Memory, sweet Lorraine, has us
On her tongue straight up, your salty
Lips commanding the pleather couch
As Marie tasted, like yourself,
Delights between your churchly vows,
Bacchus teaching us, twice born, how
Gods know love is made, immortal
Dance from dusk till dawn, forgetting

She had fought with Dan and you had
Visitation scheduled with your
Prisoned man, forgetting all I
Ever knew of what we were and
Why we should be elsewhere soon.
Come, I'd like more exploration.

some questions don't have answers
a hole too big to fill
words placed carefully in the abyss
the love in an old portrait
barely faded, black and white,
from a one-room school
the need to be needed
the astonishment
of desire

What's worth remembering
Is hard to say,
Words being less than innocent,
Harder to  avoid than
Disappointment
Or the boneyard
And seldom adequate,
Even when arranged
Carefully,
Like a fresh cut spray
On the remains
Of what was once
Alive.

I chose a place you might find me,
Settled in and opened a road
Without making it too easy
Traveled,  waiting like some misplaced
Monk, who hasn't vowed to give up
Anything, knowing it would all be gone
In the devil's time and we'd sure
Have less to show for it all than
A preacher's feast on Sunday when
The prodigal daughter needed
A rededication and spoke
Her mind instead, saying this place
Could be Calvary, you know it
Maybe is.  I wouldn't be shocked.

If I were the man in my dreams,
Your feet would be back on my floor,
Or up in the air once again,
With nothing much said for an hour.
Such truth in the night is released
That morning seems all but sincere,
Your absence like abstinence preached--
A sermon I don't wish to hear.
Long afternoon offers its legs,
And shadows of telephone poles,
That slant like a man of ripe age.
Forgive me my various goals--
Your pleasure was always the plan,
The dream of a wide awake man.

Where this road leads, you might get lost.
When you've traveled it far enough
You recognize the signs, what's left
From target practice and the wind.
I'd give you more to go on if
I hadn't lost the thread and now
It's speculation mostly, though
A little moonlight still endures
And I'll be waiting if you need
A ride, or a place to walk by.

All morning & into the night,
Searching the universe for words
That might move you this way again;
Wishing they were available,
Or could be cobbled together.
Suggestions are welcome,  I'll pay
What I can--a nickel a word,
A sawbuck if you keep it short--
Maybe eternal devotion
For the time we got left,  enough
If we stretch it, to storm heaven.

My losses don't add up to much,
The way that I remember them--
Money, a girlfriend who could ****
Like the devil, fight like a mink,
Still does with another old man.
The abyss lies most before me
And I'm eyeing it like a sailor
Who's seen storms before but not this.

The night's compassion for sinners,
Even in a small town like this,
Colors the evening red and blue.
My own distraction from death's stare
Is a woman who has seen him
Take her brother and now below
The surface of this reservoir
Allows my **** the pleasuring
Of toes and arches as we seem
To keep our distance, just bathers
In the Blood River where Christians
Come morning will baptize their dead.

The pleasure of a well turned phrase
Does not approach your touch, your taste,
My tongue's adventure in your lips,
Smooth motion of your pulsing hips.
If words could ply their way inside,
I'd give up my infernal pride
And scream your name--a madman's way--
To ask if you have more to say.

Woman dancing in the rain,
I see you have replaced the sun.
The world revolves around you.

I'd like this night shift better
If words were worth your time,
Or I had more command of them--
Enough to move your eyebrows,
Call all your lovers liars,
Convince you I'm your touching stone.

Up before the birds
Have anything to say, preferring--
Except the owls--
Daylight to this protracted night
And none of them in the odd habit or need
Of recording that which might not otherwise
Be remembered, this linear
Declension of an oral pass along.
The cats are glad for an early meal,
Before returning to their torpor,
And my lover--whom I'm careful
Not to rouse--
Has better sleeping habits than
My own,
And will listen,
Once the birds are singing,
To this redacted song.

That sound--that sound you hear
That makes you come alive,
That makes explosions + relief,
That blues broke down
In a  half-filled bar on Beale Street,
On an ordinary Wednesday night,
An ordinary woman
With dark curls and a small face,
Blue eyes, who walks in
Through the front door, past
Your table in a modest, patterned
Mid-length dress, pleasantly round,
Not tall and about your age
Or a little more
And you think maybe
She's come for the night shift,
Pouring drinks, serving
The occasional pizza, cheeseburger, wings
And steps instead onto the riser,
Nods to the band
And takes the microphone.


                        II

Old black guitar player Herman &
The trumpet player,
****** thin and white as flour,
Who accepts the occasional, ordinary
Hummer from your friend Jane--
Not Chet Baker but he's got
Chops--
An adequate sunburned drummer,
Double bass obscuring all but an Afro.


