Some died in the Spring;
and some by the river, deep
in Winter beneath a bridge.
Some died alone by a tree
behind a repossessed house;
and some with their cats
at home, quiet as a mouse.
Some died reading bills
that come in the mail;
and some reading the part
number, reaching for a fan
belt hanging on a nail.
Some died with a flyswatter
in hand, toilet paper in a screen
door, dead flies on the floor;
and some like heat lightning,
fast as a sick baby’s breath.
Some died without a warm, caring
woman’s hand on a forehead;
and some sharing a last cigarette.
She, my old lover who loved danger,
died on the side of the road
in the arms of a stranger.

Shade, go away
knaves, your shadowy
hands are made of clay,
simple worthless dirt.

Darkness, be gone,
night belongs to poets alone
to cast their bones where they may,
worthy words, their poetry.

It is summer -
a quiet night

- the silence
disquieting

all those lights
out on the water -

- stars, like floating
diamonds

moon, you big old pearl
- my lifebuoy

a driftwood fire of dreams
to hold me -

until morning comes
slowly - like a sad-eyed model

- tired of her beauty, wanting
more than a moment in the sun.

On a night when nothing better
was likely to happen, a beat throbbed
out just the right line, and a bounce woke
up in the toe of a boot, and everything
in the night sky was sparkling light,
which is how I found myself one time
at the local VFW where they played
the same tattered tunes over and over
until the need to dance drained out
of a lonely sad woman there like suds
from a dripping beer tap, and so
she steered me out onto the back deck
where a hard-boiled moon dangled
from the power lines looking something
like hope warmed over; we untangled
ourselves when the sun finally shined.

If I close my eyes
maybe you can’t see me
and I won’t have to lie
here, still and silent -
on my side
of the great divide
that’s come between us -
the quiet nights
no longer dreaming
go on and on -
living, breathing
beating hearts, forgotten
seasons lost -
in distant canyons
we once walked
our paths entwined -
companions once
leaving shadows
aligned in the sand -
in the canyons
where we left our hand
prints on a wall -
side by side
you and I.

I miss Sunday
in a skyblue sundress
with sunlight
shining through
that gap between
thighs so soft
like cotton clouds.

I used to keep a bell jar
full of old fine fishing line
arrowheads, gold coins
and stuff not easy to find

like cherry cured shine from
my mountains of Tennessee

buried in a lunch bucket
twelve paces from the coop
waiting for the moon
who took his own sweet time

slower than a long night
listening to the same hoot
of the same old hoot owl
in the same old dying tree

knowing it was the end
of my days on the Creek
me, I could see it coming
like a dead star's light

from so long ago
I couldn’t possibly know
which old road I’d follow

so holler at me my
friends, my loves
from time to time
wherever you be

whenever your heart strings
are feeling a need
to tell this spirit of mine
your sorrows, your joys
or wishes for
better tomorrows

and I will from somewhere
be there with open arms
and ears and a heart

sewn tight with that jar
of invisible string
that binds our lives together
forever and longer than that
light from a dead star still
burning on shining so bright.

In my truck
just starting to work
and the man on the radio says

It's 11 minutes before six
on this early Toosdy morning.
You're listening to NPR...

Ahh, fuuuuck says I to my truck,
it's too early for this ****,
another Toosdy staff meeting
and here I am in an ironed shirt
(wearing my RESIST t beneath).

What the hell, everyday is the same,
trains roll on, tracks never end
and tomorrow, Toosdy will be gone
with the wind.

Who am I
to deserve such sights,
to witness this splendor?

Thank you for trusting me
with this color, this light.

Thank you for reminding me
what lives behind the dark.

Whoever, wherever,
whatever you are.

There are the dead
and the dead and
the dead and the dead
floating down stream
towards the Ferry, and
there are the things
my brother, Barry, never
thought about telling me;
I am dead asleep, I am alive
and you are gone south
my brother, tell me I am that
which I am, I am dreaming
that you are not death yet,
we are  one person
getting up and going
outside naked as the day
we were born, one April
and one May, we are still
rolling down hill in the hay,
and you say we should be
shaking our fists at the moon
O, brother tell me you
miss me and I’ll tell you, too.

