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.

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.

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

Twelve years ago today
The world changed for the worse

April came with a sigh.

4/1/14

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.

I dream of white
winds blowing,
like dogwood
petals, or snow.

This is the longest
I’ve been so close
to you on a sheet
of papered dreams.

Like you, death,
these poems
about you, come
as no surprise.

Close to the last page
between the covers,
still I think I’ll need
at least one other.

I hoped before
I could let you go,
before I hoped
the white winds blow.

--- · May 7
Traded a sharp knife and pony
For a sharper wife

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 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.

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.

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.

Sometimes you have to let the mare have her head.

r

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

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?

Some may think
a spark
is just a spark
a weak attempt
at a start
to a flame
when in fact
it is the beginning
of an art
found in the ashes
and stone cold bones
of a dark hole
in Zhoukoudian.

If I knock on your heart's door,
will it open with arms spread wide?

So much depends upon...
how willing
you are to stand
in line
glistening in the rain
waiting to sign
your name
longing to right
the wrongs
and fix the broken
axles of the red
wheelbarrow
and maybe paint
it blue
as a Blue Jay
flying free
in a blue sky
above white chickens
like shadows
of clouds
over the barnyard.

When I was young
I broke all the rules
Made up my own
And broke them too
My teachers and Mom
Knew not what to do
They implored to my Dad
Who simply smiled
And said "that's my lad"

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.

There is this taste
that I can’t rinse, spit
or rid myself of lately
and it’s not the kind
left behind by a dentist
yanking a wisdom tooth
out or the ****** mouth
from an eighth grade
playground go around
or bad blood in the hood
but something more
like a fight for a life bored
to the bone and hung
out to dry in the sun
having to bite my tongue
on the curse of the irony
of it all that I find too
hard and bitter to swallow.

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.

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.

;)

I followed a cloud
for five long years
of my life, until I fell
into a pond thinking
it was a beautiful woman
letting  her gown fall down
from around her shoulders,
and the words for her
******* were so strange,
I had to learn to pronounce
them with lips shaped like, oh,
I don’t know, maybe an O,
and teach my tongue new tricks.

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.

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.

What can I say
about changing places
and the weary night song
piled outside every window?

It can weigh you down
like happiness, like rain,
like the notion of destiny
or an obligatory farewell
that you carry strapped
to your shoulders.

Believe me, if it would help
you see things in a different light
I would only write poems
about love and dream gardens.

The sun and the fresh air
would do you a world of good,
and I would make it rain just enough
to spruce up the flowers.

I would read these in a French dialect
and part my hair accordingly
like a slight, wry smile.

But the truth is
I could never understand
why a single language is not enough.

Breath blown into an empty bottle
and tossed into the nearest stream.

This human need for a philosophy
of words when a howl would do
much better; after all, we are only dogs wearing a fancy leash and a collar
of home we sometimes call a house.

Places change because with the years
we change even less. We’ve spent
too much time in the dirt
and now everything is relative
because it is under our fingernails.

Scrape away rinse and repeat and still
the hounding memory of nights
under the stars, backs to the chill
of dry ground and nothing but a long sigh
for a sheet to pull up to the neck.

How many sighs does it take to make
a death? Just open your eyes
when the night peaks at its most
exotic and serious black.

We’ve been here before, you and I.
Heard sounds that would never
make sense out of context.

But there was no need to ever
translate what the crickets said.
Was there? For us, once, never a need.

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'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.

Stepped on one today
A stone alone
What would it have to say
Not ******
Just relating
To that stone alone
Simply waiting
For another stone alone

r

Remember when we burned
down the federal fences
and let a black family in
a white house built by slaves -

man, the fire was hot
and the smoke smelled like freedom -

but that was then, and here we are
not so much later, the rails are made
of iron like the fists of a dictator -

the smoke burns my eyes, man -
and now - I can’t breathe.

I saw the sun set
between my toes
and the moon rise
with just one eye
while my mutt Daisy
looked at me sideways
and sighed like maybe
she thinks I’m lazy
and I thought, ****’t
it’s a shame when a man’s
dog makes him feel bad.

my eyes:

intrusive,
are remote,

focusing on strangers,
and this neighborhood

isolated, in
their dimsighted faith;

no longer blissful,
which is
my true nature

scary, how blind i am,
how old, how
mortal

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.