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.

Lee's dumbstruck seeing hung
Beneath the light
Her dress, a wig the color
Of her hair, her shoes--
The marionette he wanted.
He'd spent some time on this,
Had set the stage then texted
Please come get your ****,
Garage unlocked.

And  had he thought
Helena, by her now--too late
To shield her eyes--
Would understand such hate
At five years old?
"Is that you, mom?"
"I guess it is.  Your
Daddy's mad."

She held back tears, undressed
The doll except the hair,
Then cut it down while standing on
The set of steps he no doubt used
To raise it there
And dropped it in the trunk
Of her Toyota, unsure
What else to do with it,
Collected all the dross
She carried in for seven years,
Before and while things
Went to hell.

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.

at loneliness the edge defies
a gentle passage i no more
than you can bear the silent core
of what accepts and what denies
disintegration through cold space
a meeting on no other side
no ticket for another ride
no place to taste much less embrace
so think of less than death tonight
hubristic thief of borrowed time
think more by our edenic crime
swept loose in this romantic light
your lips can speak the truth or lies
to say much more would not be wise

Our ***** have long erased the lines
Stone-chiseled into  monuments,
Fresh minds distorted by the signs,
Persuasive wine and sacraments.
The old salvation of belief
Hangs out like fossils by the creek,
Sustaining some with sure relief,
Who seldom give the other cheek.
In fear of lack of more than this
Untimed, uneven passaging,
The slow decline & emptiness
Of vanity and preacher's stumps,
As bridges see increasing jumps.

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.

The American dream had wheels,
Wheelwrights heating rims to fit
Linseeded spokes,
Conestogas, prairie schooners,
Bicycles and trains,
Fords and Maseratis, Harley Earle Impalas,
Coal trucks, semis, interstates
That separate the morning.

I just want to be here by you,
On brisk October evenings,
A glass half full of dry red wine,
Good records playing Miles Ahead
And some extended rhapsody
Laid down by bodhisattvas who,
In studios or concert halls,
Or even football stadiums,
Found paradise and brought some back,
So we could share this lovers' gaze
And spell these words that someone else
Not here tonight might read as if
The world has loved us all somehow,
In stories & in tones of blue.

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.

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.

The first thing we moved in, west coast
Or Mississippi, was speakers,
Then the amp and turntable.
That way we had music
As we pushed in the couch and chairs,
The kitchen table and sometimes
A television.  Magical
Evenings filled with despair followed,
Like cold on rain, and we shivered
As the inexperienced do.
I remember the train station
Floor in Monterey, Mexico,
My apologies
Among the vendors with their carts,
And good advice I got that night.
You like that watch?  Put it in your
Pocket.  But we were only young and dumb
Enough to leave home with traveler's
Checks and a taste for tequila,
Not like the families waiting now
For how long it takes the sheriff
To show up after the notice.

Not surprising, really, that she
Never heard from Kevin, though he
Promised if he could he would keep
Calling, after his heart went still,
The inevitable outcome
The cardiologist assured
Them would be soon, maybe three months,
Maybe four.  He lasted seven.
She wore black for the first long year,
And listened close to everywhere
His voice might speak the slightest word,
Watched the fingerlings swim downstream
In the waters he used to fish,
As if one might turn back and look
At her with swift recognition,
Beside her in that icy stream.

What had to be the way it was
For this to be the future, now
That everything has hour-glassed,
The question yet remains and how
Would I begin the rugged search
For lonely time still spread across
A frosted morning, swinging birch
Or any rutted road criss-crossed.
Where are you, in this place of need,
My long abandoned plans and who
Will ever mount that fiery steed
In seasons where the sap is low?
The mind still bends, as scribblers lean
To scratch out what is yet unseen.

These blues ain't made their mind up yet,
If whiskey gets the night or pills.
Both call you on a sucker's bet,
That knocks you down before it kills.
Try standing in your lover's room,
The night she packed and left for good.
You ****** up one last time & Boom,
There ain't no woman where she stood.
Apologies wear out and ****
You used to get away with knocks
Your words outta your mouth and yet
There's no need now to lock the locks.
Who cares if someone robs you blind?
You got no life to leave behind.

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.