                         III

Smell of blue tobacco smoke,
With just a little ******
And in the dim light you reach out,
Put your hand on top of your lover's hand
As soon as you hear that sound,
Echoing Etta--Steal Away.
And then she parks the mic
Back on its stand and leaves,
And the glow of just lit
Cigarets
Is all the evidence
The evening needs.

Where I'm not thinking
Right tonight could be
That place you left,
Reflecting like a looking glass--flawed,
Picked up cheap
At an antique store.

On cold mornings, before school,
And before the mill started,
I could earn two dollars
By shoveling down the top
Of the sawdust pile
As steam rose around me.
A drag chain brought bits of wood
From under the circular saw
That cut railroad ties,
Two by fours and tobacco sticks.
Twenty feet high, the view
An eagle's,  I had not read
Of Sisyphus, though when I did
It came with understanding gained
From those mornings,
The smell of fresh cut oak
And the need to rearrange that dust,
So it wouldn't throw the chain
Off its sprocket.

Sunday evenings,  once a month,
Instead of going back to church
We drove to my grandparents' house,
Parked in two rows beside sedans
Belonging to my uncles--
A prison guard, two factory
Workers and a farmer.

Women brought food from the kitchen,
To men who put out cigarettes
To take a plate and a soft drink,
Then rounded up the kids outside.
Should I have been more than quiet,
When uncle told a racist joke?

Tonight no doubt you see through this,
You might say an attempt
Ongoing at seduction,
As popular as
A lost art
Can ever
Be.
Your flesh inspires a raft of words;
Beseeching poetry,
Phone calls and texts--
No one writes letters anymore.

Where do you go,
When you're back in town?
Do you drive by
The torn down church?
The old graveyard famous
For fornication, or the old-style
Dairy Queen with the good
Milkshakes?
Downtown's too young now--
Let's put it that way--
No one there you'd know.
Try to remember
Where you left your heart,
When you see me
Looking up the road.

My heart delights in your embrace,
Your cover for the multitude--
Insistence on a sacred place,
Where souls resurge in gratitude,
Accepting my outrageous mind
As easily as picture shows
That light the night as they unwind,
Amid the settling of crows.

Still learning what I should have learned
In nursery school,  where hearts get broke
And mended at the first recess,
Where nothing's ever what it seems
And no one thinks the day will end,
Or Christmas will indeed arrive,
With boxes full of promises--
The star stuck on the inside tree.
Consider how long you've been gone--
I can't imagine time that long,
Or where the **** the future fled.
You may return.  We might unite.
The trees are tall in my backyard.
I've watched them grow, not seeing them.

With no more thought than lovers give
To morning or the rising tide,
The future of the universe,
Or what it takes to tell the time,
The spectre covers all our bets--
The coins unseen, cash for the boat.
I'll not insist on innocence,
The taste of something not foretold.
Your wilderness has my regard,
Less charted than the deepest floor
Of any ocean riverfed,
Where rain is born again, again.
The beautiful need not delay
Such unrepentant leaves and wind.

My thoughts of you as I awake
Are not as pure as angels' dreams,
Unless they spent their night on earth,
Carousing at some roadside inn,
Leg wrestling on an unmade bed
To learn the mortal ways of man,
Which gods themselves scarce understand,
Except at certain festivals,
Or on a mission comically
Disguised as fowl or serpentry,
Beguiling those less innocent
Than you, my love, could ever be.
Small wonder that I'm losing sleep,
Imagining myself in deep.

at seventeen i couldn't wait
to blow this town discover more
the world itself an open door
my innocence an unlocked gate
how anyone explains the time
since then is fine with me tonight
it shouldn't take this long or quite
so many failures underlined
what's done is done the world goes on
its seasons full of reckonings
too powerful for knaves or kings
whose plots are often ****** upon
rock solid etchings stood in rows
as all ambition ebbs and flows

the sixties ended with a folded flag
handed to my mother's sister
in a family cemetery not far
from where we lived
just down the road
from the baptist church
site of the wedding
six months earlier
the merry month before danny left
for training and his first real job
a full year after walter
gave us news
that this fight
was one that lies
sustained
while boys just out of school
married and shipped out
and came back in pieces

if I would move out of your way
small good things oddly would appear
as I have ever less to say
and you could quell the late night fear
this mortal blanket tossed aside
quick ending of the fever dream
collapsing all our foolish pride
that separates us at the seam
sing now what you remember well
an old song of Kalliope
who shares the stories poets tell
born crying out of memory
i've cleared the space now find my head
so something better may be said

Imagine the look
The look on the old man's face
As the shepherd
Said
It's a girl
And the wise men
Handing out perfume
Said
We knew it would be so

