boy coils in the lawn
& early air.
grass touching him wet,
smoke crawls from his lips,

into the blue awoken,
or sky before his face.
there it dances like wild life lived
& falls away with breezy.

dearly herb to glossy reds,
he purses, thus to inhale.
sparked ember, spark clench, fist to fist.
life given to life encapsulated.

the sense of it goes steady,
goes patent cool.
he exhales, and looks to the south,
where his legs once were.

i mine as well be wearing flip-flops forever
in this godforsaken century.

lonely man/me/or him sits at the edge of a river.
at the edge of a town,
on the edge of a rock round and called mama
/earth.
he is contemplating jazz,
no,
madness/women/& spontaneous combustion.
he leans the sun forward to touch his forehead/combust.
the man is homeless,
  or this is his home,
  or that van parked over there and smiling.

he balances boulders in the water,
peaked on schlitz,
contemplating birds,
no,
the blood of old age and some sort of ex-girlfriend/witch’s brew.
a malt-gut sediment.
chikee hut nap
& dreams.

this is how it is for the man/me/or him raised-up
in a single-wide or on the riverside,
with the ghost of grandaddy
& his theories on complex-costume-parties.