In a small apartment, close enough
To the tracks he can hear the whistle
Twice a day, as the train--
One locomotive, boxcars, tankers,
And a dull red caboose--
Approaches the deadening.
Sometimes it wakes him
Enough he rolls over or goes to take a ****.
It's hard to sleep in the daytime anyway.
Nights he's stocking shelves--boosted
A little, when he has a dime--
Not a bad gig, except for the pay.

Hard called sinner, get the spirit.
Myself, accountability
At stake stood, faced eternity
With boyhood sins in my pocket.
Imagine if you've ever burned
Yourself, you know how much it hurt--
Revival speaker sweats his shirt--
And I, respecting what I'd learned
Fast from a dirt bike muffler dropped
Against my leg in some bar ditch,
Could understand this preacher's pitch--
What if that burning never stopped?
Outside the men smoked cigarettes,
While ladies spoke low-voiced regrets.

We understood each other well,
And both of us found pleasure's song
In languages we hadn't heard,
Slow dancing as the light grew dim,
Such effort spent denying death
The time of day.

The strength of my companion's love,
Hegelian against this dark,
December night when nothing else...
When nothing else has quality,
Gives some direction, reckoning
From yarrow sticks and founding stones,
Inspecting bruises on my heel--
Misjudgment of the starting point.
Believers' voices shout me down,
Gainsaying reason's starting gun,
While traitorous, self-conscious death
Goes nowhere without company--
The sundial estimates the night,
Lies waiting for the angled light.

Uncertain as the view tonight,
Before your eyes have had the chance
To focus on the innocence
Of children with a human right
To play outside and then be fed,
And not expect the sky to fall--
Not be shoved up against a wall--
To dream in a familiar bed.

The words fight back,  accusing me
of moving their broke syllables--
a painful attempt to prevent
their distortion of my language--
into patterns they have never
become comfortable exposing,
apprenticed to the bonesetter
with no time for anesthesia,
working from memory and not
expecting any gratitude
from the flesh now decomposing
as we speak at four in the night,
unconscious of the pending dawn
and what will get left in the dark.

We live in confusion; who knows
whose words are strong enough cover
for the terrifying future?
Dare we expose the myth, my friend,
or is that why poets slant?
The ravens outside my window
Don't care that they're in this poem,
as long as i leave them alone,
which mostly i do except now
and then when i'm outside as they
alight to glean bugs from cut grass.
They're used to my distressed accent,
my pale reflection of the sky,
and my eye not on the sparrow.

Bare hedonistic middle road,
So periled and yet amorized
By ladies I have soul adored,
Lean gentlemen who spent long nights
In speculation on the grave.
Ascension charts the harder shot,
With tattered sails on fire and grey,
Unguarded heart that's not yet stopped.
Fast falling stars escape my reach,
While dim & smoky neon dives
Swell up a piece of history.
Come lovers, give it two more trys.
The moon ignores my open ears.
I'll need your help to man the oars.

For lack of better words, we say
Poems, prayers and incantations;
Numbers give us expectations.
Studying about that good old way,
Sunday afternoon river shore
Immersion is a passion play--
John casting for his Salome--
Few can remember anymore.
Of course we sang Shall We Gather?
Though not too well, acapella,
Afterwards risked salmonella,
As we broke the bread together.
I chased girls in my Sunday clothes,
And with the boys it came to blows.

It's quiet on the street tonight,
With staying in suggested now.
This city pavement's silent vow--
A gravel boneyard road late night--
Collects my mind and rattles it.
With little left to interfere
For those of us who've made it here,
Inside and out the counterfeit
Cross stages of this brutal script.
No angels left to take the call?
Tonight my friend learned how to fall,
And targeted perhaps the crypt.
Eighteen years of common hours--
Counted up on asphalt flowers.

Got a friend in Washington, the state,
says i'm the least judgmental person
she's ever known and of
course i wasn't even trying,
just my own form of rebellion
working its way through
the underappreciated universe.

