Got trouble again in Memphis
or she wouldn't be back
in her hometown
with a teething two year old
her mother tends to
when she picks up delivery work
or has a meeting
and she goes along
Sunday mornings
with more eyes on her than the preacher
not because of interest in salvation
so much as to mollify
her anxious mother
who believes she'll find
a better man
than the Tennessee hustlers
whose provinces are underserved
by streetlamps or revivals.

young suicides have spoken out
an echo from the lower rocks
bruised souls uncertain how to shout
or even listen to the clocks
celestial or most terrene
that ridicule the future past
armed crosses planted in between
young werthers with their futures cast
corrupted out of innocence
too soon to have the stoic eyes
unblinking into providence
rejecting even death's disguise
in words like these that slant the truth
poor folks palavering like brutes

i want to make the good things last,
or failing that, good memories,
those moments when the veil is torn,
and sorrow is a secret prayer

look close, the old world moldering,
unsightly damage year by year,
the yellow sun yet billowing,
indifferent to all we fear--
the sacred disappearing,  god
reduced to holding seances
behind an aging, thin facade
of emperors and witnesses,
whose outer dark is just the street
gaslit by hawkers selling shade
half guaranteed to stand the heat
on sidewalks chalked where children played,
as life gets marked down, sold by lots,
and mothers visit mounded plots

reactions to the soneteer
have ranged from *** to calumny,
substantial offers of a beer
and nights that live in infamy.
supposing that i had a choice--
such suppositions have their place--
i'd give it up, this peasants' voice,
to see the pleasure in your face,
a secular beatitude
no less amazing in its grace,
that saved my soul from solitude,
than any sacrificial blaze,
or resurrection from a cave,
despite the way my songs behave

not sleeping after too much *****,
coffee & bad news & lines
of questionable length
and meter
pushing to spill something
on the sheets
as if i were the arbiter
or at least a voice recognized.
this is our wilderness

Sammy can't afford the pills
so he's learned to cook
with just a spoon
& some shaky friends