The sound of utensils being stored
'just so'
A second cup of joe
A post card Dusk soon to follow
Red sky traveling West
Fir Trees begin to shadow our
little 'Brick Nest'
Hummers relish their final feast
The Harvest Moon takes over the painted East* ...

Practicing my greetings and goodbyes
Working on retorts , concerned looks and smiles
Reaching for a handshake with the goof in the mirror
Thespian Monday mornings worthy of Oscar consideration

Dead grass crunches beneath our feet
Wild onion rules the breeze
Winter arbors lay exposed and barren
Gravel roads are hard packed , abandoned
Capricious Blackbirds hold their power line
perch , day runs quiet across the frozen earth* ..

Post-war digs line Locke Street
Kudzu , streetlights , lamplight
Critters and skeeters , front porch
smokers , stray cats , brown bats
Concrete sidewalks , sacks of One Stop
chicken sandwiches , cold beer and
L&M; cigarettes
A doobie on the wood porch , a
brand new FM love song , arpeggios flying
into space , no regard for the work
week rat race , a smooth young face without
the first sign of a wrinkle , happy and single
A swig of 'Mist , a midnight ride to an all
night 'catfish expedition' on Saturday night* ..

Walk into a room where people are laughing -
only to watch silence ensue , you've become an issue
Your neighborhood dealer 'cutting you a deal' on something
killing you , pupils fixed and dilated , the
machinery is running out of gas , waiting on a
view from the Moon when the pang of death passes
The picture loses the Sun as reason is fractured , morality collapses ,
hope is trashed as your troubled heart slowly relaxes* ...

Sunlit , steaming , cracked parking lots in between Friday rains , dumpster drains form acrid , putrid pools , rank reminders carried into open windowed non air condition dwellings , children play in sprinkling rain for relief , city trolleys crash watery asphalt depressions ,
homeless shelter neath the awnings of boarded storefronts , cyclone fence -barbed
wire runs in every direction , emergency vehicles , taxis , suburbanites head for
their destinations
Men light one cigarette with another
Women repass with their neighbors from front porches
A forgotten district filled with quiet desperation* ....