My thoughts should be
Arrested
But for lack
Of a reliable witness.
Forget memories,
However real they reconvene.
Dreams have no defense
In the morning
And I feel a difference,
Understanding love is mortal.

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

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.

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.

Unless these clouds move out tonight,
There'll come no moon to wish upon,
No drawing down Diana's light
By bacchanalian devil's spawn--
The only sound  a cat's footsteps,
And our quick breath, almost unseen--
No other watcher here except
The wolf that winters here between
This woods and that one, biding time,
As lovers shiver, called outside,
Through sacred oak and profane pine,
Against the forest's darker side,
Now slanted on a recent fall,
Unfettered as this lupine call.

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.

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.

She's got a new coat, rabbit fur,
She found marked down in mid July
In a strip mall consignment store.
She's wearing it at work tonight.
A new layer, first to come off
As she dances in bright, hot lights.
Washingtons, Lincolns and Jackson
Collect on a string drunks tug on.

At home she's got a girl and boy,
Who wait with grandma while she works,
Expecting she'll arrive with toys,
And bar food served with plastic forks.
It's Friday night, no school tomorrow.
She packs them in and starts the car.

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?

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.

To love so well is rarely known--
Incomprehensible but true,
This thing that you and I have grown,
That everyday comes out for view.
Surviving while the others fell,
This linkage has the strength of steel,
And when there's nothing left to tell,
Still how we lived was oddly real--
No grand illusion in the sky,
No better place than by your side,
No understanding by and by,
No chariot or train to ride.
Yes, you comprise my paradise--
Let heaven weigh the sacrifice.

i quicken, not for the ghostyard
but its house, whose monotheist
message,  the missionary's charge,
has long eclipsed the sacred mist
that birthed my sacrilegious soul,
which worships wood unscarred by nails-
cascading birch, midsummer pole--
a rotted stump the missing grail.
i've seen the sun come through the leaves
to wake the boys who stayed up late,
young satyrs with their lust relieved,
imagining the girls they'd date.
we had no parson preaching sin,
no other world to lose or win.

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.

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 ****.

That scream of thought holds damaged wits
Responsible for absences
Long overlooked or spiked in fits
Of badly scattered witnesses,
Yourself the more exemplary--
If such sweet modesty allows--
For having landed here with me,
While others mouth consuming vows.
A useful god would not condemn
Such pecking at the heels of thought,
Unbowing to the seraphim,
Or even him the shepherds sought.
Tonight that child has much to grieve,
Whose mind has nothing left to leave.

What can be ever sung, a fraction of
The pain that's splintered on the sun & moon,
Ignoring Venus with her clouded cuff,
Swift Mercury in retrograde till June.
Red god of war, the ******, marches through
The stations of the terroristic cross,
As body counts become the evening news.
And Jove, enormous father,  albatross--
The rings that sing of sky & earth devoured
High sons of water & the underworld,
Anticipating wearily the hour,
The tenor of the unrelenting sword.
Should love be born again, how would we know?
The ocean offers secrets for the crow.

tonight we have good wine good song
no talk of any old remorse
no judgment of the the things gone wrong
just life encouraged on its course
such courage as siddhartha shared
outside the gates on any road
that anyone could take who cared
to ease a pilgrim's heavy load
eavesdropping on the universe
sad echo by the waterside
whose pleasure falls denied and cursed
you come to me another's bride
unsatisfied and passionate
your trembling lips so delicate

Quiet Saturday in April,
Sliced inbetween the sacred days--
Black eyes of the cave dwellers son,
Stone sealed and no longer breathing.
Reerection of the temple,
A barn raising, takes its sure course
Among the sunburnt carpenters
Whose hammers were inherited.
Should anyone be left behind,
As everyone is leaving soon?
Not even leaving--remaining.
Such useless information should
Perhaps be left untrumpeted,
Old news just mentioned in passing.

What she doesn't need, not again,
Is to be told by a lover,
Or a husband, where she went wrong
Before they met, or even since,
When apparently she's ******* up
Whatever great plan he had for
His life, which might have been a breeze
Without her siren's screech and moan.

She sits alone, in fading light,
Rejecting pills prescribed to fix
A chemically imbalanced soul,
Neglecting how it got that way,
This  bitter world of reckoning,
At lonely ends of summer nights.

