On this cold afternoon,  T.V.
Has ****** & Daytona.  You
And I are close enough you could
Come over, yet I don't guess you
Think that's a good idea, nor
Do  I, but thinking isn't all
We do.  We've lost our instinct
And our earthly home, companion,
Lost the rhythm of the slow dance.
I'm not stopping, not this evening
Or tomorrow, will yet present
Myself, still so lightly adorned
That I have said nothing, nothing
At all by my scant appearance.
Things don't happen for a reason,
Not one we don't invent.  Free will
Is out of fashion.  All the new
Philosophers agree on that,
Though fundamentalists dispute
Among themselves such hardshell creed.
I long to taste your skin again.
Come give me time, bring everything.

Am I the last man thinking words
Can overcome your hesitance,
May circumvent your maiden steel,
Too polished by your fingernails?
I'll drop your walls like Jericho,
If syllables can keep the beat,
And slide their music into you.
I'll wake your rhythm, legs askew.

Your skepticism's understood;
Good men are rare, a lot's been said,
So you go disappointment prone,
Distrusting things that you've been told,
Inhaling lines and downing wine,
Forgetting us, sublime--supine.

A little drunk, on new year's door,
She calls to say she might come back,
And I, who steeled myself before,
Say sure, and feel a little crack.
A frightened lover's midnight moan
Brings back the flood, the thunderbolt,
The once connected lips and bone,
The song, the night, ecstatic jolt.

I'm done with words that break & fall,
Need legs & feet & dampened hair.
Reluctant ink disdains the ball,
I'd know your motion anywhere,
Who moved my world with mortal sin,
And ushered chthonic rhythms in.

How fine would these lines need to be,
To find their way inside your mind,
And move your body southerly?
Could my words even be that kind?
Erato, lend your song to me,
And teach my lips the way to find
My missing lover's broken heart,
To give her back this swollen part.

Come live with me, my naughty love,
If only in a fevered dream.
I'll swan you need a god above
To hear you when you laugh and scream.
So please yourself & picture me,
How perfect was our ecstasy.

Suppose he's Buddha, or maybe Jesus
Christ, a mendicant testifying here
With his boots off already and I light
An incense stick, he says they're from the same
Factory as Tony Lamas and the
Only difference is the label and the
Sole and he only needs ten bucks to buy
Some food and I say we don't sell used boots,
Nor any kind actually as we're a pipe
And record store, but he has his pants off,
Jeans better than Levi's and just broke in,
He'll throw them in for a dollar or two.
The store next door takes clothes, but only on
Consignment and he needs to eat tonight
Or maybe a bag though he never says
It, I can tell he's low on something bad
To need, so I pass him the sawbuck and
Tell him to keep his bluejeans and put his
Boots back on as he's likely to need them
Where he's going, mention the soup kitchen
Downtown, though I know he's salivating
For a straw, or else a needle.  Someone
Else comes in, looking for Norwegian Wood.

No words engraved in stone or spread on sheets
Can touch the simple sadness of your voice
This last day of December, bittersweet,
Remembering our kisses and your choice,
Conventional but not the love you need--
Too dry, too dry, for one whose lips are moist,
From conversation, sometimes poetry,
From thinking nothing when you lie with me.

I shouldn't mind tonight this rain,
Could follow it along the street,
From gutter to the grated drain,
Then back up when it tugs my feet.
The future and the past complain,
Unsatisfied at where they meet.
The sun has left, the pale moon hides,
Conspiring with the gaining tides.

Consoling verses aren't the kind
That lend this year its bitter bark.
Another ring around the mind,
This damp December leaves its mark.
New year begins its life tonight,
In coruscating, falling light.

I understand it better now,
The fall, how you missed the first step,
From there tumbling to the stone floor
And lying there till your brother
Came to find you when I had not
Been able to reach you by phone
And you had not shown up to eat
Your mother's Thanksgiving day meal.
No angel there to break your fall,
Past the curved grain scythe you had nailed
To the wall among the other
Antiques and bric-a-brac found here
And there at yard sales and antique
Malls.  You were a scavenger, lost
Among the women and children
Who might have made a family
And yet did not connect somehow.
I recognized your pain, knowing
How you tried the medications,
Manic at times, though never quite
Level and never good enough
To replace the Russian water,
Cigarettes and desperation.
I carried you out, with our friends,
Mummified like a believer.
You've come back in dreams and handed
Me pieces of your muddy flesh
And broken bones and said make words.

