Rain fell today, yeah, the drought's over.
Now you can all go home.
I hope this a bitter winter,
hope it chills you to the bone.
That might settle the score,
but when I settle my affairs
I'll want more: prepare for war.

Some soon to come and some more soon to go–
like I expected any less.
I'd tell you what but I am just too yellow,
I'm too young to know
but you couldn't call me heartless.
I make amends, make amends, my friends.
Wanna be easy, breezy again.

Lovely Western Zephyrus, I do invoke thee now:
please send something our way.
Lovely cumulonimbus flown in on o'er the town,
like a child's tantrum rage.
Have to be brave, be brave to be saved.
But my voice is hoarse, depraved.

This Winter now is just a-getting started.
So far it's like a one from way before.
Reckon it will leave me so brokenhearted.
The storm's knocking, knocking at your door.

She always kept her back very straight,
and the men would drape
themselves across her shape
and around her waist–
take on the form she gave.

Fleet fingers wave the same way,
leading about
all of the strays.
Me, I'm some sort of prey
for this creature, kyrie.

Coin-covered costume with colored cloth
combing coiffures
into a froth.
Gypsy girl getting dressed.
Them eye's beheld n' them eye's lost.

Coocoo Callay, what did I say?
I gave it weight,
now she looks dismayed,
betrayed I'll stay.
Maybe see her some other day.

Always, always's so full of maybes
from where you came
to this ****** maze, reasons the same,
to be somebody's baby.

When I die I'll finally have the time
to go visit with my mother,
do the dishes and all those little somethings.
It'd be more money-coming
to my sister and brother.
When I die I'll maybe turn to the Lord,
the only room and board I could afford.

When I die don't bury me.
Just a ghostly linen sheet will do.
Prop me up in the corner discreet.
A Stetson hat, underwear, and my Italian shoes.
When I die let's have us a time–
big bonfire in the woods with wine.

We can go up to my shack
where no one can find us,
lay around in the sack
n' get simpleminded.

each night
he would enter his boy's room  
Bobby's tomb, he had come to call it  
and turn the TV off  

before remotes, 24/7 programming
and the infomercial, plump with desperate promises
the tube gave a final hail, the stars 'n stripes whipping, the national anthem screaming, and an anonymous promise
to return tomorrow in a perfect world

it would not be perfect for Bobby,
no matter how much thoughtless Thorazine,
hazy Haldol, or mesmerizing Mellaril
they shoved down his throat

now and then
before flipping the **** to off
he would sit with his sleeping son
stare into the screen, listen to its hissing;
he would swear he saw something  
in the gray ocean of static  

not trillions of senseless electrons
busy bouncing, but a lone sailor, rowing away
in a foaming sea, riding raging swells,  
bound for a black horizon

one his tormented son
had reached long ago

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

I:

Modern parlance,
It says disease; it says illness,
I’ve a darkness that swallows up the sugar birds and intercepts the light bouncing up from the epoxy,

and rocketing towards a god my mother knew.

II:

I've done so much,
To great and tractable youth,
That hammer created nothing vestigial and lionlike, no, it simply left depressions on waxen suburban doors,

That you once wildly rushed to open.

III:

When I remember,
You wrapped around the backstay in an empty field -
Trying to reach forward and knock the Camel light that I had lit to keep myself from speaking,

I light another.