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

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

What matters now that time has long Resigned itself to peering in
Through black cat glasses that belong
On overwrought librarians
Flipped out on sheets like ridicules
Of mockingbirds as shy kids find
Their *** on shelves at grammar school,
At least the represented kind.
Can someone take these shelves away?
They've given books much too much space,
Quixotically arranged the day
In covers where the lost embrace
Lost lovers from a borrowed song
And lives are lived, however long.

I once knew a girl from Kentucky,
Whose husband would not let her f**k me.
He landed in jail,
And could not make bail.
Now all of my friends call me lucky.

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.

It didn't matter what we did,
Together while the light lay down--
Eat something,  watch TV, get high
On every breath we shared before
The darkness called,  like memory,
Like a thing almost remembered,
So sure we were that time would leave--
Unwanted guest, unlikely song

should i be excused from thoughts
indeterminate as they were
not ever knowing how they sound
in occupation of the space
a poem seeks, taking notes
on its ambitious song

We've outdone Father Abraham
In sacrificing girls and boys;
Along the border, in the wars
That serve no cause but oligarchs,
Who reassign the deity,
Call Moloch to America,
With powder, pills and poverty,
While celebrating liberty.

Don't fault the peasants, red or blue,
Whose votes have been corrected by
The players in the party rooms.
The unwashed--unbrushed teeth on edge-
Come out of hell for processing,
Discover yet another ring.

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.

How beautiful the children's feet,
Mothers at the border crossings,
The cellist in the war-torn streets,
Resplendent in the evening,
Who know that evil has a name,
A placid face, blue eyes of death,
Who murders with a toxic rain
That sears the skin,  that takes the breath.
The earth grows dark with fallen leaves;
Blood brothers, elders, innocents.
Say nothing of the amputees,
The blinded and the minds that went
Beyond recovery.  God's hooks
Were never meant for common folks.

It must have been hard to wake from a dream
Where he could do anything, even more
Than anyone alive, to realize then
That he could not move half his body still,
To wait to be transferred by his small wife
From bed to porcelain *** to lift chair-
Unimaginable loss of freedom
In a house he built from lumber he sawed
From timber he cut from a woods he owned.

I grew up there, by that same woods, deep and
Dark in the early morning light, snaking
Logs between still standing  oaks, looking up
For widowmakers, dead limbs that slaughter
Loggers, and over my shoulder for snags
That rear tractors or snap chains that become
Metal whips--so many dangers in that
Woods, yet I  felt safe, as his son, because
He had the confidence I wish I knew.

She stares outside the open gate,
Convinced she can't pass through it still,
And leave the world she's learned to hate.
Perhaps she'll eat another pill.
Scorched character has settled fate,
Has undermined her sovereign will.
The cost of freedom set too high--
She loves her gold too much to try.

The hungry ghost, tight-lipped and sere,
Stores up the treasures that corrupt,
Refuses love and succors fear,
Finds living always too abrupt.
I've said it slanted, but today
The cage is empty anyway.

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

the man with nothing to say
stretches it
past comprehension,
echoing the future
when all
the voices
return

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.

If I could conjure paradise,
I'd place it here, in this soft light,
With day trips for the groceries,
Occasional short strolls at night,
And visits now and then from friends,
Who'd bring good wine and never fight,
Would love the music that we play,
Transcend some way our mortal plight.

Our maladies would disappear,
Financial worries all dissolve,
Eat every fruit available,
No ****** mysteries to solve.
No hatred, spite or jealousy.
Around your body I'd revolve.

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

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.

Karl's been drinking since yesterday,
when she came back for her clothes
and the dog he bought her
five or six years ago,
an Irish sitter
that never seemed to trust him,
even though he'd fed it well
and brushed its coat
for the two weeks she'd been gone,
suspecting perhaps
that the whole affair
was more his fault
than the other man's
and surely more than hers.

Was this a predetermined thought,
Constructed in an unfree mind--
A trot line strung where fish are caught
Without a well cast lure to find.
Loose words sift through a poet's hand--
They scar the skin like god's own hooks,
As if there were a master plan
That could inspire a patchwork book
Begun with what was deadly banned,
Unknown within the naked world
Until the slanted word's command
Suggested sacrifice endured.
Some better line deserves this place,
Wedged tight in this most thoughtless
                                                              space

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.

