Mortal pink to gray crest -
the fox sun and cloud hedge
advance thin as wax,
strew frost on the yard,
& wrist peach away,
as light leaks, hours ahead.

Some yellow has gone,
bleeding in the valley.

Night lisps forward,
soft as ether,

as blossoms of bay laurel.
The moon stains the east,

& errant glimmers
founder in the cloud ditches.

The trees gather ice,
pages of silence,

smeared with identity.
Let this winter end

with an escape -
let this blood gallop

from black lots filled
with daggers of self.

Move me to
the necklace of river -

away from this inheritance
that stirs the dark.

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor.
That's my dream. It's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering,
along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving."
–  Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
~

Remember
the golden age, Wally ***?
And the songs
my mother taught me?

We sang about what was.
Or might never be.

Like permanency.
Distinction comes
out of stiff and frozen silences.
Take it with
a spoonful of disdain.
Take it in the eye.
Actors are like breakfast cereals.
They're obvious
and according to taste.
I stopped needing them
long ago.

Beautiful
Tallulah.
Beautiful,
"less to this than
meets the eye"
Tallulah,
dismiss me,
that I may be free
to find Tennessee.

Open windows
and closing doors.
Always a breeze,
but never a way out.
Right on cue
the cards shuffle.

Butter and cotton *****,
tricks of the trade.
I mumble to be heard.
I am legend
to disciples
of the Method.

I wear my friends to bed,
burn them like newspaper.
They call me "Bud"
—cigarettes at dawn
after devouring the night.
And now my song ebbs,
as the stylus hits the leadout groove.

Tomorrow, I'll be better.
Today, I'm just me.

days and weeks and years
suffering takes its toll

quiet in the night
fragmented, not whole

decay and deep despair
in this horror story world

now she is a woman
but I new her when still a girl

                 Illusions!

It flickered in the air,
sagged branch to branch,
pushed against the windows:
a death was pulsing.

It spilled into the streets
of my hometown.
I opened an old phonebook,
the names were humming.

I was cut to pieces by it.
I knew her as a little girl,  
she knew my sister
in her hippie period.

The telephone lines cowered
beneath the gray massing of moon.
The faces of houses screamed
ceaselessly at me as I drove.

It is so insistent,
her sixth-grade smile
in my old class photo.
It hovers inside me.

My life consists of two parts-

as actor and spectator

I've to juggle in between

they don't come together

I see you wrote me
    And I will try to reply
    Please... take a number

2. Love me NOW, ******!
    I can only wait so long
    Another beckons.

Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad--
Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care.
Say the devil touched my tongue--

Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!

The old light of the stars
is brittle to breaking
under tonight's deserted curve.
My thoughts slur away...

Wishes wheel out
over the tree line
while radio eyes
hush to the dial.

Cars keep their grip
on the dying street -
my thoughts fracture...
I'm telling you - it still hurts.