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 bouquet 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.

***** Joe's got a ways to go
before he can climb up
from beneath the bridge

He's not been the same
since after the rain
of rockets on Robert's Ridge

He stopped spending his days
living life in a haze
of a VA induced nirvana

He forgets he's a Vet
and the checks that he gets
goes to his sweet Suzana

He keeps his head clean
with a fifth of Jim Beam
and clears out the bile in his liver

Most days he can be found
with his head on the ground
and his thoughts out on the river.

We, lost Africans
left the savanna
to follow the stars
leaving the ground
to stride with arms
down by our sides
to inherit the earth
and dirt of other lands
following the caravan
of sacred elephants
taking off our black
helmets to discover
other atmospheres
learning to breathe
here as well as there
drinking and singing
like blood thirsty
tigers the dangerous
songs of maps drawn
and long forgotten.

So long, love,
say gnite honey,
I'll go pull a stump,
so here I am, the field
of night all around me,
crazy, sad and lonely,
what love there was,
like a bee on a rose
buried in the year book
of past attics, you never lost
my shadow because I
never had one beside you,
though you did lose a ring
once, or twice,
you were like a woman
holding mirrors
over the spring, there
are screws
in the window sill
never sunken to hold
a pane, you don't listen
for me in the rain
anymore, you lie yourself
back into the one
you think you love, cruelty,
cruelty, cruelty, that's all
you've ever known, my love.

Yesterday I headed west
I left the sea      gulls behind me
they cried    so did I
something strong was calling
me home   where sacred stones
are planted strong
with words carved deep
inside my heart
I'll plant lillies   lay a rose
tell my Mother   I am home
and my brother  and Dad too
I'm glad to see    they aren't alone  
as I turned away
I heard a bluebird say
Son, don't you come to stay
too long     for this earth is cold
when the winter comes 
the ocean's now your home
go breathe that warm breeze
until the sun no longer shines
and the eagle flies   the gulls
no longer cry    then you'll know
the time has come   for you
to climb aboard and sail away.

I know I'm not easy
to love
I never was

It doesn't take much
to please me

And when you smile it does

I know some day
you'll leave me

That's just the way it goes
like when a gentle
summer breeze blows

But when you do go
go knowing that I'll know
you were the closest one

Take my heart and run
baby, take it on home

Take my heart and beat it
women, I won't need it
where I'm going.

It rains
and I think of bales
of wet hay
crushing the wind
out of children
riderless ponies
with frayed rope
tied to the pommels
I find it hard to explain
eyeshadow and dead weight
tied to the other end
and girls who would like to
go on in this world
***** by their mother's
stepsons and husbands
the men and women
of learning have left us
so much, I prefer
to look at the moon.

You are fallen darkness,
the ghost ship
in the wake of a quarter-moon

Your depth
is like a blue grave
looking back
from a burial at sea

Your hands are shadows
over a campfire
lustering against the lightless
river, palms folding
like prayers over
the embering heat
of driftwood and deadfall
retreating into ash

You are heaven's shoal
of dead stars, the obsidian
lip of the shoreline
I approach without light

The shallow groundswell
of sand un-printing my tracks,
as if to refuse my sunless steps

You are streetlights left behind me
back home, softening now
beyond their dead-end streets.

I visualize you
who I will never know,
Constant Stranger
I call you, I imagine
you when I write
and to think, you
will never know me
like the few who
I am close to, those
who say: I don't
understand what you
are talking about,
but I know what you
mean...you know
there is no other poet
on earth like me
and I know there is
no other poem in the uni-
verse just like you
and every two folks
have there own way
of loving, the poet
and the poem know
what they like, like
the kind that takes us
into different and strange
countries until we realize
at midnight, we are alone,
you and I, Constant Stranger,
anonymous mates whose love
can never be consummated.

The clouds, then the years
drag through my hair
like a plow traveling through
this sandy gray soil of mine

There are many theories of time
like words that can pass
into the mouth of a Mason jar
and stay there forever, and last
like a message at sea floating far

How is it there are trails
you cannot follow for being
so **** dog tired, something
now, and not was, returned
from so many journeys

I have not set my foot down
in this nest of copperheads
to break the eggs or be bitten,
this is simply where I wanted
to be struck and born.