She said I was an *******, and all due credit
Being given, I understand where
She was coming from.
She also said magnificent,
Which makes it better maybe--
Be good at what you are--
And I miss that kind of sass,
The price of fun, if you will,
Certainly kept me from getting
Overconfident
Because you know, when it looks easy
Someone has put in a lot of work.

Gas moms.  Beat up vets. Oregon
Catches a wave.  This is the new
Authoritarianism.
Is anyone surprised that wealth
Has resources?  Propaganda
Sells a psychopathic uncle
To the poorly educated,
Whose votes are needed for the fall.
Under the rubric of control,
We lose our right to speak.  Russia
Contemplates our self destruction
With a sly grin.  Poison the well
And the fountain will sacrifice
The holy child.  Revolution!

Men ate first at get togethers,
While the women who had laid the
Table waited and I, too young
To yet be called upon for prayers,
Shared a table with my cousins,
Who would later, as the sun set,
Shed their garments in the cow barn,
Just to see their difference from me.

Could I sleep tonight in your dreams
I would live again that cold night
We made love on the leather couch
At your friend Karl's stone house outside
The city limits past the farm
With the field of llamas and the
Windmills cranking ecstatically
In those stolen hours when brides
Before their second marriages
Give someone much less practical
A ride to be remembered long
After the cans behind the car
Have rusted or been flattened by
The side of the road that leaves town.

Last night I rearranged the world.
You may not have noticed it yet;
It's just a little friendlier.
The sun still shines almost the same.
Ain't nobody changed the darkness.
Increasingly, appetite for
Paradise has worn through black shoes,
And the new road needs a future.

Bodhisattva knows the blues, eight
Bars that give you the double pour,
And 2 safe ways around a fight.
They's steppin now, come midnight hour,
Slantin out back like kids in school
With one quick break before the bell,
A natural way to play the fool
Against a painted concrete wall.
Nine months ain't long to carry fire,
Get lighter and go back to work,
Respectin on the shoes you wear.
A waitress ain't got time to talk
You out of ending hell's night shift
On accident, tied off & hit.

Damnation's doing well this year,
Fine crop sprung up on city streets--
Or get it free online, I hear.
My reading list includes the beats,
My playlist too, Pop smoke in peace.
We park the ice cream trucks for morgues,
The unmasked emperor, his niece
Unveils; psycopathy, call out the guards.
This will go on, it could get worse.
The heat don't help, we're on our own-
The preacher's wife believes we're cursed,
Infested by the doubt we've shown--
I think of Dean, the railroad track,
With no one there to have his back.

Waiting for nothing,
Impatiently,
In the absurd morning
Where the news reports
Assess chaos, statistically,
Amazed by the grace
Of the essential,
Who work
Through the night
That has come.

On this good night, love calls me home.
Unsure if I deserve so fine
A place, not knowing anywhere
That well compares, I'd call with eights,
Displaying Aces, Paradise
Still on the table.  Who needs God's
Mansions, I'll stay here, with leaky
Roof and broken window, cats, dogs,
Unkindness of ravens across
The street, with whom I've struck up a
Conversation.  Breviloquent,
As always, they only want us
To know, despite the harsh rumors,
They really do love their children.

Is it weak to say I don't know
What I am without you?  Can't think
How the sun will continue its
Illusion, or how the waters
Will divide for my safe passage?
How to make it through the minefield
Of memories, or the maze that
Starts sometime before the morning?
It's hard to wear an expression,
How to find one less unnerving
Than my own reflection.  I guess
That's why the followers of God
Make black the mirrors.  But I see
Nothing anywhere except you.

My friend John, who saw through
His preacher dad's Presbyterianism
By the time he was fifteen,
Still searches for unicorns,
Keeps his metal detector ready
By his underwear drawer
And last night dreamed
He was Marco Polo.
Imagine his surprise this morning,
This very morning,
Pulling out his favourite boxer's, black silk,
Extra large with the yellow
Batman logo,
And there behind them--
No idea how long it had been there--
A smiling rhinoceros.

