I looked to the West
with strained neck
and weary eyes
where roads stretch
over hard ground
and boots cover
beat-up toes from
industry from nature
from time and the
morning starts before
the dawn in the starry
mourning ours of the
midwest skies that
keep going, further
than humanity, and
tomorrow is a lifetime
and lead paint is the
only god you need
aside from the warm
solitude of another
struggle that eats at
your brain but sings
your heart in the tune
of the wind that howls
through your being--
straight through to
the other bitter side--
and in that thin line
that separates god
from man and stretches
clean through to the coast
I saw a purity of thought
and of being in the very
struggle of the sun
over that ridge that
seemed to strangle
the earth like a necktie
and I saw the spirit
of the spirit, the old
one, the first one
******* and bound
with hopes and dreams
and furniture and gold
and television chords and
bits of blue cheese, bibles,
and bad skin and so forth
and the whole scene made
me sick until I puked up
all that I had swallowed
in my youth and my
stomach was anew and
fresh and filled with sunlight
from the horizon that went
on into the forever where
poets rest their brains
and god sits and reads
Bukowski to the angels