What comes from ashes, you would know.
I've seen you there, fire in your eyes.
Your modesty allows me slow
Pursuit, perhaps I should disguise
My tongue's intentions in a song,
Or dance my way inside your head
And bring you back where you belong--
Oak headboard,  my ancestral bed.
You may see me, firewalking fool--
Head topped with bells, a rubber soul--
Salute you with a burnished tool,
Your misused heart my certain goal.
Now close your eyes, imagine me
In your embrace, in ecstacy.

around much noise
         in places where time
has pocketed
the words
come in to be remembered

How 'bout that mad monk
Larkin's elephant
Slow dervish
In a Chinese hat
Around the notes
Big holes

glad night
this mortal joy
                        so long
    uncertain and
                ridiculous,
                         sublime

     need i remind you
     love is best
not understood,
                practiced
     constantly
                                beyond belief

death and doubt
set looking
for a weakness
you deny
i think you must know
                     something now

i mean
i should tell you
my heart depends
on madness just
as the ragpicker
on litter and the breeze

it's what you find and some of it
get down, out of context maybe
yet still there like broken concrete
in a yard in Alabamee
where it might interrupt a blade
and you understand, could save a life,
could sift the fear out from afraid,
then paste it with a putty knife.
these flakes are not stories, they're stones,
eventually a cairn, and what's
allowed is all that sticks and bones
can divinate in passing shots.
assess the risk,  i won't advise--
existence has its way with lies.

when you were in my arms, I had
no thought, that rare condition sought
by mystics, dervishes and mad
and hungry painters staring off
at other suns' forsaken light
as if it held salvation keys,
rededicating one more night
to supplication, bended knees.
now time has moved your innocence,
ticked off the things you've never done,
and narrowed down your penitence--
some things still worth the price of fun.
this world is world enough but time
makes hesitation mortal crime.

when you were in my arms, I had
no thought, that rare condition sought
by mystics, dervishes and mad
and hungry painters staring off
at other suns' forsaken light
as if it held salvation's keys,
rededicating one more night
to supplication, bended knees.
now time has moved your innocence,
ticked off the things you've never done,
and narrowed down your penitence--
some things are worth the price of fun.
this world is world enough but time
makes your reluctance mortal crime.

These letters bid you come again,
Not just in dreams but in my arms.
Let pleasure find its best way in,
Set off the devil's own alarms.
I'll play the fool, an old one now,
Who yet believes your batting eyes
Outspeak the misdirected vow
That soon enough proved bad disguise.
Long living takes a need,  give leave
I offer my sincere repeats--
My pen and ink, my sacristy,
Another round of wrinkled sheets.
Unless your heart bends otherwise,
Our foolish pleasures soon seem wise.

What if she shows
Again, daughter
Of memory,
Willing,
Insistent,
And I am speechless?

What if she wraps
Her legs
Around my face
And my tongue
Gets caught
In my throat?

What if she lies
To me,
Just slightly
Looking
Over my shoulder,
Or below my eyes?

What if she prefers
Sonnets, to a
Questionable sestina,
Or a good liar
To my reckless
Blurtings?

What if I
Can't take
My time,
Or even begin,
Can't say anything
That even I believe?

What would you do,
If I were you
And nothing
Seemed
To come out right,
Or even clever?

How can I
Sleep, while thinking
She may not return?

so far--
and you may laugh
at the idea,
i wouldn't
blame you--
i've not
found lines
fine enough
said
to bring you
out again
without
one
look back.
forgive me
my
persistence.

The world is God's own concubine,
Naked on this April morning
Cool enough to perk pink buds
Of a hundred billion roses,
Expectant of the yellow bees
Whose needs are close to mine.

Two more mass shootings overnight
Get scant reporting being less
Body count than the one last week
Or the ordinary bad beat.
Our heart goes out so much it's lost
The way back to it's own door.

I drop the beat, it's my own fault--
My mother bought the dimestore books
I wanted more than toys, and read them
Till I knew the words, correcting
Any one misspoke so I've got
Them now--will trade for your kisses.

My great teacher, Guy Davenport
Told of the time he put out Sartre,
On fire in Paris,
Set by his own tobacco pipe
Stuffed back in his jacket pocket
On a park bench.  Imagine that.

My own mistakes overshadow
Yours, and I'm running out of space
To sustain this unlikely conceit.
If verses ever did part lips,
I'd keep my pen in hand all night,
Exhausted lay beside it.

A taste I can't forget what sings
At your command--Oh how I love
The narrow path on which you glide,
The lies that only look like clues,
Discarded wrappers of long dreams
That I have slept through every way.