There's nothing left to say tonight,
No words that aren't worn out or bruised
Beyond a useful harkening.
Still sirens cast their subtle spells,
Confusing sailors with a song
No more dependent on the verbs
Than parrots or chrysanthemums,
Seducing all that aren't tied fast
To wooden poles or ancient scrolls.
Jack Kennedy, Jack Kerouac,
Where are you when the road goes on?
Our country is no summerland.
Heat bakes dry ground and cuts off breath.
The earth receives its offering.

The rain cooled things down, what had been
Hot afternoon yielding to birds,
A squirrel on the wood border fence
And us, in still life on the porch.

This old contraption left behind,
Instructions lost or put away
In places not remembered now--
Our leaders having shuffled faith
Or folded it conveniently
Inside America's new cross
That ratchets dreamers off stage right-Still works.  A dab of lubricant
And here we go, chain links advanced,
Cranks jamming thumbs of volunteers.
Let's take it to the county seat
In broad daylight, democracy
In need of several days good work.
Old monuments don't move themselves.

We've been through Telemann and Talking Heads this morning,
Tubes and Zoso all archived and streaming--
Last year's peaches.
This afternoon I'm reading
Eliot, and after that some Ellison,
Invisible.
I miss the small town circus
Of the evening; sawdust, tents
And cheesy acts that sold
The tickets,
A high wire act escaped from
Someone's senior prom,
Sad clown who's done his act
Since Richard Nixon's second term.
Not the greatest show on earth but good
For a night out with the kids,
Who might rather be at a Kiss concert.
They've not come to this small town,
But Bob Dylan did
And everyone, almost, was
Disappointed when he didn't do
His greatest hits.

A place where nothing else seems possible,
Where shoes have been removed and cast aside--
As children do at any chance to play--
Come listen to the harmony of souls.
What a word.  I wish i understood it
Better.  Once i thought i knew salvation,
Said prayers that helped a sinner get some sleep.
Some nights i lie awake and can't slow down.
Has anyone accepted love enough
To feel it in the morning like the sun?
I think my lover knows it more than i,
Whose wisdom has the shallow strength of words.
She loves me when i find myself undone.
She rights my mind when i am overcome.

Nothing changes
As the night burns
Into an unholy morning
Of despair,
A scream without translation.
American spring,
Killing season in Kentucky,
Minnesota, Carolina, Georgia,
New York.
Nothing changes but the names,
Mississippi, St. Louis, L.A.
Vigilantes and police,
Incendiary commentary by the chief
Executive
That fans the flames.
Nothing changes but the body counts,
God's sons' and daughters' stolen right
To breathe.
At least a fire gets seen.

****** afternoon.
I have no imagination.
My fantasies are memories,
Of women, mainly, though it varies
Now and then.
I learned confession as a child,
So I'm used to it now,
Don't see it as a way to paradise
Anymore, instead have always found it
Lovingly exposed, if only
For the night, occasional
Morning, or sometimes
Afternoon.

It's three a.m. at the neighbor's.
Someone's always fighting over there.
This time it's only two squad cars
And no bus--that's what they call
The ambulances, at least on the TV dramas,
But I'm drawn away from the TV.
Perhaps if I had on clothes I'd step outside.
They don't stay long this time,
Just talk out in the yard
And if anyone's taken away I've missed it.
I'm Gladys Kravitz these nights,
Watching the witching next door
Because three months ago it was a friend of mine,
Recovering from surgery or not
With a port direct to her stomach.
Crushed pills in ***** aren't real food.
Didn't know she was dying there--
Who the ambulance was for.
I don't sleep well these nights,
Don't know anyone who does.
The world has turned into a dream,
And the moon reflects mortality.