No one stays long
in the house of the bereaved

The hounds are lonely tonight
but not the priest

I dream I am still
in Tennessee grieving

Drinking moonshine
and branch water
looking for a fight

The undertaker creeps out
of the farmer's daughter's room

His wife beats a spider
with a broom then sweeps

When Death beats his child
nobody listens to her weep

My mother used to beg,
Son, don't write about Death,
We'll cross that ditch soon enough

I have nothing but respect
for the dead, I said

But there is no doubt in my mind
Death is a bad dog, a real *****.

All of these words
formed without breath
is magic against death
and all of this ends
with to be continued
I wave so long
with a handkerchief
to the horses on the range
of my dreams
and every scene is sculptured
from wood with splintered
fingers ruptured
with the blood of my brothers.

My father and I
lie down together.

He is dead.

We look up at the stars,
the steady sound
of the wind turning
the night like a ceiling fan.

This is our home.

I remember the work in him
like bitterness in persimmons
before the first frost,
and I imagine the way he feared
the pain, the ground turning
dark in the rain.

Now he gets up
and I dream he looks down
into my brown eyes
that may as well been his.

He weeps and says goodbye,
my son, I don't want to
go yet, but I can't wait
around to watch you die.

There was always a great darkness

moving out
like a forest of arrows

So many ships in the past

their bows bearing women
as stalks bear eyes

The burning ships

that drove their bowsprits
between the thighs of dreams

With my ear to the ground
I hear the black prows coming

plowing the night
into water

and when the wind comes up
I can smell the rotting wood

leaving a wake I want to be
left alone with

Night after night

like a sleeping knife
that runs deep through the belly

the tomb ships come.

I was walking
and the ocean
was above my knees

I didn't feel the cold
or mist hanging silent
above, but I knew
the darkness, old friend,
longer than I will admit

I knew the waves
in ways I know
I could never explain

You found me there
and called out for me
to come out of that grave
I was sinking in, I don't know
how deep I would have gone
had you not known my name

I should drop to my knees
and kiss the salt from your feet
thanking you with the sea on
my lips and leak salt of my own
offering gratitude for calling

Thank you through the mist
and waves, thank you for
my heart beating, not feeling
the cold, for my lips that never
tasted the lightless far below

Thank you for following
my footprints when I was lost,
drowning in a sea of sorrow.

The night carried you away
like a river
it wasn't a dream
it was a flood
even the buzzards were sad
as I walked along the evening
I wanted you
to come out of the dark
into the dark
I kept my eyes open
for the port of your neck
it was so easy to bruise
with its vessels
blue as the earth
and then the dam broke
like my voice
but not your spell
and when the moon came up
they took you away in a hearse
I double-crossed myself
with the holy water of your eyes.

Take your sweetness
and bury it deep,
for now is the time
that fire is needed;
hide the tenderness
where you'll remember
to never forget, for
the only fear to fear
is the wild running
through your veins;
take your boldness,
your coffee black nerve
and steady hand squeezing
a hot coal without a flinch;
take your bravery,
your sea legs stiffened
against the storm
of indecision;
take your bright eyed stare
into the dark clouds coming,
take them and nod your head
with downturned lips
at all you were afraid to be.

You are my wedding
reception for death
a heart beyond doubt
floats in your neck
like a compass
past lovers
holding close
a stethoscope
to my chest
and the final mist
of mourning
in your eyes I
am wondering
will I be missed
or just another
season in your life
passing like
summers turn
to autumns' leaves
falling one
     after
               the
                        other.

For a long time
I've been dreaming
of being the younger me
my heart leaning
into those dangerous places
like the wheels on a road grader

Nights to remember
seeing big lips in the moon
blowing its black and bad sax

Dreams of night sweats
and my lost loves
dancing in the fields
where the moon, a white cow
goes to chew her cudd

Dreams deep in other cities
and towns where photographs
all signed love are slipping
out of the frames of many mirrors

Dreams of an old soured pillow
waiting for its case to be called
shanghaied by the cold sea
a long ways from the mountains
where I once found young love

Dreams of a storm coming
still many miles away
hearing the wind in the trees

The thunder wakes me
like a backfire on a moonshine
run with two trembling fingers
finding me riding shotgun.