When paradise gets tedious,
I have it on God's word he'd trade
Eternity to hear your sighs.

We move the world with
Bold assumptions.
Without their breeze,
Would the time pass
Or do any of the things
That it does?

I am known by silence,
Unremarkable, necessary
If anything
Heard
Is recognized,
Is comprehended.

The parting gifts of lovers
Are the faces and the words,
Where I myself have overspoke,
If only for a minute,
While the flash
Of pain confused sin

With redemption,
The collected misunderstanding
Of the childhood need
For a tall and quiet man
Who answered the world
When needed.

So much of this song
And shuffle is giving
A dog a pill it doesn't want.
Experience helps,
And a love of dogs--
An easy reach for the Buddha

And if the universe--
This one--
Was the size of a baseball
Once, it must have come
Hard, like a high
And tight fastball

Out of the hand of Bob Gibson,
The year before
They cut down the mound.

Set here, between the sky & earth
We filled each other's greatest need,
To change this small world casually
To Canaan's land or tacitly
Some semblance of the living word,
A narrow path of flesh and fruit,
Foundation of the universe,
Disguised as just a music show.
The need to move the air tonight,
With screams and pleasant fingerings,
Marks made on pages as the mind
Wants more, wants sin and salvation,
A comfortable bed and a chance
To understand a simple day.

When flowers turn their faces
From the sun,
Only then
Could I look away
From whatever you are,
To disregard
The blind child's arrow,
The taste
Of your shoulders,
Movement
Of your fingers,
Almost magic.

All words eventually miss
Their mark, so what
I say--no matter
How well said--remains
An insufficient testament
To your embrace.

He's found her in the gallery,
This spotty neighborhood
Where cash is king
And what's available today
Might not be back tomorrow
And he's the one who's out of place--
Suspicious eyes on concrete steps--
In his short-sleeved shirt.
He hands her fifteen folded twenties,
Says call your mom, she misses you.
She nods and slips the bills inside her bra,
Says something not quite loud enough.
He takes a step, looks back and says,
Your brother scored two goals last night.

your unexpected saving grace
amazes me when i get lost
or find myself in some dark place
despairing at the hellish cost
of temporary residence
clocksprung outside what can't be told
through common words of reverence
by penitents within the fold
i slake my thirst in your embrace
long tested by my ignorance
contrast mere heaven with your face
that weathers pain and happenstance
extends the evening star's delight
that i may yet say one thing right

were we on devil's holiday
3 lovers in the strength of may
ignoring any other world
than that wherein our legs lay curled
and was it sweet for that bright morn
to be the dazzling unicorn
who clattered off less innocent
of how the tempter's time is spent

dilapidated old motel
wide potholes in the asphalt lot
where we stood talking in the rain
so many years ago it seems
like someone else's history
no matter what we said
the opportunity
not lost on you to stand
beside me closer than
your friend my date that night
as your companion talked
in flashing lights about
the evening's accident

some potion seller's dream
encouraged our acceptance
bitter fruit
brittle words
stored in old vessels concealed in ignorance with lines so well
rehearsed that freedom is
a foreign question
they ring almost as true

Time Is treason to my freedom.
It bends these words outside my will.
The question, if I understand
Correctly, has to do with love--
Some say it can't, some say it must
Endure, must overwhelm the church
Bell, explosion of at least one
Universe and the possible
Mistake$ we've made in naming God
As our witness to the gallows.
Meanwhile his daughters lay in hell,
Distracted by the devil's *****,
That offer up a homesick blues,
An unsprung harp, a slide trombone.

Days without much news,
The ordinary pleasure
Of lovers,
Homecoming,
Dogs inside from the rain--
More the thunder,
Not understood.
No more than the time
That won't stand still
When the question of death
Cannot be quietly ignored,
The absent father shadowing
Eternity

I miss the stripteases,
Even the arguments--
Less bitter than the loneliness.
It takes so long to make a friend,
Even longer
To adjust to experience.

You are your mother's eyes,
Her innocence and guile,
Gossip of the single-chair salon.
She say count
Your friends on fingers,
One hand held behind your back.

You were young and casual,
The bed post carved and whittled,
Woodchips on the floor,
Not wanting to be known,
Or even placed in memories.

Forgetting was the great effect
Of the twelve packs
And occasional *******,
Swearing by its value--
While I, some freakish lobe,
Remember every ******* thing.

You never knew how to need love,
With its circumstances,
Gift of the restless father,
A long train ride
Into thin air,
Some years a summer visit.

Rooms with moving pieces--
Morning's unmade beds,
Disenfranchisement of the afternoon,
The self-help hucksters
And baloons--
Children waiting.

Transition of your oldest friend,
Beside you in your husband's arms--
Before they both are gone.