and you ain't gotta dig too deep
to find it

it's right behind your eyes, in that picture
you see

of Mama runnin' half naked from the house covered
in blood and snot

and crack crazed daddy chasing after her
with a butcher knife

before the man come and gunned
him down

it's there in that lump throat memory of grandad telling you his own Papa got the whip

for standing tall against a bulldog
Alabama sheriff

hell is being sent to Granny
for foster care

and her telling you she ain't got enough
food for herself

it's wearing shoes so tight
every step is a jab

a reminder everything you do
is gonna come with pain

what Hell ain't is what that fat pastor
claims it to be

some fiery place I can't even
see

buried so far down I can't feel
its infernal heat

hell, hell is right here on my black
and blood painted street

they could see the Rockies on most clear days

though their ranch was as flat as any Kansas cornfield

the slopes cursed them with wicked storm now and then

but other than a few shingles off a roof and a steer or two struck by lightning, their place was no worse for the wear

Father and Son ran this place as did two generations before them,

and after chores one eve they watched a flood they thought only God could command

they flipped a coin to decide who would take a truck of supplies and who would stay to tend to the herd

the boy won the toss--just as well the old man figured; his spirit was not as ready for the road as it once was

he helped his boy load all the pickup would hold and his only son left on a clear dawn

he sliced the Oklahoma Panhandle while most folks were still eating breakfast

Amarillo was in his rearview by lunch; he had a hunch he could make it all the way there by sunrise the next day

odds are he would have, had a fleeing Houstonian not fallen asleep at the wheel and pulled into his lane under a midnight sky

the doctor from a Texas town with a name the father wouldn't want to remember assured him his boy went fast...and didn't suffer

once the father got his son's mangled body in the ground,  the old man took his grief straight to the store, filled up another truck and left his stock to fend for themselves, as he took a journey his boy was not destined to complete

he didn't shed a tear while he unloaded the supplies on a new coastal plain, amid scores who did not lose a son

though surely he was not the only one, he thought, who would cry himself to sleep that very night

where waters his son never saw receded,
far from where the mountains meet the plain

I didn't pick my name
anymore than I asked for all this rain
to fall on my streets

I thank the good Lord above
Amelia didn't live to see this--me
in this chair, a leg lost to
the sugar diabetes

her cat disappearing
in the night

the water's to my waist now,
but I ain't cold--just hungry
and dog tired

last night with Noah's flood
arisin' I could have sworn I saw
two water moccasins slithering
around my one good leg

I did prayin' a plenty
and didn't sleep a wink

dawn came quiet--guess
the neighbor's rooster run off
for high ground

if there is any left on God's green earth

my ears are goin'
but I know I hear an outboard

someone is coming to save me
to pull me from this room turned to toilet

someone

the sound of that motor's fading...
they'll be back

in the meantime, I'll keep
calling for that cat

there's high spots
where she could be

and I could swear I saw
a ray of sunshine through
those clouds

and when they come for me
I'll tell them my name

give them a good laugh

Dickinson, Texas, August 28, 2017

penning a poem in his Oakland
flat, he was stuck at double nines
each of the lines was fueled
by a Winston, each stanza, cheap
red wine, and quiet desperation

outside, the beat of bongos, the pop
of zip guns and the wail of sirens; if
the summer of love was hot at Haight,
nobody told the Panthers who crashed
in the pad below his

he wanted to tell the world this,
epic style, an odyssey on asphalt
a choreography of elbows breaking glass,
and boys running fast, in 'hoods where
every mother's son died too young

but he couldn't weave the right words
to end a story that started with **** filled
hulls of ships, the crack of whips, a war
of bro against bro, and Jim Crow to keep
the nightmare alive in the light of day

now the "Man" snatched them up
with draft notices, turned boys into men
and men into monkeys to be mowed down
in jungles in a question mark on
a map most had never seen

stanza 99, where were the words?
another Winston, another swig of sweet
red wine, though nothing came, until he
heard it--a baby crying in the night
and he picked up his Bic and wrote:

Here you are, coal black child of a distant star
calling out in a language as old as time, "I am hungry!
Hungry for more! Fill my belly with mama's milk,
my lungs with god's free air, and let me grow strong,
straight and brave--brave enough to dream through
all this dreaded darkness."

Oakland, August, 1967

we started school during
the Korean "police action"
like extra syllables made
murderous mayhem more
palatable than calling it
another dreadful WAR,
half a decade after we won
the last one

those of us who survived yet another
crazy Asian WAR are now fading fast

I take in news of our passing
with my morning coffee, reading
the obits like they were the sports
scores

and every one I see whose numbers
are smaller than mine remind me I
am playing Russian roulette with the clock,
every hour

were it within my power,
I'd spin those hands backwards
to a day before cybertime

when Donny, Johnny and I went
to the park to toss a hardball into
well pocketed gloves, and discovered
the delights of peanut butter and
marshmallow cream sandwiches

back, back to a day Ike was pres,
and I would watch The Twilight Zone
with religious fidelity--back, to a time
so ancient Maris had not yet slammed in
number 61, chipping away
at the Babe's immortality

some told us the end was near,
and death by fierce fire was a reasonable fear
long before the missiles of October
and JFK's intrepid blockade

but the mushroom clouds never did appear,
and here I am with Medicare card in hand,
living in the same land where men with funny
hair make ominous "tweets"

and Manchild dictators with tiny peckers
lob missiles into the sea

wishing Clark Kent were still around
ready to don his cape and take a leap
and a bound, and save us
from ourselves

but first he would have to find a phone booth
in which to change...

only three days ago,
you blotted out the Sun,
casting as many spells
as you did shadows

tonight, you're but a sickle;
shaved to that anorexic shape
by the third stone from a ball of fire,
which couldn't make a dimple
or a pimple on Canis Majoris,

still I stared at you, luna
imagining the ancients, barefoot
on this same rock, who saw
magic in your pocked face

how far we've come
in scant millennia, making tubes
with their own blessed fire, to blast
us from the bounds of earth

so we could look back
at our spinning blue orb
and compare small steps
to gargantuan leaps

nor Horace--my Ars Poetica was ars psychotica,
cannabis my myrrh

though I must have known Homer, for my thumb
took me across vast asphalt seas

where I was tempted by sweet sirens, and didn't resist, while others crouched crowded in desks and read tales of two cities

unaware I was ever there, hungry, road weary, far from their land of oblivion