When I was thirteen
and still seeing daylight
between my ****** feet
I went to spend the night
with my best friend;
we watched Gunsmoke
on the TV and raided
the refrigerator;
I remember his sister
coming home later
and leaving a crack
in her door and taking
off her clothes before
turning the radio
of my childhood on
leaving it playing
all the hot night long
and I sill hum every one
of those sweet songs.

I made you of breath
of shadows and sunbeams
of boundlessness
of folding out and in like wings
of fallings and risings
from the gravity of things
I am your leaves without
limbs or leaving
I am the circles and spirals
your body carves from air
your leaps toward heaven
when you most love the earth
I was before you and will be
after you, I am the center
and the circumference
I am within and without you
And I am your comforter
when the cold winds come in
I am the point on the line
I am brief and desirable
I eat oranges and watch
the Northward flight of geese
my being roars like oceans
I rock myself in the cradle
of self doubt and other emotions
I sometimes let take control
I rock the world like a baby
I kiss the air like my lover
here and here and there
I embrace you, World
I am your second Moon
that rose from the South
I am your eyes, your mouth
your star, your tree
and something else
I am sand, river, feather,
grass, moth, l am forever
yet lost and not found
and I am something else
and I always will be
something to someone else.

I had been dreaming
about eating bruised peaches
that grew from a tree
by the river, its water
thick and sweet as sap.

I thought I saw an old woman
shaking her dustmop,
but it was only the moon
and stardust in the dark
that never stops.

In the fields
there was something barren
like a journey
and echoes of salt
sprinkling on a table
with food laid out for a wake.

The fog from the dream
by the river was smothering;
I was suffocating lying there
where it is said a young mother
once walked into the water
with the pockets of her dress
stuffed full of smooth rocks.

I woke when I heard
shouting that tore out the light
as night came flying by
like a bird dressed for a feast
wearing his finest black feathers.

I remember this girl
who went to the window
at dawn when it was still
dark in the winter and she
sees we have a long time
now that her father passed on
and we know we won't have to
go to school because the bus
it can't run, she slips her slip
over her hair and places it over
the chair near the fireplace
while I unlaced the sinew
of my boots, I remember it
well how we lost our cherry,
it was hard as a rock, like
breaking a wild horse, it was
a mirage of sound as the blood
moon sunk into the frozen ground
and I realized that the times
we can bat our eyelids, and
all of our nights and tomorrows
are not infinite, like love that comes
only once in a lifetime of sorrows.

It may be just a Picasso
blue period
I’m going through.

Or maybe it’s only
Winter’s darkness
not letting the clouds part
for the light of the Moon.

Why am I so sad at heart
whenever I write of you,
my woman of sorrow?

You, wrapped in your robe
like a blue, blue Picasso.

Love, I've forgotten
how to spell your name,
forgotten the taste,
the smell, the feelings,
all those things you
used to bring to mind;
no, not you, not her,
nor lovers now blurred
I've known in my life,
but you, Love, the meaning
and joy, the sweet pain
of one simple word that
I've not heard in so long
a time I can't remember.

Most nights
I reach inside
my mind
trying to unwind
those thoughts
like twist-ties
that bind
to keep the loaves
of bread
free of mold
and fresh;
un-plan the long
planned plan
of mine
to choose the time
of my demise;
and sometimes
I try to listen
closely to
the constant ringing
in my ears,
the rhythmic singing
whine and changing
tones that turn
the sadness
churning, the waves
of emotions raging
in my ocean,
blue as the bottle
kept by my bed,
sleep my quest; sleep
eternal, the rest
of death I beg, leave
me alone, leave
me one more night
of breath to breathe.

I was thinking
about back then
before I thought I
heard notes on
flutes made of reeds
when there was
no young bird
beating its wings
inside my chest
no light in my eyes
but this was long ago
before the shadow
of darkness came
to command the land
back when the moon
was the blind eye
of a fish in cold water
in the back of a cave.