Unti the end is dark enough,
The mind will not quit reckoning.
I've heard proclaimed the life above,
Where righteous mate and angels sing.
Of course the getting there is tough,
My shoulders don't suggest a wing.
Perhaps you have some other plan,
Some unrepentant, feckless clan.

Unless you're something more than wise,
This pale excuse is wholly mine.
I don't mind thinking otherwise,
I wish I could at desperate times.
Two lines complete the son his fate.
Not what you're thinking, I can wait.

Culled from
         The Feeling Good Handbook

1.  Anxiety, worry, or fear
2.  Feeling things around you are strange
3.  Feeling detached from your body
4.  Unexpected panic attacks
5.  Apprehension, a sense of doom.
6.  Feeling tense, uptight or on edge
7.  Difficulty concentrating
8.  Racing thoughts, having your mind jump
9.  Frightening fantasies, daydreams
10. Feeling that you're losing control
11. Fears of cracking up or crazy
12. Fears of passing out or fainting
13. Fears of heart attack or dying
14. Concerns about looking foolish
15. Fear of being isolated
16. Criticism, disapproval
17. Fears about something terrible
18. Racing or pounding of the heart
19. Pain, pressure, tightness in the chest
20. Tingling or numbness in the toes
21. A discomfort in the stomach
22. Constipation, diarrhea
23. Restlessness and/or jumpiness
24. Tension, tightness in the muscles
25. A sweating not brought on by heat
26. A lump or tightness in the throat
27. Trembling or shaking legs or hands
28. Rubbery and /or "jelly" legs
29. Feeling dizzy or off balance
30. Choking or difficulty breathing
31. Headaches, pains in the neck or back
32. Discomforting hot flashes, chills
33. Feelin easily exhausted

       All of the above, accounted

Your love dispels insanity,
When all the world's an angry ghost,
Invading sacred liberty,
Collecting bones along the coast,
And carving out the lungs of trees,
While more have less and some get most.
What can't be bought has value still.
Without your love, the world be ill.

Was I mistaken all this time,
Alive where nothing else could be?
Romantic lines that sometimes rhyme,
That almost tell me what I see,
A waste of paper, pen and ink,
Your love is more than I can think.

We should have harrowed paradise,
To slake the disenfranchised souls.
The powers say it's otherwise,
There's not enough for all of those.
My thoughts are weak and compromised,
An eremetic son sunk low,
Whose mind and body lust to rise
Against the everlasting foe.

Creation and equality,
Long separated by the sword,
Don't trickle very equally,
While politicians scheme and hoard,
Then toast the weekly homily,
Beside the chairmen of the board.

I have seen words leave their shelter,
Get confused in bitter weather,
Call for help and not be heard.
I wouldn't want to be a word.

I've got some pages left to fill,
To speculate upon free will,
Stumbling through philosophy,
I can't be sure that I am me.

Anxiety is evidence,
Strong fear of every consequence.
Perhaps you understand this pain,
I don't believe I've said a thing.

Stone shadows fill the seer's eyes,
Soul singers, jacked philosophers,
Cold necromancers' boney dice,
Unearthed beneath a willful curse,
Stale fear of morning's sober skies,
The augury of captive birds,
Whose song goes long unrecognized
In yours or mine or Karun's dirge.

As pictured from behind, she looks
Across the water into trees,
Gripping balcony rail waist high.
She's put down bow and violin,
White table just below the rail.
French doors half open frame her back,
Her braided hair, her ankles crossed.
Her weight has shifted slightly left.

Don't think about the end, not now.
No poet's words or prophecy
Can fill the void, no sad slow song,
No prayer or self-inflicted scar,
No philosophical dead end.
Our dancing fails, with hobbled feet.
Sleep tight, sleep's not an easy step.
It doesn't rhyme, or fit the lines.

Apologies to all who need
What's fallen here, suspiring this.
Can't go. Can't stop.  Comes late the taste
Of something that should not have spilled.
Such thinking isn't sanely stayed.
Say what can surely not be said.

Unhappy poets understand
The blues that testify despair,
And force the fortune teller's hand
Through smoke and ash instead of air,
Their breath uncertain where to land,
Or what it costs the heart to care
For songs and dreams, the holy ****
Left drying on the forest's mat.