You and I are different now.
What could be said last night,
Or earlier today, has left
Its meaning far behind, so
We continue, starved for company
On sheets or under words
That might or might not celebrate
The ritual
Of acts that won't return,
Or if they do will not be recognized
As yours or mine, no fast
Or fascinating gesture having caught
A breaking second or a moving hand.
I say this knowing it has not been
Long enough for bitterness to pass
Into the future, or your eyes--
Blue as heaven's door--
To once again meet mine.

Supercession of the wordgod,
So to speak, is what we need love?
Likely repetition cold sod,
Sky the only scene above.
Could I or you believe this world,
Accented back and forth in time,
Serpent orange and green uncurled--
My garden tree a simple lime.
The sun it moves my shadowed hand,
Draws circles, hearts, cascading leaves,
Cool water inbetween the sand,
As overwhelming lust conceives.
Released from sin, this river flows,
Comes rising as the evening glows.

On my grandfather's deathbed,
The one I sleep in now,
Which he shipped back from Detroit City, on a freight train in the
Nineteen thirties, when his father died
From typhus and he became head of the family here in Western Kentucky,
I remember his wavering lucidity
Through a past midnight thunderstorm,
How he asked us to sing
Rock of Ages and
When we had finished said
That was terrible, which it was.
Who could sing,
At a time like that--
His son, my father's bass voice
Quavering as it never did
In church, but there we were,
And then the last words I ever
Heard him say--
How do they count the time?

Thousands dying now.
Fifth Avenue and main street.
Trump reelected?

The poor are big tent acrobats,
Not looking down at broken nets,
Expecting angels, miracles--
Some meaning in the universe--
Believing freedom, other myths,
Regurgitating Bible school,
While makeshift morgues have openings
For politicians promises.
Red novel death, unmasked to see
God's children, faithful, crucified,
Hard praying we can't understand
The ways of God, just being man.
Enlightened rogues--forgive me Gregg-
Know this is not, this is not right.

Put coin in mouth, not on my eyes,
That I may see the underworld
As I arrive, and hear the cries,
In Charon's bark, uniquely burled,
Fierce brilliance, goddess of the night
Released from khaos, sails unfurled,
Anchor weighed from the morning light,
Old sailors bent and fetal curled.
Come back as J.C., looking close,
Surviving cocksure helmsmanship--
Dismissive of the lethal dose--
Chests pilfered long before the trip.
If this prove false , and I the liar,
No mangod soul shall quench this fire.

These awkward moments, in spite
           of ourselves,
When we see enough,
Surprise pops out, head
Of Jack, priapic toy
Held down by hinge and clasp
Until it's cranked again
With music or a spilling
Verse, some ***** minded
Woman's tongue complicit
With the subtil, chosen
Charmer of Arcadia, good and evil
Bifurcator, dancing in the grass.

Meditation, with a black cat
In my lap, **** frost on the lawn,
Lapses into words on a page
While heads on the widescreen chatter--
The new pandemic,
Ways to subvert the vote
In a  contested convention, winter
Weather.  The president praises
Gone With the Wind.  Life is good,
And death I'm watching out for you today,
Pale stallion, afternoon shadow
Of sapien lingo I would not wish
On my companion.

Ridiculous Eros aiming blindly,
This cold fortnight of the shorted month that leaps,
Your sonneteer--approaching unkindly--
Breaks into a fevered back beat yeah creeps
Her way beside a fiery  salsa step
By step, with some erosion of pursuit.
Apollo's got it bad for you,  can't help
His slipshod rhymes, cracked rhythms destitute.
If any more can ever yet be said,
Your golden arrows strike the syllable,
While lightning spikes inside the maker's head,
Induced contortions of the mandible.
Straight shooters miss the mark as oft as not.
Come let this winder take another shot.

No sight without the sun, which blinds
The close observer, melts the wings
Of anyone whose father finds
His labyrinth has need of strings
For sons and daughters sacrificed
On city streets and gravel roads,
Where pills & guns & powder's priced.
America the great reloads.
No mother's child can satisfy
This ancient need for blood and bones.
Beguiling lies that justify
This everlasting, cratered jones--
Give way to truth, in slanted rays,
Declaring beauty through this haze.

