"instantly" doesn't apply
though we use the word to describe
an eternity that passes
before one’s eyes

in the flash flesh takes
to surrender, when a bullet passes
through a heart, a skull is crushed
in a head-on collision  

let me pause a hand an "instant,"
to make the car key turn, or the foot fall
from the curb a momentous moment,
later

altering all destiny, by chance,
if I had the chance, to be master of a tiny cogwheel,
of one machine--I don't need omnipotence,
only the reins of time

in a stadium,
in the nosebleed seats,
a lemon rind moon was all the light we had
when the city lost power

the crowd murmured, impatient
for the carnage to continue, players knelt
on the turf; their coach-gods commanded,
Let their be light!

I rose to leave, when I heard them
a canine symphony from jackals who escaped
the ranchers' sights, the dumb traps,
taunting us, the light seekers

who knew not how to comport
ourselves without electric diversion, without
staged battles, while they roamed the dark,
snouts angled towards a charcoal sky

sharing song and scent, sentient though not
like we, but content to be yip yapping in the autumn night
while we lamented the lack of light, and yearned yet
for different blood

I don't hide under rocks
the way they say we do

I find a cool linoleum floor
in a condemned house

and hope it ain't got too many cracks
or no rat will come while I'm asleep

a popped fire hydrant can be a gift
from white gods

but as soon as they come twist it shut
I dry fast and slither off to shade

even if it's behind a dumpster:
Damon's got good trash

had me half a cold rib eye
from that heap last night

and a good nap 'til the city come to
dump the bin this rude dawn

now I'll be on the prowl but only long
enough to beg for some silver alms

only long enough to get red wine and find the next spot out of the sun

for these August streets are too hot
and make my cool blood boil

hey!
you lookin’ at me?
like you would if I wasn’t here
is it my stewed stench you fear?
you lookin’ at me?
you wonder at all where I been?
or if I committed the original sin?
you lookin at me?
like I’m some bug you gotta crush
or some load you forgot to flush?
you lookin at me?
how ‘bout I sit beside you in your holy hall?
would you then know you too could fall?
you lookin’ at me?
**** no
I ain’t even here

my stylus on the keyboard

is...

a vulture venturing from q to m, scavenging the whole way

spelling not a kind word, leaving a cyber trail of blood

mockingbirds rarely roost; when they do, they typeset self loathing, for what it's worth

mostly mourning doves make nest there, pecking keys, punctuating words with their sad songs

deaf as I am, I still hear them,
see their blue tales

not yet has an owl visited with its mythic wisdom, but I know one day it will call my name...

not a minute too soon, amidst this fluttering digital madness

mass ******, ****** masses
of other inferior classes
the tempest does this to beatific butterflies
locusts do this to the fecund fields
we do it to fair game and fowl
but we evince a primal howl
when it is done to our own
somehow surmising we hold the throne
and are of such lofty creation
we can engage in desecration/decimation
of a trillion voiceless vines
and all else within the confines
of the kingdom of lesser beasts
fodder for our feral feasts
were the “chosen” not fodder for…
Reltiha?

I scroll
mad missives
to the world

I rage against the good night
waging a farcical fight--against chronos,
its mechanical machinations

without these spinning spell
breakers, would the moon and the stars
be my finite measure?

****** if I know,
though I am compelled to write a history
of which I am a clockwork part

as if its epilogue applies to all but me,
denying me the curse to see, a winding down
of the great spring,

a coil well disguised--its tension
measured miserly, by ticks and tones
I hear but will never comprehend

why did you leave
without talking to me
I had to hunt you down
in the cyber world,
like some new age cop
in search of a common thief
the cancer took you
they said
you fought well
and did not let the demons of drink
torment you in your final days
they,
those who shared your space
at the end, had names
on their doors
next to yours
but I was with you
at the dawn of man
when we sailed dream ships
through seas of sirens
did you not want me there
while you spoke your last words
while the old dreams
spilled through the soundless air
I could have caught them
before they landed on the ground,
before others trampled on them
because they did not know they were there
did our time, our few moments together
in this long liquid languid
maddening minute, mean nothing
to you
why did you leave without talking to me
I would have listened,
even if you said not a word