From the garden of Heaven a western breeze
Blows through the leaves of my garden of earth
                                             --Hafiz

Humility comes easier
And easier, accumulates
In the pockets of poverty,
The deep rivers of the heartland,
Where we're told by cashiers to have
A blessed day--sing, count your many--
And it's true as the western breeze,
Where leaves flutter, underrated.

Compassion, in the garden of
Heaven, God's country, flown over
Aside from quick stops to mine votes,
Cannot be regained in this land
By anything less than human,
By any houses not holy.

The fortune teller's twisted heads
See past the time you might have stayed,
And how we might have made our beds.
Did you have need to be betrayed,
Forsake your soul and take your meds?
Confess the way you've been afraid.
Who's with you isn't where you've gone.
He's with you now, you're still alone.

I've no great fleet to sail you home,
Though you are ever beautiful,
As Helen with her careful comb.
Call yesterday your interval,
Give me your scent of summer rain.
We'll face the future, heal the pain.

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.

Downhill on a cool morning
With a fresh cut load
Of logs for the mill
The brakes went out
On the old truck
With its nonredundant lines.
No stopping it my father
Double clutched and geared down,
Steered across a road ditch
Deep enough to bounce us
High above the seat,
While I in childish innocence believed
He knew what to do,
And he did, as well as anyone could
Under the circumstances.
The chains and come-a-longs
And standards held, tires didn't
Burst, and we made our way
Slowly to the mill yard, unloaded
On the ground and spent the afternoon
Soldering that breached brake line,
Refilling it with fluid and bleeding it.

The news is not good news today--
Hide from the wind and run from rain,
A boat on fire, gut sick gun play.
All told, a litany of pain,
And I, perhaps I should feel worse,
Should give anxiety its due,
The medications being cursed.
And yet the sky outside is blue.
I claim no sense of innocence,
While holed up here--a sonneteer,
With lit incense and cupiscence
For that woke fear this craft can't queer,
This horrorshow, this pixeled glow--
Trade winds that blow where words won't go.

So I picked up this gig trying
To enlighten the universe
And it's bad pay and long hours,
Benefits more intrinsic than
Bankable, but it needs doing
And just like my uncle Virgil,
When he retired from the Castle
On the Cumberland--the state pen
Where he'd worked since he was thirty--
Told me, there's not many vicious
Killers, not even among the
Lifers, just things that went bad wrong
And could have been to me or you--
Something you need to remember.

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.

Could be coffee or
The cat's indigestion again,
Looks like islands
On the vast yellow page,
The lawyer's pad,
Hispaniola with its stark
Divide,
Jamaica, Cuba,
A rhythm section of suppression,
Questioning the rights of man,
Woman, trans, some progress
At a price
Unknown.  Love,
The color of the sun,
Suggests itself in shadows
And reflections.

I've never known a poet who didn't
Wish at least most of the time that he could
Be a lineman, say, or else a fireman,
Even better, rescuing animals
And people discovered in a bad way,
Or perhaps a musician, for whom words
Are always buried in a dying song.
But tonight I envy the sweeper, whose
New machine cost eighty grand and flashes
A yellow light at five miles an hour
Up and down Olive Street, where I abide.
I'd wear headphones and smoke a pipe, I would,
And the world would be cleaner when people
Awake. Instead i've lost the urge to sleep
And cannot be persuaded by the pills
Or longing spent earlier in the dark.
I'm settled in, content to mark the time
From sun to sun, while no cars pass this house,
With pent up language of a modest sage,
Renouncing what the night has said, just me
And this steely-eyed old man who's run his
Rig on every street in town, both up at
3 A.M. and he's the one getting paid.

