I tried.

Scurried up the elm to bring night closer.
But the limbs got thinner,
thinner there and sapling.

****, the stars are wounds,
and the moon's a gaping.

And what swoons below
is a lark, a laugh and a flaking,

like skin ripped in endeavor,
like skin that is ripped with want,
ripped with gravity, like fingers,
pale with just hanging on
as the growing tip breaks
and falls before magma.

Chattering squirrel, I beg you hear
This quiet sonnet plead your leave.
Yes, you and I count each sincere,
Refusing, Dylanesque, to grieve.
I offer you the whisky jar,
A hit of **** or mushroom caps.
Cold day is slanting into dark.
If I were younger, there'd be apps.
I couldn't write this, maybe you
Began it and I snagged this line.
What moves will drop, when time is due,
The snow, the leaves, your mind and mine.
No more space left for barking here,
Scorched words an antidote to fear.

They hung laundries like prayers,
these women, there, new to pants,
between Beechfield and Brisbane.

And all the actions were in the alley,
the zipper between, where we,
young thuggeries in our dungarees,
plied bicycle trades on summer days.
Even flies shunned our manes.

Fists and spit and baseball cards.
Skates and snakes and fenced-in yards.
Each these swinging statues,
thrown, frozen, spun, fastened
to concrete and rash.

And yes, there, the women,
the mothers, pinning towels
like code, pinning sheets on wire,
glancing through a breeze, they saw it all:
saw us, the young and barely criminal,
rang it up the chain.
And yes, oh yes, these mothers,
there'd be hell to pay,
there'd be hell to pay
come dinnertime.

I ain't seen no crow do no killin',
never in a day.
****, they ain't even a squabble.
I seen a lot a' crows
on a lot a' roads,
courteous as squaredance,
bobbin' over ****, skunk,
whatever red,
always cool to clear the way
and wait fer a passin'.

I ain't seen no dead crow neither,
not a one.
I seen 'em harried though,
hammered like B-17's
swattin' one o nines.
But that ain't no nevermind.

Pigeons, yep. Lotsa pigeons.
Slapped a few sparra's on the grill.
Never took a pheasant
but I seen 'em,
all broke feather
and bonnet in the ditch.

Baldies?
Now that's a bird that's got one
helluva marketin' department.
Proud one that.
Eats the eyes and *** first.
Runs off the competition.
**** things don't know
bumpers from blimps.
But wha' d'ya do?

A con-vo-cation, yep,
that's what they call 'em -
hell, we almost snuffed 'em
clean out and now we call 'em
a convocation?
Seems a bit stilted to me.
But there you have it -
a convocation a'eagles
a ****** a' crows.
Just goes to show ya',
them namers don't know.

Lee's dumbstruck seeing hung
Beneath the light
Her dress, a wig the color
Of her hair, her shoes--
The marionette he wanted.
He'd spent some time on this,
Had set the stage then texted
Please come get your ****,
Garage unlocked.

And  had he thought
Helena, by her now--too late
To shield her eyes--
Would understand such hate
At five years old?
"Is that you, mom?"
"I guess it is.  Your
Daddy's mad."

She held back tears, undressed
The doll except the hair,
Then cut it down while standing on
The set of steps he no doubt used
To raise it there
And dropped it in the trunk
Of her Toyota, unsure
What else to do with it,
Collected all the dross
She carried in for seven years,
Before and while things
Went to hell.

At the still axis of revolution,
about which our tortures churn,
the pure and toddler self remains,
present and young,
uncoiled, unlearned.

Such that a top, spinning,
poised gyroscopic on a point,
traces a path on a floor,
spiraled to the delight
of a child's fresh gums attentive,
must wobble in the end,
must with those most
stupendous frictions fall.

Neither the lean nor
the circumference, dead on the floor,
succumbed to turmoil,
defines the top, no - it is the axis -
that about which all things turn -
stiff spindled, silent, and spun
by the pink and toddler hand,
in the wonder that is yours,
in the wonder that is ours.

it wasn't as though he shoulda seen it coming
(God knows he muddled through that one well enough)
and it wasn't as though he thought it in the bag
(the whole **** thing had always seemed ****** daunting)
but these now recurring tasks
and pop-up commitments
were wavering him
a great big pain the ***
burdensome, machine like
lacking, of any particular meaning

now there was that element of perseverance
that he had read and lectured on (oh, how he had lectured on and on!)
but he was not fully accustomed
(having flown on a wing and a prayer)
to the shattered routines
and fallen plans
obligatory iterations
and post-mortem like sessions
(seemed easier to stack em up, and
shelve em in a somewhat manageable way)

but a rhythm evolved
in simple momentum, and truth
new plateaus, and revelations
transformative unfoldings
and cosmic events
(which appeared as gifts from above)
and they paved a path to growth

eyes opened, to the wonders of the world!
a grounding in an earthly connection
narratives reclaimed
adjustments made
faith, and fellowship
first steps, compromise
and gratitude
filling the center stage
(in kaleidoscope colour!)
in this glorious
and ever evolving
play of life

~

was it worth it old friend?
you bet your *** it was!

Sheathed in a concrete calyx,
a flower, a generation folded in
upon itself, waits the horrors of the sun.

These petals once unfurled, fell upon
by hard rains and scorch care not, I am told,
the grim and arrowed planting, but
brace against the stem of the next blossom,
for none, I am told, hold the wind alone.

But that is not for me to know.
I only know that these seeds forever sown,
do not prove lustrous on the hills,
in the fields, narrow-tilled,
worse yet, in a vase, I am told,
worse yet, in a vase for gazing.

I am stuck between Sweatro and Gingerman,
stuck out by the dumpsters, ****, and toothed butts,
scrubbing concrete for roaches, hands stung
out with brown shards of Michelob bottles
between shots and lines.

I am stuck in the batlamp, stuck in the felt,
stacked like quarters by the rail, waiting my turn
at the game, my turn at the trough,
hailing drinks like cabs, two fingered,
absolute and limed.

There was a girl there once,
square-shouldered, brass-railed
and flickering. There was an eye
to an eye, a mocked dissection - yes,
a cutting - a splendid humbled nothing.

Yes, those nights bled fast,
slumped down to Campeche,
burrowed into beans and red rice.
Yes, before the fogs wore off,
before the graystones went gray,
before the foilman don't like that,
out there in the dumpsters,
where I found a roach,
scarred my lip, spread glass,
spread lies and conjured a time
high in the **** of discard,
high in a nothing called mine.

My past is now
at my back
like the shadow
of a man
in a chain gang
picking up trash
I left in a ditch
bottles and empty
beer cans, cigarette
packs and such
stuff my supper
is made of, old bread
that tastes of regret
and thin minnow soup
my card carrying guardian
angel scoops up
from the River Styx
with a ladle made of screen
tied to two sticks
from my window
cell that I have named
the holey hell hole
so, this is all an allusion
to the 26 letters
of my self-
imposed sentence.

a grey afternoon and just now
it starts to rain, big drops
in small pools on her terrace
looking outside - another
glass in her hand
the house gets dark
last light through the living
a house already silent
he's gone, big drops
on the roof beating a drum
beating her dead heart
she sits down, suddenly
dead-tired but too afraid to
lie on their bed, big drops
against those windowpanes
a year of loss
has started
a lifetime of love
has ended
a man has cut her landline
and she cannot believe
there will ever be
a rising of another sun
a blowing out the clouds
another good morning beautiful
another - looking outside
all the water in the world will
not free the lights in the lake
this is how she will remember
losing, forever