Cold night spent needing
Something more than scribbled thoughts
Regarding April.

You feel like you've escaped and then
It's back, that feeling that you've failed
At everything that matters when
The world and you have separate sailed.
Man overboard, call strike the mast.
Unwax your ears and hear the song;
Those sirens that you won't sail past.
Collapse your angel wings, go long.
Reclaim scorched ground in sanity,
Dismiss the cursed curriculum.
Host sacrilegious deity,
Liscentous offerings to come.
Axe whittle down your enemy;
Poseidon take a whiff on me.

What seems important?  Now is not
The time nor here the place of sand--
Annealed, reconstituted thought--
Neck high, yet claiming one free hand,
Spent youth a mandala released
In ardent love songs and defeats,
Old sorrows that have scant decreased,
Poured out in lines with bagua beats.
Your frame and mine, the scarred remains,
Fragmented, somehow holding on,
Against the new, the older pains,
The resevoir turned now to stone.
Shanti, shanti, shanti my love,
Do not look back, don't glare above.

It shouldn't be this difficult
To find a way to love the good,
Pledge loyalty and not insult
Wind water fire and sacred wood.
Did language separate warm blood,
Get bent in efforts to control,
Leave children out to face the flood
Without the carpentry of old
Anticipating what will come,
Despite denier's profit schemes
That leave the offspring running from
The nightmare smacked upon their dreams?
Give love, give faith, give blood and hope,
Throw courage, strength and high test rope.

I've learned this language better now,
Can hear each letter's tone of voice,
Who let me know I've sinned somehow,
Still leaving them without a choice,
Despite their subatomic strength,
That should be paired with more than mine,
And then expounded on at length,
As some apocalyptic sign,
When really I am less impressed,
Would trade them for another slate.
Not saying this tonight in jest,
They're insufficient, as of late.
Yet live with them and give them due--
Some nights they cast a lovely hue.

She hears herself
When no one else is there, rehearsing
What sustains, intransitive
Awareness of an ancient ground, words
Lined and ploughed, bloodwatered,  humble sown
And harvested, now swallowed and recast,
Choked I am (one a.m.) bic pen,
Tam o' Shanter working through the darkness
Still surrounding mother earth.

Of course it's three a.m. again--
Time long encircled in the blues--
And grateful for the company
I pull out old shellacs;
Dinah, Eartha, Big Maybelle,
Then Tina, early blues with Ike
On a long playing record, songs by
Little Walter, Blues Boy King,
Songs Ginny used to sing
At juke joints in northwest Tennessee,
Before she made her way out west,
Vegas and L.A., when cheap scotch at midnight was enough.
And now, somehow, pure grain and Percocet
Have stopped her, some say accidentally.
Man trouble too,
Horn players with habits,
Car dealers and one evangelist,
Backslidden but believing,
Tapped now to speak well,
Ignore vices and regrets.

Step outside the wires
Some winter morning,
With your wool coat and hat,
Before the world has wakened,
When and where walnut shells,
Discarded by the clever nocturnals,
Dot the snowy sidewalk,
Along with occasional ****,
Small carcasses and cigarette filters.
Watch your breath and listen
To the city--small town, really--
As it sleeps.  The medicated night
Has disappeared, into the meditation
Of streetlamps and the few remaining stars.
Having found this place, decisions remain.
You can strip down everything outside you,
Make snow angels in the neighbor's
Yard--imagine her surprise should she
Awaken--and then compose these lines,
In what remains of darkness of the sky.

As commoners endure the truth
Of calculations bent to fool
The innocent, this barker's booth
Conceals the reaper's tripart tool;
Religion, prejudice and shame,
Cruel conflict built on mockery,
A shallow huckster's facile fame,
Insipid, feckless trumpetry.
Some plainer spoken hope survives,
Green mountain wild bred patriot,
Dry powder of the children's lives,
Who see their future from a rut.
Moscovian chicanery.
Foot soldiers for democracy.