Her eyes are every color
under the sun, and then some-

mostly flecks of golden
kansas wheat and earthy brown-

and when they are green
- i've seen mountains grow
and valley scenes below

-sometimes gray as if they know
winter is coming, slow

-but when they're blue, so blue-
water wells at the fate of the sioux,
and the broken bird's egg, a dog
with three legs, and a sky sky-blue

- mostly, she has kansas in her eyes.

Some days pass by fast like a flash
of white, a young woman
crossing her legs on a park bench

while some nights roll slowly
like dark stockings a widow takes off
at the end of her mourning

but tonight is as black as *******
draped over the light by the bed

a silhouette of a lady in the glow
of a cigarette before morning.

Sometimes I think
not often, but enough
that if I had a shrink
(s)he would say
Neil Young is the one
that ****** you up
son, I mean, he didn’t
mean to, but
looking back like I am
apt to do too often
his music I have listened
to through the decades
made me who I am
today and yesterday
taking me so many places
where the pavement
turns to sand, like
on the beach, or down
by the river, or somewhere
on a desert highway
where I tend to see the sky
about to rain most days
and the ambiance of
ambulance blues
is so ******* beautifully
depressing that even
I can diagnose me
just knowing that rust
never sleeps, and a heart
of gold remains elusive.

;)

There are waves
that say goodbye
and waves of light
on darkest nights
and waves that sing
melancholy songs
that make me want
to lay me down
beside the dunes
and listen to
those tidal blues.

If you squint just right -
there’s a new star in the sky
tonight - shining bright
- shining a light on suicide.

I can’t rightly say
what’s gone wrong
when I try writing
on these long nights
my words all suffocate
like lightning bugs
in a moonshiner’s jug.

I know you know
this universe is old
and life is but a wrinkle
in time and me, I’m
not yet a twinkle
in my long gone father’s eyes
compared to those blinking night
skies, but let me tell you
friends,  when the fog
rolls in off of Dead Woman Shoals
all damp and **** cold
as the nose on my black dog
when it calls out to the moon
its mouth a deep hole, dark
as doom, a howling for
a galaxy, a dying star born
to be swallowed
bones all ribbed and rowed
a wind chime clacking
on the back porch alone
when nary a breeze blows.

I can feel it in the air
tonight, a sadness
that’s better than love
dressed in the wind
ready to go anywhere
looking good in black
cold night of the flesh
a hunger for another
kind of paradise, there
are worse things to die for
on long nights like these.

My past is now
at my back
like the shadow
of a man
in a chain gang
picking up trash
I left in a ditch
bottles and empty
beer cans, cigarette
packs and such
stuff my supper
is made of, old bread
that tastes of regret
and thin minnow soup
my card carrying guardian
angel scoops up
from the River Styx
with a ladle made of screen
tied to two sticks
from my window
cell that I have named
the holey hell hole
so, this is all an allusion
to the 26 letters
of my self-
imposed sentence.

I ask you moon
what good does it do
losing sleep regretting
all of the stupid ****
you did, time wasted
when I could be listening
to the wind whispering
poems in my sleeping head
instead of thinking about
my own death, hell, I may
as well be writing my name
in the water, my prayers
to women knowing they
can never be read, any way
I go, I’ll go in peace because
these words, I know, will be
unknown, so let the waves
take away what they will
let the tide say that I tried
I lived, I loved, I swam
a long **** time; I tired.

Her words will light a fire
underneath deniers, eye-to-
eye, take on the liars, I, too
have too long uttered silence
while our children quietly
despised us, we, even me
who knew, choked it down
the unclean smoke unspoken
yes, how dare we leave this life
behind for generations to bare
our crimes, and yet they rise
above to breathe fresh air
the clean O2 of burning desire
searing, shouting utter truth
to wake the world, to sing
and single out, to recognize
a lie when it is a lie, FIERCE
like fire, beautifully reactionary
aflame, to inflame, now is here
your time, rebel, my rebel child
fight for your very life, your future
children, species, for all mankind.

Squinting lines instead
of the smiling kind
I watched the sunset
over the pines
as always, west
where my mind wanders
wondering why I left
an orange blazing
light lighting my deck
back aching
so **** tired
of this god forsaken
place wishing it was fire
not just another dying day.

In so many words
it comes down to this
time wasted, spent
a million regrets
and not one red cent
of it worth a ****.