with moonlight, he travels mostly
at night, past snoring hikers and embers
of fires that cooked their food, kept darkness
at bay, and heard what they had to say

if the coals could only speak, perhaps
he would find the right circle of stones,
a black heap of carbon that once glowed
red and gold, and her tale would be told

at least he would know the last words
she spoke in this wilderness--whether she
chose to vanish into the deep wood, fodder
for the scavengers

or was the prey of evil men,
who lurk at every turn--in bustling city
and quiet forest as well--vipers who strike
without warning, without curse or cause

when the moon's light wanes, he moves yet
in darkness, feeling his way, a nocturnal detective,
hoping to find what the others have given up
for lost and registered among the dead:

sign or scent of her--black coals or white bones,
a piece of tattered clothing, the canvas backpack
with her name, the hiking boots he laced for her
which left tracks he forever yearns to find...

he sat bedside with his great grandmother
stroking a hand laced with what he saw as
tiny blue rivers, flowing from a thin wrist
dammed by ancient knuckles

boulders chiseled by eighty-four years

he read from his book while Mommy
dozed in the chair, and nurses squeaked
in and out, all with half smiles he could
not decipher, for Grammy was sick

and when his mother was awake, she cried

he hadn't seen her tears before;
he tried not to look, preferring his book
with its pictures of the sun, orbiting
planets and mazy moons

and spaces in between where heaven might hide

he understood most of its words,
and none were of heavens--unless noxious gasses
and swirling clouds of dust were the winds which
whipped through the pearly gates

but his seven wise years knew that was not so

when he turned to the page of the
penultimate planet from the sun,YOU-ruh-nuss
he discovered it took four score and four years
to orbit our star once

math's mystery may have eluded him

though coincidence was not yet
in his lexicon, and now he knew Grammy
had her times around the sun, her eighty four
equaling one for the great tilting Uranus

blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both

she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes

she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not

she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye

a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter

another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed

and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,

the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever

from a eulogy, by a poet, of a poet:

she rewinds the years for the dead

to a time he sat around a campfire with the ancient ones, singing,

"old songs written by broken men in love with their own vanishing nature..."

and it hits me, I am now among their ranks

proudly proclaiming, I am Natan Lupan, the grey wolf

yet seeing more a shivering coyote in morning's mirror

no noble howl to greet the day, but scripting what I will say,

to a world of faces, without whose feigned graces,
I would be put out to pasture

they see the white beard, the thinning mane, and wonder why I am still among them

then they decide where to go to lunch

without me, but I do not lament this loss

broken sons, long lost lovers, buried friends, and a Medicare card trump such trivial slights

they know nothing of my pitiable past

nor do they care--they weren't there
when my Elysian dreams and grandiose schemes
were born, and died

now a darkness approaches, and I fear I face it alone

though a borrowed line reminds me,
others have been there before...

sitting around a fire in the night,
mesmerized by flames that flap gold wings for short flight, then become red embers when men take sleep

when morning's cold ashes are lifted by the wind, I hope the songs we sang will be their celestial waltz

he saw carp in the reeds
cats, whiskered bottom feeders, were there too,
deeper in the green waters

he wormed his hook, thanked
the good lord for the river, for tonight Christ's bread
would be fat fish, fast fried

thirty days and thirty nights,
he had eaten the sour beans, the gruel,
his stomach growled now like a lion

ready for the hot white flesh
but the fish were slow to bite--by noon he had but two carp;
neither longer than his hand

he decided God hadn't heard
his entreaties; he shouted out to the white sky
where he believed the lord lived