The sun that rises in the east,
Despite the longest night we've known,
Reveals an unaccepting beast,
Whose mind held strong till overthown.
Anxiety has steady feet.
Unhappy poets know their beat.

She loves the music more than words,
While I'm caught up in sentences,
The nouns and verbs obliquely heard,
The slanting lines of innocence,
Too often at the end of nerves
To have our tongues make any sense,
With nothing more than broken words.
Mistakes are human, I've been told,
Forgiveness from a greater soul.

She says the songs don't sing her name,
And poetry has scant appeal.
She sings.  I write.  We're not the same.
And yet our kisses make a seal.
With time gone south and winter near,
I  wish your legs, your lips were here.

A bag of food for Saturday,
And maybe Sunday if it lasts.
It shouldn't be this hard to stay
Alive and see beyond the past.
The dragon takes the mother's claw
And holds the flame that heats the tar,
Coal-colored death drawn through a straw
In West Virginia's town called War.

The sun comes late in mountain towns,
On roads that need a new repair,
Still dark when buses make their rounds,
To draw the children from their lair,
Who learn at school some poetry,
That won't alleve this poverty.

Light rain
All hallows day
An orange-faced angry man
Disintegrates
Tune in

Unlikely color of the fall,
Surviving drought and aphid bite,
Cold nights, strong wind, the harvest blade,
Protected by a wreath of thorns.

An old man bends beside you now,
Pulls close the collar of his coat,
Considering the steps and rail,
The fading light of liberty.

We say the same things, same things that we've said.
I wish our words meant more than words can mean.
So little can be said without the heart
Expanding, fighting, breaking, growing old.

Your time will be your own again, she said.
That's what I hate the most tonight about
This whole bad deal,  my selfish loneliness.

Regrets--a too long string of cans behind
The GTO, the goat, red Pontiac
Ragtop spewing gravel in the churchyard.

Come back from darkness, find a light.
To anger show forgiveness, and
To accusation self control.
Surprise the world with honesty,
And clean the air, the earth of spite.
Give touch the holy place it needs,
And calm despair with love and hope.
Seek wisdom with the suffering,
Give truth a chance, don't hurry it,
And leave all hatred as you go.

We play on themes of an old faith. You know
The story as one who fought it believes
In the war, and then doesn't believe it
Was worth the price she paid for believing.
A quick step through the graveyard gets you past
The carvings, cut flowers wilting on the
Rocks and a line of ancestors beneath
The surface of a small hill here or there.
New Harmony.  Golgotha.  Palestine.
In the light of day the granite glistens,
The weathered old stones lean toward the trees,
Patient with their stories. Come back tonight.

For this place late comes early. Insurance
Men wait until they're told to go & then,
"To what?  Go home to what is what I want
To know."  A small thing changes when the bell
Rings, cracks open night's unholy rhythm,
Lit only by the SKY BLUE WATERS sign.

It's what you make of Sunday when it comes.
It comes to this, unless you give up air-
Which isn't what I mean, we all need some-
To eyes that cover up with clouds and hair.

And if you could just get out of the deal,
How easily would happiness be found?
No logical connection spins the wheel-
No reason that the feeling comes around.

Of course you can pretend, or fake again,
When all you really feel is misery.
I've been there when it wasn't fun, and when
It could have been described as ecstasy.

A southern slant, a tricky smile, is all
I've got to get the things I want, a note
Of melancholy tasting skin in fall,
When green gives up it's shade to winter's coat.

It's paradise that doesn't last, this time
Spent sliding through the grass, composing notes--
Odd things to do, a shuffle or a waltz,
A speeding up and slowing down. So what,
Objectively I've not got much to show--
A cadence well enough begun, but ****
It's hard to keep a good thing going long.
The earth itself turns slower every day.

Dare we regard the lover's moon, quite full
Tonight against the purple sky?  We've set
Our ears for reggae, sure the moon will speak
To anyone who sees it slowly spin,
Slow dancing with the broken hearts that don't
Get over losing Heaven's perfect day.