Sometimes
at night
late, when I slide
off towards dreams
it seems
my thoughts
they often swirl
around a pearl
at heaven’s gate.

Sleep,
a phantom
sea, adrift
on a wave
light years
away, awake
way past 4
in the dark shade
of her absence,
my loss, a fissure,
not a metaphor
for a fault,
just my heart
and all
its vagaries.

After the wind has finished
with her mischief, and night
black as a Crow caws the dawn
and as the ocean's cold hands
fold and unfold, tomorrow
will surely bring some sorrow
only time will tell, while I while
away the long hours listening
to the tapping on my windows
wishing again, just once again
that it was you and not the rain.

Somewhere, someplace
I lost my way along
the way, searching for
the extraordinary
forgetting the more simple
things, the everyday ordinary
like the words for a bird’s
heartbeat, the color of water
in an estuary, the calligraphy
of the grocery list, an apostrophe
like an old man picking cotton
a woman long forgotten
drowned in the vagueness
of the ocean, a blind poet
comparing the sun to a rose
light slipping through blinds
hidden behind silk curtains
burdens born by mothers
worn and weary, left alone
the name for vines that grow
on silent children’s stones.

I waited all day
to hang out
on the waning
crescent moon
but a storm came
in from the north
so we sat  on
the front porch
it’s just a phase
we all go through
my dog said
and oh how we
howled at the rain.

I wonder
does thatTrump/Pence
2020 bumper sticker
make your *****
feel bigger,
or is it that big
black smoke belching
diesel Ford F-250?

You can’t unring this bell
       of sorrow with your heart
as dark as tonight in El Paso
        Texas by texting more lies
between rounds of golf
         with twenty lives lost
just because you’re El Presidente.

I could live forever and still
never forget your face, unlike
the other girls who I knew
I was too old and ugly for
but there you were, dressed fit
to **** in your black beret, short
shorts the color of a forest, a Che
T-shirt cut above your navel, a
ragged copy of the Manifesto
in your back pocket, like a bandanna
to cough in, playing the cello
so well in all the cafes around town
a mournful sound like the wind makes
at night when I go to visit your grave.

The same sun
that gives life
to a chrsyanthemum
a red rose, a vine
climbing a live oak
also cast shadows
against pale stones
and tall white walls
of a mausoleum.

I used to view existential
as a meaningless concept
rendered complex when used
in sentences by the pretentious
until I came to realize that it’s
simply nothing but the shadow
of a black dog sitting on a dock
by an old man holding a rusty
old revolver to his head on dark
nights of deep water thinking
man, what a waste of a good
bullet if you pull it, so throw it
in and let me fetch it once again
just like the last time, and the time
before that, or like every time you
have a notion that the ocean is blue
only for you and your sorrow, dude
let it go and let’s go home before
tomorrow comes, for your shadow
is aware and cares for your existence.

She’s a mystery
the slight curves
of her face
framed
by dark waves
lips shaped
like the wake
of a ship
parting the sea
as deep as deep
eyes I can see
staring back at me.

I’ve left footprints
in deserts
where no man’s been
in millennia; a thirst
not yet quenched
these dry cracked lips
can still spit out a poem
on old buzzards’
bones, trekking alone
whistling Dixie, my brother
I’ve a few miles yet to go.

The sun also rises
over Onslow Bay
at the same time
that I get out of bed
hazy as the air ablaze
already redder than
my eyes, I got crazy
again my aching head
and back says, yeah
maybe a little bit, man
you set the night on fire.

I've surveyed
highways, byways
waterways, caves
Woodland mounds
long dead towns
and never found
the distance between
love, loyalty, vows
words that somehow
get lost in time
less than light years
forgotten moments
gone because stars
die yet pretend
to shine fire on two
lovers who tire of one
or the other, like you
sleepy-eyed woman
so far down the hall
I've gotten lost walking
the long walk alone.

I learned the blues
too soon
and the pain
I gained
singing on dark nights
to the rain our plight
those who know loss
is just another cross
to bear for the dark guitar
strings piercing hearts
the cross spreading her legs
like a pair of pliers to make us beg
plucking nails from ****** fingers
picking scabs that seem to linger
through the calloused evil seasons
of high cotton and boll weevils.

Did you see them take the green fields
one by one, now line by line on hills in echelon?