That past is least predictable,
Which might have cast the healing spell,
Slim echo of the madrigal
Drawn out of some abandoned well
Where wishes once flowed easily
And fast enough to be construed
As miracles and prophecy;
Small crosses fashioned from old wood.
All offerings anticipate
Such future unaffordable
Without the fire that's said to wait
Some place beyond believable.
Lost words lay stalled on blotted page,
Conceived like orphans sent to rage.

ephemeral morning,  page torn
from an open book
testing appearances, aurora
of a figurine fresh
from the latest carnival,
a salted composition
as the taffy and
the clowns

For all things mortal,
Love has time--
when nothing else
has reason--
stays past the time
one not staying
would be gone.

my friend reminded me today
of barefoot roy, great-uncle roy,
who rode the baler chute all day,
and twisted wires like christmas toys,
before grass string & knotters ruled,
then big bales bucked with tractor forks
and kids were told to stay in school,
his feet resembling bottle corks,
the only man i ever knew
could walk a stubblefield full speed,
through cockleburrs & startled snakes,
without the notion or the need
for brogans where the hay's been raked;
he picked on her, he picked on me,
and prayed to god to let him be.

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

my father was an angry man
who fumed with godlike fury when
someone like me had other plans
that constituted mortal sin
or less than steady revenue,
yet kneeled beside my bed when doubt
had displaced subtly all i knew,
trained substance of the altar vow--
as if this constant crossworld death
could be persuaded to relent,
could be defeated, sparing breath,
or carved out blue as light gets bent--
a son the perfect sacrifice,
as wine is poured and bread is sliced

if freedom could be earned
then i might see the one
who brought me here
as someone i have loved
almost well enough
to recognize
in evenings when the stars and moon
are less apparent than the rain

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.

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.

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 world's abandoned us and left
Us reeling from its own devices,
Separating smaller slices,
Cold servers calculating theft,
Corrupting every sacred craft.
Women punished for their choices.
Hungry children got no voices.
Let's have a war, without the draft.
What worth in words the poet wrote,
Old gods could show us how to live?
Bad questions linger, bodies float.
Who knew the earth could cease to give?
I leave this ragged, tortured note.
And from this pen, I'll forge a shiv.

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.

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.

Unruly truth, your sharp array
Marks tossing lovers--hostages--
Gives aspiration to the clay,
Whose pornographic images
Come through the open basement door.
Fidelity, unreckoned thief
Of all the lies that promised more
Than visitations cloaked with grief,
Defy my moving hand tonight,
That's found the place where life comes in.
Reveal your ugly face and fight.
This thrusting pen comes jammed with sin.
Submersion couldn't call your bluff.
I'm done with this.  I've had enough.

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.

even augustine could dream--
of freedom, women, men?
and god, salvation
of the fittest--
nevermind the terror of the night

Despite the clutter and decay,
Indicative of my decline,
I'll have you understand I'm not
Unhappy with my lot, and yes,
Do comprehend the odds against
Becoming one with God or you,
And yet I've seen it happen once
Or twice and so, intermittent
Though it's been, I'll keep at it, love
Being one of those things, Hegel's
Greatest contradiction, reason
Being useless in its face, so
I don't mind the pain it harbors,
As much as I would miss its taste.

Shall what cannot be finished
Be abandoned?
What should be done with love,
So strong and mortal--
The answer
To a question
Impossible to frame.
Hard work with poor material;
We should have made
A better god
I suppose,
Though what we have now
Must suffice,
Patched up and resurrected--
Blasphemous poets,
Lovers,
Something overwhelming,
Undefined,
A path not going
Anywhere we haven't been
And yet tonight--
Good earth our destination--
I see you and cannot
Reply,
Except to say,
As simply as a stubborn fool,
This is what we are.
And knowing that
Is far too much
To leave behind
Or otherwise believe.

I think we know the way it goes,
Stray bullets in the moonlit night--
Football East Louis, Illinois--
Take life from good girl only eight.
A pawnshop gun, a deal gone bad,
Unanswered prayers, unfinished life,
Uncertain hopelessness gets fed
To those who somehow just survive.
Which way is this, untouchable?
Defender of the sacrosanct,
Red blood of Jesus, god man child
Spilled out on grass beside white paint.
Our sport is shooting children now.
Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low.

Told of keys
& a kingdom
Don't blame
Me I'm on my knees
At a loss
For words or machine oil,
A stuck lock in pearl--
Petrified cross.
It's a matter of mimicking
The master, *** metal
And attention to detail,
Tumblers unsticking--
A little spit,
Devil's ****.