Without legitimate occupancy,
Adverse possession is the legal right
Of anyone who moves in and maintains
A property, so here's the deal. We must
Move in to 1600 Penn,
The current tenant having broke the lease.
The caravan from Guatemala first, Hondurans trudging slowly from the depth.
Then the Yemen children not yet murdered,
Those with preexisting conditions next,
And women whose assaults were ridiculed,
Those roughed up by cops and politicians.
Losers in the war on drugs, the big house
Having far exceeded capacity.
The mentally ill, discarded by the
Great communicator after he tore
The Solar panels off the roof.  This is
Anger, not poetic license.  When a
Long train of abuses and usurpations
Evinces a design to reduce them
Under absolute Despotism, it
Is their right, it is their duty to throw
Off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security. Such
Has been the patient sufferance of these
And such is now the necessity which
Constrains them to alter their systems of
Government.  And journalists under  fire,
If there's room still left in the briefing room,
Let facts be submitted to a candid
                          World.

Backs leaned against the wall,
Legs akimbo on the concrete walk,
It's colder near the ground--
Any weatherman can tell you that--
And yet you can't stand all night,
And the shelter doesn't like the way you look.

In buildings left abandoned,
         A cold collective forms,
             Sick for a fix, trading
  What's available, devalued
                          As it is
Tonight, what once wore better
                        underwear.

The path to paradise is not well worn.
I think I see it, but it's never clear,
Just scratches on a rock or silver streams,
Not deep enough to navigate, so I,
The awkward wader, stir up silt and sing
Off key, a howling animal, unclean.

All that can be said
                             is how unlikely
another word or two could change        
                       places underneath
all that has been said,
not counting evenings when
the same thing said did not
mean what it did
                            the night before.
I could be too certain.
             You could be too certain.
If we wanted the same thing,
                    how would we know?

Come see black night.  Black night proposes
                                                      mo­re
Than madness in a prophet's dream, sets free
A lean uncertainty, sweet taste of all
We dare not see.

My sweet Kathryn, you were older than me,
Knew all the black mountains--Olson, Creely, Duncan, Morley, Dorn... While I
                                           was learning
Levertov.  Your dark, unshaven armpits
Drove me wild.  I understood the honor
Of that crazy night--how could feather leave you--
               our dance at the outlaw bar,
Your sapphic gaze bemused by coal miners,
In cowboy boots, as the band played Haggard,
Coe, Willie, Waylon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson
& Emmy Lou.  I wouldn't trade it for a date
With Miss Brazil, or Russia as it were--
Some people say you made that up,
Changed heritage and grew the hair to seem more European.  I couldn't care
Less. A great dark mystery I loved
Now thirty-seven years ago with me
Just old enough to drink and you come down
From Bingington, I loved the way you said
That frozen town, where your husband lingered,
Teaching English to native speakers.
I know you still loved him. I think you loved
Me, but needed a woman's touch the same
As I.  Strange how a night can be recalled
More than years, one drunken naked sunrise,
Pillow talk instead of class.  I ditched the speech
At PBK, can't remember what they
Fed us, coming for you in a straight shift
Chevy pickup, red as the night was black.

Allow these lines to draw your heart tonight
Away from where it scatters every day.
Observe each scratched & curious black mark,
A cursive incantation, ancient skry--
Almost as if arranged by me or you.

She checks me out, with smoker's stains
On crooked teeth and looks about
Ten years less old than me, which makes
Her forty-nine.  I thought that old,
When I was seventeen, just been
With two sweet girls, about my age,
Insanely jazzed to learn that thing
Which makes us so ridiculous.

A fool can keep his wits about.
An old one learning not to fret,
Has lost enough to be sincere,
Steps often where he needs to be,
With less reluctant feet. My need
For naked words remains obscene.

When words could help I didn't say enough,
And when you needed silence I was loud.

I can leave it half full now, the ice tray,
Can drop socks & underwear anywhere,
Don't need to report my own wherabouts,
Just sometimes, like now, to figure them out.
Are you at home? is a loaded question.
Not exactly is a lonely answer.

Sometimes these words are all we have & you
Know I don't use them with a supple tongue,
Would speak as lion if I could, or dog
Or even snake--at least a subtile beast--
While I have thoughts I never recognize
Until it's too late to make any use
And what I mainly want is physical,
This ticking passage of the intellect
Is not about the things that matter most,
Yet here I am, staining the sheets again,
As one who lived a hundred years ago
And hoped to slide between the legs of time.

They got pills now that take the place of words
So I'm thinking poetry should give it
Over, being unreliable at
Best and dangerous used as intended.
No quaaludes anymore so that rules out
Ballads, but with serotonin juicers
We could all of us be Rod McKuen.