Still, holding ground held holy by their sons;
no longer marching to the smoke and drum.

Where bugler called the day to final rest,
now silence grows like lichen on the stones.

For those who gave their all at our behest,
our memories alone will not atone.

Do you see the fires burning at a distance,
and more hallowed ground broken day by day?

Each new stone laid a fading reminiscence;
each new boquet soon fading into gray.

What better way to honor sacrifice
than to pause and speak their names aloud.

Until the gods of war are pacified;
until our flag no longer serves as shroud.

Fire and wind
of close bullets
tornados, floods, rain
I. C. E. with eyes
sharp as barbed wire
dead souls walking
those pale corridors
with an odor
the color of bone
and skin off the backs
of the poor
in their pockets
like rawhide, they are
rolling, rolling, rolling
***** of dung along
carrying briefcases
full of batshit
and other secret
pestilence yet to come.

That badass girl’s got curves
like a Spanish guitar
a few scratches, a lot of scars
you can see almost any Saturday
at the Bullets for Martyrs Cantina
if she's not strung too tight, she’s a
lean, mean beautiful Argentine into
that whole revolutionary scene
singing Seremos como el Che
all olive drabbed and black beret’d
always quick with a ¿Como estas?
Eh, I'm okay I says, mis chica mas
bella, pero su ese Che es muerto
but here on the B!ue Mesa is where
the truly live come to live - ¿Comprende?

Often I feel alone
until I find myself
most at home
sitting in a dark quiet
room, or outside
beneath the moon
blowing smoke rings
around shiny coffin nails
imagining they are glowing
stars, pretending all is well
which beats the living hell
out of feeling lonely
all alone and by myself.

Sometimes just before dusk
after my black mutt’s been fed
I go down to the canebrake
and cut fishing poles for the dead
where the live oaks’ shade
is so thick it'll make you shiver
like a stonemason chiseling
dates in a graveyard by the river
before shadows of the wriggling
bait worms on rusty curved nails I
use for a hook and light in the eyes
of the fishermen begin dwindling.

There’s a 55 gallon drum
in my yard beside the deck
half full of empty bottles
black ashes from burned poems
worthless words, regrets, bad
checks, the busted up scorched
bridge of Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E
half finished lyrics, melted Nirvana
vinyls, suicide notes charred and scared
every-bit as sincere as when written.

I can feel the shift
into low now, one shot
one pill, one mile left
to go
I see a light on
up the hill
like most nights
trouble is
ain't nobody
home to talk to
I know
my bruh, Moon
he’s a lonely
old ****, too.

It’s a short walk from here
to Sneads Ferry Cemetery where
the bored to death are buried -
I go there every now and then
and read to them a poem by Lorca
the fortunate who died so young -
bled beneath an olive tree, a fascist
bullet to the head, no pain, I envy that
his fast demise, no boredom -
or surgeon’s knife to try to slice
away the little flowers of the grave
I would take his bullet any day -
before I’m bored, before the blade
before I claim a plot, or take up space
here in this ******* boring place.

There’s a before
                                                     then an after

                 and the in-betweens

      which is all that really matters
  after the beginning~and the ending

we’re born,                                    and we die

                   highs
have a few
                                  a whole lot of
                                                           lows

  but nothing means not a ******* thing
  if you know what I mean, you know?

That thing we had
I’m sorry that
I walked away before
giving it or us a chance
to even dance, to
become something, sadly
still, my heart
I’m happy for the
more than nothing
thing we had.

At night, time passes by
like shadows that were not there
the morning before when I
opened my eyes as the sun rose
from dreams that left behind
their hind tracks to show where
I have been lingering in the forest
of many seasons, something to go by
while the hunter quietly closes in.

Sometimes I drink by myself
like too many do, maybe you, too
when the wind blows like it does
here on the coast when it’s clear
and the light of dead stars come
down to swim in your circle of blood
while thinking back about the sisters
of boys I used to run with, oh, you know
we’d give our trigger fingers just to
touch them again, but the war keeps
seeping back into us like the poison
that pours into our rivers and creeks
from long gone cotton fields now paved
where the clouds of those days
are all that gets weighed in at the gin
I swear, there’s a pattern to all of this
like the weave of a tight skirt on a girl
who I once fell in love with in school
I went all crazy from watching her twist.