Who knows, as the evening coughs and starts,
What thing will call attention to itself--
Some poem or the fire, or the window
That breaks in shards as Randy collapses
Through it, having held his whisky as well
As a groundskeeper can be expected
On a fall evening to hold whisky,
Finding himself inadvertently now
Bleeding on the bedroom floor of Nora,
Beside the bed where she lies *******
Sam and another guy whose name he can't
Remember but has seen somewhere before
As parties tend to run together more.
He lets himself outside the bedroom door.

The green leaves fluttering against the blue sky
Where the moon has lately been,
Unapproachable beauty
On slanted branches
                         synergistically arranged,
My cranial nerves reflecting
What has been shot forth
In such profusion
As to lift
A humble soul.

no way to pay the city bills
and not much reason anymore
the turn of the key the lock's click
step back inside her mother's house
who'd tried hard to wait up but slept
instead in the small recliner
the television left on low
with food still warm in the oven
next morning unpacking her truck
she speaks to the neighbors next door
says it just didn't work out well
she saves the long story for me
brings pizza and knows i'll have beer
enough to go back twenty years

America, these unconventional
Blues got bags and stretchers
For the blue light special,
Chalk for the teachers
Of the wrong kind of freedom
My old co-worker from
The sawmill days
Steers a riverrun now,
Tugs barges through
The stations of the
Mississippi bridges,
Writes on FB
These protesters should
Get a job
So we don't pay
For their cell phones and health care,
Bullet wounds and bad decisions
Like the color of
Their parents
And the shape
Of their skulls
Phrenologically
Speaking.
He's got no ear for the music,
America's Blues,
Just get off the street
Son, it's yr own
Fault if yr head
Gets Kracked
Or yr shot in the back
By the Blues.
He'll vote for law,
Pardon vigilantes
And fire those *******
Millionaires that dare
To take a knee
Or fail to play the game.

when she begins to tell me this
im sure ive known it all along
four tours as a tank commander
could be to blame for how he  changed
from someone who respected her
and taught two boys to say their prayers
to fists and angry eyes night moves
and never any more desire
she packed and left the army base
in a years old car with rusted
rear quarters and one headlight gone
victim to an aluminum
bat that once knocked two ***** over
the outfield fence as they looked on

The first thing we moved in, west coast
Or Mississippi, was speakers,
Then the amp and turntable.
That way we had music
As we pushed in the couch and chairs,
The kitchen table and sometimes
A television.  Magical
Evenings filled with despair followed,
Like cold on rain, and we shivered
As the inexperienced do.
I remember the train station
Floor in Monterey, Mexico,
My apologies
Among the vendors with their carts,
And good advice I got that night.
You like that watch?  Put it in your
Pocket.  But we were only young and dumb
Enough to leave home with traveler's
Checks and a taste for tequila,
Not like the families waiting now
For how long it takes the sheriff
To show up after the notice.

Because the morning has easier
Decisions, the old rise early,
Coming to our coffee and eggs
In bowed appreciation
Of the harvesters and hens,
Opening the paper
With bent fingers
And lowered expectations
Of good news, prepared
To see familiar departures
And a history of marriages
That have somehow survived.