“let these fish find my line
fill my belly before I'm caught, drunk again
on the devil's broth in the town square”

but God didn't hear, for
three scrawny swimming sinners were all
he caught by a hungry sundown

leaving him eager to find
the old still, and barter with its master, for he was
more generous than the Almighty

who created all things that
swam in the rivers, who tempted him with bounty
but denied a red reaping

through my microscope, I spend hours
looking at the interstices of a plant cell wall;
if the earth did not spin, I could endure the whole
frigid night staring through my telescope at one violently still
crater on the moon

but I eat only soggy cheerios for breakfast,
ramen--chicken flavor--for lunch, EVERY day,
and either Dinty Moore stew or cheese ravioli
for my evening repast

my toothbrush must be blue, the paste pure white
and I could never tolerate the plight, of socks slipping
down past my ankles

I love Vivaldi, Brahms, and the sound of soft rain,
but hail batters my brain like a billion ball bearings
on an defenseless tin ***

my alarm must face due north
and my bed sunset west, beyond those things
I have no peculiar request

except
that things remain EXACTLY the way they are/were
for eternity

I can't play a savant symphony
like some would expect, or do cataclysmic calculations
in my head

though I can recall,
two years and four months ago today, a gold thumbtack sitting alone
on my dead granddad’s wood work bench, and the gray smelling roll of duct tape I placed precisely three inches from it, to keep it company

and if I ever again travel 365.26 miles to visit Granny
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA, it better be there, not having dared
to move a nightmarish nanometer

the curs keep on coming
the crowds keep on chanting

the arena is not grand
emperors do not watch

as blood sprays the plywood
walls thrown up to pen these pits

in their epic struggle to
keep blackness from overcoming them

the spitting spectators
long ago lost their souls

now there is only survival
of the meanest bull in the ring

and the resentful surrender
of a few bucks, if their dog loses

and the removal of the dead  
while the blood dries, and the next beasts snarl

I see black ones, white ones,
tall ones, short ones

the stops have no benches;
only signs, saying:

we stop here, to ****** you peasants
from the mean streets

some lean on the poles, weary
of waiting for their ride

or the winning lottery ticket
they dream of buying

others hunker, if their knees
still allow such a stance

or by chance, pride doesn't
keep them upright

the last one I saw was curled
in fetal repose

dead or just resting, preparing
for a new beginning?

I will never know, for I didn't
stop, at the bus stop

but I'm with them, traveling hope's
haggard, hapless highway

“lets split this diner and have a beer”  
four coffees in an hour made the world
too awake for him  
we walked to the Pink Mule,
the first bar we saw  
he knew all of the bars--all bars knew him  
the bartender was Abraham
but looked like a Bob    
he had a bourbon poured before
Charles made it to the stool
and looked at me like I was a fool  
“a light beer”  
Bukowski didn’t bother to laugh
though I am sure the word “***”
was rolling around in his head  
looking for a place to get out  
he kept on about Selma,
sweet succulent Selma  
how anybody that hot
could rule the world  
dragging men around by their dongs  
without lifting a finger  
that is why the gods made wine, he said  
not for some sacrament for the holy humbled
but for men hunched over like balless beggars,
he said, when Abraham Bob  
filled his jigger a second, or fourth time  
men made that way by all the Selmas  
whose middle name had to be vexation  
a whiff of her could get you to take  
a **** job, where you spent the day
hunched over, hoping, she would be there
when you got home  
even if she was, you wouldn’t remember  
in the morning, when you would go back  
to the grinless grind, hunched over, hoping  
Selma would be your wine

the clanking
of the radiator
the only sound

except her breaths
which she counts, as if
she knows the finite number
until her last

her coffee cold;
in it she sees the night
from which she came:
the blind, deaf walkers,
the fuming taxis she left
in the square streets

her eyes well
with the last drops
of the last light
of the last star
in her galaxy
of loss

only one tear falls
into her cradled cup
where it vanishes into
the indifferent sea

she sups it slowly
back inside, where night belongs
but never stays

Will was drawn to that spot
spirits or not, something-body pulled him there
like a mystic magnet that attracts flesh

and flesh he found in that grove, between
a stubborn hackberry and twisted oak: mother and newborn,
their blood soaking the prairie grasses

he walked the hard mile to the pay phone
passing but one unfriendly ranch house on the way
a growling cur keeping him at bay

the operator connected him
with the sheriff who collected his one deputy
and was there in half an hour