It does no good to argue with a dog.
God knows they have the patience of a stone,
Devotion to a feckless masquerade
The wordy breed has ****** upon us all,
While shouldering the burden of the world.

Not all the world is word, you dare to say.
And i can only nod, so slow to see
The difference, who even prayed, when prayer
Seemed possible, in punctuated breath.

We must have love suggested now and then,
Believing it exists despite the pain--
A longshot or illusion I suppose,
The fool's lost invocation, Pan's lament,
Come up to something more than harmony
On fractured lines where we invented words,
Then tore them up, a beautiful display
Of broken things like hearts & window panes,
Notes hanging low and bent beneath the sky
We're also told is nothing more than dust.
But I insist it's there, so blue today.

Your movement to an upper latitude
Has tilted earth a smidgen.  Gravity,
A badly weakened force, reciprocates,
Just strong enough to hold a world in place
But not to stay your drifting. Mountains green,
So far from Tennessee you're orbiting,
While I in place beside my jar, uncorked
And **** near gone, must ride this wobbled wheel.

So deep in the blues the devil couldn't
Wake me up, she said Bob you blow my mind
And I said I don't care about any
Of that stuff you got and I don't think you
Ever loved anybody, least likely
Yourself and she cussed a little hearing
It put that way by a fool who hasn't
Lost his innocence and repeats himself
A thousand times in a bad night like now,
When the wind is up and even the birds
And the insects give it a break.  You know
What I mean, better than I can say it,
Which ain't that good lately, deep in the blues.

What I need to tell you, what I can't say--
We're all fragile, trying to put things back
Together when they spring apart, until
We give up and we're not there yet, are we?

The right word not said becomes a lost cause.
I should know, whose only trick is silence.

Laughter after miscast stones, poor excuse
For a fountain.  No one believes in words
Like a liar looking for a story.

What I should have taught myself or somehow
Learned, the hardest rock being the only
Salvation, is where the pain goes at last.

Maybe it dissolves, but I suppose it
Reincarnates, finds new soul and body
Out of ashes, wrapped around another
Language, words not intended to be heard.

My sentences, they're a long time coming.
Years ago I said I love you. To tell
The truth, I was scared.  Backseats are the place
Saved for criminals.  Or children, drunks and
Idiots.  That was a long time ago.
I remember it more clearly than this
Morning.  I forgot to say how are you,
Forgot to say I'm not good at living.
You know that by now.  You know everything
I could say, but what I think is always
More.  Tonight I need to say I love you more.

My father spoke with confidence. He knew
What he believed; while I, uncertain where
To step, could never feel at ease. The word,
The flesh, the force-fed faith, confused
My childish cares.  I wanted bodies more
Than souls, temptation more than prayers.  Why not
Accept the sacrifice, in case the book
Is true?  This hope of bursting from the earth
Proved more than I could do.  But why say this
To anyone who has my father's faith?
We all have stories that we make. We tell
Ourselves they're true.  The only way to live
This life, and let the mind be sound--
give all
The love you can; keep one ear to the ground.

A wolf can hear a cloud pass overhead,
Can smell the men with poison, guns and psalms.
A sacrifice of lamb will save his daughter,
His sons, his wife. A hart will do as well,
Or rodents though it takes a large amount.
The last Connecticut wolf was shot dead
In 1837, the rest forced
West, with other natives.  The Custer wolf,
A renegade, learned the trapper's conjure,
Survived ten years despite the bounty set-
Five hundred dollars, a king's ransom then,
Enough to draw the famous trackers west.
No place for a spirit that howls, or speaks
In tongues, and that is what I do, as well
As I know how, untethered to a school
Of thought, for thinking isn't what it takes
To make the sounds that scare a full grown man.

True magic's not in books, but rhythm has
It's own reward. Words waiting for a song
Are no more use than rocks laid out of place
And I have no more words to tell you why
The rocks are lately misarranged or where
We left the path, how you were once a song
And I a misplaced stone, who never cared
For anything so much as hearing you.

I didn't get much done today,
Just cooked a meal & washed some clothes.
You somehow ate some fish and kept
It down and wore the clothes outside
While snow accumulated on
The ground and back inside we laid
A fire and turned out all the lights
And you were beautiful and I
Became a strong young man again.