If a person is quiet
enough inside,
they might just be
able to catch on to
the table of contents
of what it is
I’m trying to say, to
get to, to put away
before it's way
too late, and I don't
mean to
confuse you,
like before men
could speak,
they enjoyed confusing
one another
with signs,
they enjoyed this
as much as
a mirror enjoys
an image shine,
or the evening,
like a ship, enjoys
a sapphire grave,
but that's not what
I'm trying to do,
I only want you
to hear what I have
to say one more time,
just one more day
before it's weight
becomes way too great.

This book is full
of my father's eye lashes
He treated the pages
rough like his sons
pinching the daylights
out of them, I remember
mud and grease
on calloused thumbs
and you can still smell
Four Roses bourbon
in the morning
through the onionskin
He would not weep
he knew most folks
never kept their word
Anyway, his death
came through
like a hitchhiker
You could see it coming
like the slow light
of a faraway dead star.

I'll wake up
Mundy morning
dead tired
from restless
dreams about
the forbidden sound
of fish on ice,
a harmonica
full of ants,
cat paws that fall
in the night,
the breathing
of waterfalls,
the depth
of mountain roots
and falling soot
from the fires
of Viking pyres.

We can never be
both patriots and racists,
we were once the open arms
to the seas on both sides,
to the oceans of grasses
and deserts between,
we were once home
to the huddled masses
having no need for castle
walls and moats built
to segregate the freedom
we forget doesn't belong
only to us because we are
more than the buffoonery
and blowhard *******
saturating the evening news,
it takes more than a tweet
to govern a country, we are
more than the flag we hold
hands over hearts to honor,
more than the Trumpets
and twilights last gleaming,
we are the space seekers,
the star dusted travelers
brave enough to strap
ourselves to rocket fuel
and hope, we were the first
to help, we are more, and
it is time we were it again.

Silence comes
  from bones
that rot in the Earth
beneath a wet stone
with a carved name
   white as good teeth
in a hard jaw.

Silence is
  a homerun some kid
hit in Tennessee
in 1973 and a father
remembering the ball
  going like a bullet
deep into left center.

Silence is
  a brother grimacing
whispering your name,
through salt
  and tears on his cheeks,
one last time.

Silence, it just is...
  quiet, like pain.

The Moon is like lovers -
some so full of themselves
you can't break your gaze
away, while others
are half-lovers -
here tonight, gone
tomorrow - and then
there are those -
the quarter-lovers
- you know, the kind
who shine and pass by -
slow in the short nights
- not stopping long
enough to even whisper
- goodbye, my love.

Once I spent a winter
with a poem; everyday
in the woods at work
I would say it, never
writing a word until
I had it down in my mind;
it became what I called
a floater, a work song,
a chant, until it sounded
just right and undramatic,
and then I wrote it down
in the dirt with my boots
without changing a word
leaving it there for the birds
and the worms and the roots.

Poetry
to me
is taking
my pain
and making
it sing.

I raise my glass
to you, dear woman
across the horizon
out where the water rises;
here's to all the years
I've spent waiting,
to all the miles I made
myself across, a life
spent wandering in haste,
wondering just how
your salt would taste.

Night, that cheating wife
of the Sun pulls on
her black *******

the ones with a thong
and glittering sequins
that stll lets the moon shine
singing his silent love song

until dawn comes around
and she slides off her dark
stockings from each leg

slowly one by one
before her husband awakes
and asks her to break
him a golden egg

for breakfast, over easy
my sweet woman
and let the yolk run.

Some nights
the Moon is ivory
and the sky ebony
like Liberace's
white piano
and some nights
it's blue
as my worn out
work shirt
the sky black
as dirt
I've dug from
the Earth
or maybe
an empty plate
howled at
by a hungry dog
a woman
in a yellow dress
she lifts
wading in the sea
an empty ship
sailing west
its cargo of diamonds
having scattered
far in the wind
but some night soon
it'll be the nightlight
on the wall
across the room
from my dark
shaded window.