John Lee Townes nodded sadly, knowingly
From his perch at the Come On Inn
Heard the ambulance boys
Needed two trips to get her out
(But John Lee an untrustworthy witness if there ever was one,
Prone to drunken blackout and sober embellishment
One step from rehab and two steps from the loony bin)
Though the facts at hand
Were short on gore, long on the mundane;
Peggy Rabish (her possessions few, her jewelry cheap)
Was found bruised, but not ******,
Lying in a profane yet oddly peaceful position
Of mock prayer or sleep.
As passers-by gawked,
Whispering inventions, plausible and otherwise,
Concerning jilted boyfriends and rich aunts,
Rummaging through their own memories
In search of credible alibis,
The state boys, diligent and professionally bored,
Secured the crime scene in their yellow-tape fashion.
Suspects?  One trooper barked, ****, just look around here.
****-heads, drunks, welfare cheats,
You tell me who the hell isn’t?
The park manager nodded rhythmically, disinterestedly,
Half-listening as he turned his collar up against the chill,
His thoughts focused in filling this soon-to-be empty lot,
Vacancies and felonies being equally bad for business.

i have a blank canvas,
my poems like watercolours,
sweet blues and greens,
drafted in blossom.

spring brings new leaves
and budding flowers,
opens her eyes,
begins to dress the earth,
finds freedom in the flowing
breeze,
while the sparrows
sing like fluffed out
buddha's in the
hedge.

the blackbird dances on the lawn
(always in a tremendous fuss)
birds scrambling with
twigs and scraps of cloth,
chattering about the silks
of the blossoming sky
and the sands of the sun
blowing ceaselessly
in a gold dream of day.

My father and I
lie down together.

He is dead.

We look up at the stars,
the steady sound
of the wind turning
the night like a ceiling fan.

This is our home.

I remember the work in him
like bitterness in persimmons
before the first frost,
and I imagine the way he feared
the pain, the ground turning
dark in the rain.

Now he gets up
and I dream he looks down
into my brown eyes
that may as well been his.

He weeps and says goodbye,
my son, I don't want to
go yet, but I can't wait
around to watch you die.

Not the attraction a boy of ten
has for his peers
he was not even among
the intimate friends
yet a kind of lust I felt
when he was around
a flutter and denser breath
and in his absence
paling of all else.

That early seeding
was a hushed gust
blowing awhile in the ravine of
deep south.

Pretty girls emerged from the dust
and the first man in me
grew out of first love.

architectural mollusks
    are falloping through
                              my brain
                        squeezing past the
                         instincts that
        have kept me down
My instincts,
              once brittle sea stars
                          that splintered
                                    into cracked
                                 peppercorns,
                 are now mixed with
           the breathy liquid
        of squid,
lubrication for
the spiny paths ahead
They blow their ink
between my
inverted vertebrae
      injecting Jello into bone
                           busting through
                        fiber and tissue like
                          fresh-skimmed
                    lavacream
and all my muck
rises to the top
in a neon rawness
that I find beautiful

Soon
my burning crevices
will be cooled
fossils will turn to flesh
and, as sure as knowledge
springs into action
I will make
for the shoreline
like a cephalopod rocket
silky smooth
my fins spun into wings
touching magic
as they glide

what horizons await us, what skies fasten
to the bright ambers of our dreaming bones?

our love, water trickling over
a pebble in a stream,

the whoosh of  
leaves and a shadow in the dark,

the ghost of a poem
written in a dream,

the splendour of the tide,

both everything and
nothing,

our love neither a poem or a sigh,
all the winds battling,

spring's blue moon waiting near the
water for one slow ripple to reach
out.

No one stays long
in the house of the bereaved

The hounds are lonely tonight
but not the priest

I dream I am still
in Tennessee grieving

Drinking moonshine
and branch water
looking for a fight

The undertaker creeps out
of the farmer's daughter's room

His wife beats a spider
with a broom then sweeps

When Death beats his child
nobody listens to her weep

My mother used to beg,
Son, don't write about Death,
We'll cross that ditch soon enough

I have nothing but respect
for the dead, I said

But there is no doubt in my mind
Death is a bad dog, a real *****.