Lord Almighty, Lord Almighty
the deputy kept saying, those chants hanging
in the hot air above the bodies  

while the sheriff checked for pulses,
his khaki pants painted round red at the knees
for he was too old to squat  

neither knew the girl, who couldn't
have been age of consent, but the baby looked pink,
strong, though still as stone

the ambulance couldn't make it there;
the driver and deputy carried them out
on one stretcher

both commenting how light
their fated cargo was, how it was a shame
they perished in that old copse

Will knew that was meant to be
when he found them: the little one first clinging
to a dark warm sea inside

forced out by time, her helpless heaving,
and some invisible hand that took part in all matters
of flesh, spirit and bone

the same hand that did not cradle them
but at least found them shade, a cool but cruel
reprieve from their terse time in the sun

Sweetwater, Texas, 1959

I see the barrel at the temple
feel the nickel sized circle on the skin
hear the loud last report
after the trigger pulled

daily, this scene scrolls in the head
a secret, e pluribus unum,  one
no other players read
in their scripts

I don't write theirs, only
mine, and they have their own
clandestine plans, their own
scenes at the edge of the
abyss

sometimes, I see them
fall, screaming, or silent
until they land among the other
bones

I don't know, I will never
see that place with my eyes
for I lack the courage to jump
or squeeze the trigger

no
I will find a way to sleep
and never wake up, let others wonder what lines
I read in my final hours hiding from the sun,
or why I chose pills and potions
instead of the gun

my cousin liked to have breakfast
at an open air café, with his fiancée, on Fridays
the owner knew she loved French breads, having
been schooled at the Sorbonne  

the bakery made them at his behest    
he would tell his staff to keep one for her
and to bring a bag when served;
she always saved half for later  

rush hour was madder than usual  
that night, until the bombs blasted
and brought the synovial silence that comes
in the wake of wondering, what
has happened?    

the sirens screamed soon enough
and my cousin smelled the smoke  
cordite, yes, but burnt baklava,
Maamoul as well  

his fiancée came to him that night  
watched and waited to hear if anyone they knew  
was lost, their hands clasped tight, breaths shallow,
in the languid hush after the city slowed
to its mournful rest  

the sun rose, the skies clear, crisp, to their surprise,
and they went to the café, where the owner apologized
for the wicked, wicked world, and for not having baguettes
after the bakery died

in the gray,
milky silence
of the morning…
before we smell the hiss of bacon
before the smog licks
the creamed crimson sky
before we hear the scurrying simian stream
(of which we are a inexorable part)
before the pungent circles
of Michelin and Firestone
have their daily chat
with the asphalt
before we wake to all
this grotesque grandeur
to once again
kneel, supplicant
against the wheel
before we turn the key
to ignite the spark
to fetch the fire within,
we were with Morpheus,
perchance
dreaming of greater gods
of light,
before
the cluttered clatter
of this unholy day

he crawled from the slime
of the swamps, like a creature formed
before god made light

coated solid with the muck of the earth,
the blood of those they slaughtered, and that
of his own brethren--though the feverish foam
in these ancient paddies had wedded forever
the sanguine sap of them all

the sole survivor
to tell the old tale--the fable of light
giving way so eagerly to dark

who was he to tell the story
spared the wrath of the flesh
what of those who lay behind him
now forever silenced--had not they earned
the right to be permanent patrons of light