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.

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

Nineteen nights in a bed with rails
gave me time to reconsider,
with nothing left to interrupt,
my own unnecessary place
beside you.  Do you understand
why a bad actor like myself
would give it up, get out for good?
Dying is a sinner's haven.

Life will be the difficulty.
Teach me when I'm ready for it
if you have the patience and the
time.  Don't give up when I tell you
lies. I am not brave enough.  Who
is?  We need each honest hour.

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.

If I could pray for something more
Each blessed day, it would be just
To always have the strength, endure
The arrows and the missing trust,
True potion from the mixing bowl
Of mine & yours and everyone's
Belief in any altered soul
That saves the nation's slaughtered sons
And daughters,  but that's not the world
We're here to see, and so this night,
As good as any, I lay curled
Inside the quickly passing light,
And praise the god who holds my hand,
She's always better than I am...

buckled concrete rooted up
by           and
      oaks           elms
impassable in a chair
despite the full battery
she turns
retraces
finds steps this time
so it's into the street
the only way
to reach the square
to protest
the marble statue
now she's passed
by the pickups
with the flags
whose drivers
on their way
to guard the monument
guessing she is not on their side
hurl epithets
call her a lover
of that which they
in their ignorance
despise

she wanted more, then wanted less,
a finely tuned ambivalence--
great love songs written in her name,
crisp folded, flown inside the flame.
my inclination to persist
outweighed the wisdom to resist,
come hell, deep water and the past
(rearview the only looking glass)
still walking past the angels' steps,
a fool in nose deep long-legged depths,
uncertain of the punishment
for such a carnal,  tasty stunt.
she'll read this bittersweet as sin,
complaining at what's never been

dance in bright daylight
dance in the dark winter night
dance, time disappears

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.

slide down impulsive lover spring
give succor to my ailing soul
i'll not repent the imaging
of soft mayflowers round the pole
some sweet & innocent warm air
you make where my recovery
in seasons that do not despair
remaking ground from aspen tree
mercuric goddess come again
that i may find that hidden song
discover what should long have been
pure joy which comes where you belong
reclaim slick pleasure summers bring
accept my ardent reckoning

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

The rain doesn't know it's falling,
Or that the night is warm enough
For us to sit out on the porch,
Discussing whether I should go,
Or if there's something still to do.

We used to make love in the rain.
We watch it fall like strangers now.

It's academic, as they say,
These evocations lingering,
As I and I remold the clay,
A bold offensive, stolen ring
Of Adam, Eve and human vice,
Exposed in rhythm on the grass.
Cascading willows, wind and spice,
The reaper makes his steady pass.
Cassandra sang, Ophelia too--
Good words are always hard to find,
Yet somewhere must remain a clue,
A still, small voice that says be kind.
Our final words go etched in stone,
And in the end we sing alone.

She's not close tethered to the truth,
Considering the bone-filled cage
That closes quickly after youth,
Without the service of a sage.
So offer me the opening,
Your mind, your heart,  your lips below,
And join the ****** in mortal sin
That makes the lower regions glow.
Hard knowing when the noose is slack
Who'd slice it at their peril or
Who cuts and runs,  who's got your back
When things are too much to endure.
Allow me when you need to live,
To offer all I have to give.

Half steps slide further in the dark,
When no one's watching anymore.
The band, four players in the park,
Slap out religion on the floor
As ladies circle round a fool
All night, and breakfast later on,
While giving up their Sunday school,
For one whose crown is cardboard cone.
All blues surround the passing time,
Wildflowers on a rotting stump,
Stark gestures of a tortured mime;
A hop, a skip, at last a jump.
Should I forswear my witless words,
Will motion follow, undisturbed?

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.

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.

you wouldnt know why would you know
to see him wearing cardigans
from pampered lambs and leather shoes
exported by italians
her eyes disguised by powdered base
and shimmer that accentuates
unbruised remainders of her face
that they had argued very late
designer shades pulled forward strands
a matte upon discolored neck
conceals the pattern of his hands
white hat long earrings misdirect
our short attention from the fact
that silence speaks repeated act

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.