who was he to speak of these things
but it must be, for in the beginning someone
had to utter, with thunderous certainty, the
greatest promise ever broken:
let there be light

when you left,
I heard your voice each night

days, weeks droned on, and
your words became more faint

on the anniversary of your passing,
you came to me only in murky dreams

sound, it seems, is as impotent there
as it is in deep space

will another revolution around the sun
make you vanish for good

will I be there with you, wedded to black,
listening without ears

to creation's eternal command for coughing carbon
to return to dust

will there again be an us, in that place
where nothing escapes,

save wondrous waves that whisper
the ghostly story of our demise

I looked into his eyes
not knowing if he had
a reciprocal vision

no doubt he smelled me; his
sense of scent more developed than
we sluggish two legged beasts

for each step I took
back, he took one forward, our
synchronized death dance

if by chance, I survived
my feckless faith would not
be revived

after all, I had a shotgun
pointed at his noble chest; without
my terrible tool of modernity
I would be his feral feast

when my deed was done
and this creature was supine,
desecrated by the fearful squeeze
of my finger

which God would I thank?
the one man wrote into existence
to allay all mortal fears

or the one I believe carved
canyons from stone, the one who
knew river life was flowing in
every newborn raven's heart

from which one should I dread
retribution for such a profane act?
which would punish me for the slaughter,
the scarlet blood in the pure white snow?

both--both would have seen,
both would have known, the tyranny
of evil men--me, all my brothers cast from
Eden--such a ******* of stardust

gulls cawed, so loud their calls
echoed off the cliffs behind us, a ghost flock answering,
though not shrill enough to rouse us

they flew crisscross patterns
and dove into the surf, but not one landed
on the carrion strewn across the sands

not like the vultures of my youth,
ravenous black hawks that began their devouring
at the first scent of death, or a moment before

no, these creatures merely called
to one another, a curious conversing
about the carnage below

perhaps their strange song
our dirge, as they swooped to and fro, wings
slicing currents carrying our souls

Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944

he dragged his feet
her veil scared him
she was not smiling

she bent over
the ******* box
he could not see
what was inside

her lips moved
but he did not hear her
he heard the big people whispering,
talking softly

like they usually did
when they were not singing
in this place, this room
with high ceilings, colored windows
and benches he thought
they called pews

he couldn't see him,
his daddy, though many
said he was there

he wondered what
was in the black box
and when his mother began
to walk away, he saw her hand print
on the surface, but no thumb

he dragged his feet again
she pulled his hand harder
he wiggled free and went back
to the box

Uncle Roy picked him up
to carry him down the aisle; when he did
he thought he saw his daddy asleep
in the box

and his mother's hand print
was still there, but now missing
*******

he knew that number
two--he looked back a final time
and saw other big people at the box,
walking, looking, perhaps being quiet
to not wake Daddy

that afternoon,
the boy fried an egg on the sidewalk,
sunny side up

Mother said to waste food was sin,
though she had no qualms about dumping
Daddy's rot gut and gin

while Daddy was comatose
with drink, down the sink she would pour it;
the son knew the ritual well  

tonight was the same, Daddy ******
and couched, Mother cleaning his puke
before the dinner dishes

Daddy wouldn't recall a thing tomorrow,
another day which held mother's silence from fear,
shame--Daddy's from ethanol's eager eraser

Daddy would never know a transformer
blew but a block from their house, leaving
unsettled scores in the dark

or that for once Mother and son
wouldn't have to look at Daddy's hangdog face,
the incandescent haze which bathed it absent,
thanks to a blessing from a blackout
of another sort

blink

from mother’s womb
(blink of the eye)
to silent tomb

I did not go out to see it  
the winds were too cruel  
as April’s cocky currents often are  
though the sky was a clean black palette
on which it painted perfect its orange face   

inside, in the incandescent haze
you were restless, reaching up from the bed  
at ghosts I could not see  
you were seven and eighty,
and there were many
who haunted your nights,
especially now, when the doctor had said
nothing  was left to be done,
but the watching and waiting    

he had given you little
of Morpheus’ sweet sap, as per your request  
and I left the light on, as you demanded  
what about the dark did you not like  
save what we all fear, as the end grows near?    
for whom were you grasping?    