A madam in her house breeds fear,
Long list from halls of government.
Wild music flowers night its ear,
Played rough enough blue words come bent
From queens and jesters, jack and jill,
Buck dancing Appalachian child,
A delta path that winds uphill,
To Corinth, where the rocks lay piled.
Black Jesus clogs at Nellie's house,
Trades in his sandals, blesses feet
That dance in air while lancers joust
On what were never quite white sheets.
Some unwashed sinner sheds her skin,
Makes men of boys and boys of men.

All colors and their absence mourn--
White page, black pen design the mind.
Bare bodies blow Gabe's copper horn.
They leave a twisted trail behind.
What's left unwrit is lionspeak,
Transcripted worse than poetry
Encaged in shops that smell and creak
From correlated symmetry.
Unbending letters, cold steel rails
Truss up irrelevant decrees,
But broken grammar jams and flails
From supplicants on what were knees
Aa ee ii o u
Come hear what's lost, spit out in blue.

Only we raised crosses,
Gallows poles, ever spiked
The heads of enemies
Along the road to Rome,
Quartered our
Kind--horses being driven
Without understanding--
Ever made slaves a stock-in-trade,
Built cages for refugees
From places worse than here
In class distinction,
Worse leaders--imagine--
Than our own.
Breathe deeply and continue,
While in the place incomprehensible
Another slaughter,
Then another,
And who would give himself that
Name?  Reaper?  Personification
Of the inhumane, political.
A sleepless nation, terrorized
By lies and accusations,
Fear of swarthy siblings,
Ishmael, El Paso.
Pens and pencils, paper, crayons.
New shoes.  Notebooks.  Erasers
Left on the tile battlefield.

With that sure reckon of a horse
Returning to its stable, I
Am in your arms again, strong force
The fiery pit could not deny.
Where words have no place left to hide,
You offer much that's not been said
And I, a prisoner of pride,
Lie famished, begging more than bread.
And should we find a stone removed,
Would this replace mere words with flesh
That time itself shall not improve--
Wine lately vinted from a wish.
Should I give notice of my tongue
Inside the cave where gods are hung?

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.

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

I can't compose myself today,
Have no imagination left
That's worth the time it takes to say
What might reflect somehow what's felt.
This odd pursuit is no escape,
No recompense among the just--
If anyone could claim that shape,
Who rose and fell among the dust.
As morning scrolls to afternoon,
Long evening to outer dark,
The wailing heard, the gnashing soon--
The trinity of heads that bark,
Until the music stills their breast--
In dulcet tones, then sudden rest.

And will these pixilated snaps
Look dated as the Polaroids,
Half **** but wearing baseball caps
Long borrowed from the naughty boys
Who brought the **** & Mad Dog wine
And 8-tracks blasting rock & roll
In pull outs on the county line,
That back seat dancing we'd been told
Would cash a ticket down below,
With those outside the sacred fold,
Incapable of what they owe,
With prices raised on mortgaged souls,
The ancient myth still holding firm,
Anticipating some return.

She's kept so many keys, cut long
Ago to doors and boxes, locks
On gates and diaries, on wrong
Or bad directions, wind-up clocks
Long stopped and not remembered well,
That maybe should be thrown away,
Though skeletons will sometimes sell
In sidewalk sales on judgement day.
Increasingly, the future's picked
From options found along the road--
Reaffirmation, habits kicked,
A heart that bears a heavy load.
Kind words prove yet her greatest spell,
Her keys cast in the wishing well.

Red sky this morning,
Clear to anyone not sleeping in--
Heat rising off the street,
Songbirds reluctant with their song.
The early lunch crowd eyes the sky.
Don't like the looks of that, one says,
Seeing some suggestion,
Something gathering
In the west.

Come dark it's rained three times and quit,
And then the heavens open up--
Fire dancing through the rain.

Some lives will not be spared tonight--
The weather not the worst of it;
Black powder, steel and lead.

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.

The shadow of a cross lies flat
Against the ceiling seen above,
As i lie flat upon my back
Beneath the fan that hasn't worked
In centuries. It's five A.M.
I'm trading sleep for poetry.
I've traded it for other things,
So why not scribble? why not sing?

This second stanza needs a push.
I must confess i've used up love,
Though loathe to tell you just how much.
I've let it flow and let it go.
We're running out of time it seems.
Grey doves find branches in the trees.