I suspect I knew, from the old days,
when I would sit on your knee,
the other big people there with you  
swapping stories in the gray Lucky Strike air  
you thought I was too young to understand
(and I probably was)  
you thought my mystic memories
of that slur of beer buzzed words
would trail into the city night,
like your smoke  
(but they did not)  
sooner or later, mostly later,
you and your buddies
would get around to the ships  
I would see sails and pirates
but your tongues would paint thunder and steel
(which I somehow could taste)  
Eddie the **** and David the Jew,
those were the two, the ones
you let slip through your hands  
the ones the salted sea took too soon  
your eyes were not bleary
when you told the tale,
every sentence punctuated
by a swig of Schlitz, a drag off a ***
your buddies told their own stories  
of those who slipped through their paws  
or were blown “all to hell and back”
or drowned, without a simple sound    

those were the spirits
for whom you reached,
anemic apoplectic apparitions
in the indifferent  air, but still there  
for only you to see, waiting for you
while I wondered when you would join them  
and if I would yet brave the wailing wind
under the blood moon

you've been on the same branch
on my Hackberry all day

in shade; though I don't know the glare of a star
means the same to you

for me, the arc of the Texas sun is measured
by Mercury and the clock

for thee, time, heat, and light are perhaps pulse
without calibration

I only know your mate has been in the shallow grass
beneath you...

prostrate, still, silent--since well before
this dawn

black ghosts, white ghosts
line my lane, ether's balloons
watching the night,
calling to me

what does thou see
mourner in the flesh, others?
fainter apparitions, silent
even to us

you won’t find him, they say,
no soul stays close to home, we fell
in distant moors and this night, we are
the whispers in your thatched roof,
rain strolling down your old stones
fog rolling from the ponds

but, he will be
wafting over another's hedge,
far from the glens where you threw him
the ball, miles from the roads where
he road his bike

he won’t be near
the blackened stacks by the tracks
where a strange body found him,
transformed him into one of us
with a blade honed for
eternity…before
that night

one ever sharp,
even though it was thrown
into the Avon before your boy
was cold

look for your lad, your love
in the wild sea, in the shapes waves weave
blue on sunny days; he will be there
not black or white like we

you will find him, ever
near, though far from where
you look

he looks to that place
hidden in the grey folds and
white matter where the words
and images are birthed

all he sees are blue beans:
jelly beans, frijoles beans, kidney
beans--all as blue as robin's eggs,
strewn on a pitch black field

he waters them to see
if they will grow, for surely
this field is of magic or
at least dreams

but, it seems, nothing
sprouts; the fallow field remains
the same: a bed for countless
beads of blue

he lays his stylus down,
a sword he wielded for naught,
closes his eyes for a final view,
and all he sees is blue

Bobby's couch has a biography
of cigarette burns, food stains,
and cushion wear, all there, though
he doesn't know who wrote it

for $5 at the AmVets store
he bought a place to sit, and sleep
on nights when he was too wasted
to it make to the bedroom

where he has a mattress on
the floor; Bobby knows its life story, because
he filched it from a loading dock
at Sleep World

in five months,
it's had three women sleep
on it -- all hookers who gave
him a freebie

after they did copious lines
of coke on the glass topped coffee table
Bobby inherited from his brother, along
with a recliner he sold for ****

Bro's doing hard time at Huntsville;
he wanted Bobby to have a nice place
Bro gave his '73 Ford to their half sister
since Bobby's licence was suspended

when Bobby gets that oil field gig,
he's going to buy another Lazy Boy,
and a refrigerator to stock with beer...
maybe later a color TV

Sherman, Texas, 1978