It feels like freedom, skeleton
Lock clicked and a little money--
Enough for bus fare and a room
In cheap places already seen,
Maybe for a couple of weeks--
The strength to go straight if choices
Overcome the tempter that speaks
Louder than the other voices.
You won't freeze in Florida or
Southern Alabam and might meet
A woman again,  with flavor--
Coarse salt and sweat, yet almost sweet--
And she might share a slight worn key.

The blue bear lying on its side
In the dumpster, atop the trash
Was meant for Kevin, apartment
Seven on the second storey,
Whose father came by but was not
Let in because an argument
Developed over missed payments
He admitted he should have made,
And wished he could have made, eight bucks
An hour and staying clean not
Being enough to pay his rent,
Restitution on the damaged
Trailer where he used to cook ****,
And avoid the repossession
Of his pickup truck.  Later he
Calls her, his baby mom, and asks
About Kevin, and if he can
Come back around, now that they've both
Had time to calm down, with the cash
He got for Christmas from his own
Dad, a little less than half what
He owes, but enough to help out,
And also, if she doesn't mind,
Since he'll be a minute getting
Back, will she go downstairs and check
The dumpster to see if the bear
Might yet be rescued and restored.

What if I told you your secrets,
The ones you never tell--
lime green off the tree
at the edge of our
laughter, whispering words almost
abandoned.  Love is the way you hold my hand.

We are listeners, you and I, tracing
back the conversation, almost to its
beginning,  sharing the cost
of fear, if that's what it is, where it
begins, this knowledge of each other.

Do you look away afraid?
I do.  You live in the future,
of what might be my soul:  possible?
Give me your pleasure,
Permit me in your story, face to face.
Come, come to my bed.

A path established long ago
Invites us boys to follow down,
Set up a new encampment here,
On this brown bank of Caster's creek,
And brown our bodies head to toe,
Pretend to be the other's girls,
In tents we've pitched as evening falls,
And constellations fill the sky.

Two brothers and the rest of us
Find arrowheads and smoke grapevines
The morning after we've entwined,
Throw sticks and rocks like savages--
A Saturday to be alive,
Unlike the sons on Asian hills.

This passage will not steer you sane
Or mend the dread insomnia
Won't dull the existential pain

Or promise heaven hears you call
A comforter no just these streets
Whose long acquaintance seeing all

The butts tossed down the crooked beats
That question every soul tonight
Who takes a step and then repeats

The essence of some second sight
Of mortal blood that cleans the stain
Of what is measured wrong or right

With blue ink borrowed you remain
As white frost settles in the lane

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

it comes in late, at the witching hour,
at the time reserved for drunks waking up
and losing sleep,  the road outside slower
and the light from the street lamps just enough
to slant the shadows of the shuffling
raccoons that scavenge what has not been picked
already in the busy afternoon,
it comes in strange and strong, it comes in thick
as hoarded ink that must be spent before
it's wasted, dry as a salvaged headstone
from the old yard give way to new pasture,
roses fusing, vining out ancient bones
as i--awake now--wrestle with the fear
of reckless words i hesitate to share.

But then, when does it go,
This madness that could not
Have been expected
Or prepared for?
How to put it, in layman's terms,
Thin patchwork of a day
In need of much forgiveness,
Words that break apart from overuse,
Scattering syllables
Like a convict's rock,
A monk's waterfall,
The seed of some neglected question.

How can I tell someone like you
That I need you?  You expect me
To lie, to say I'll be all right.
I never could avoid the truth;
You say it's easy, with practice.
Soon enough it's second nature.

I should be kissing your shoulders

Bare ground gets soft in the cold rain,
Turning ankles and slowing work,
Freezing the overnight tracks
Of possum and raccoon, brushed in frost
For  the morning cattle feeding,
Before the school bus and lessons,
Drilled paddle of the principal,
Confessions of the miscreants.
Nothing more simple than the heart,
Which warms the lungs so breath is seen.
The hens don't peck, prefer bagged grain,
The steady work of laying eggs
That disappear with doorknobs in the nest.
What's the poet getting at?

time is the sun we move around
through shadows and reflections
expecting more
a prophet or a sacrifice
how do we hold the sound
of any place without a name
some avenues allow return
their beauty having lingered
i find myself convinced
though why remains unclear
that we've something more to learn
some word or some experience
something that would obviously matter

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.

If we were less impermanent,
We'd forge our nails as hard as god,
Whose only child had kinder skin,
And veins cascading mortal blood.
The straightened line must have an end,
Entropic and irreverent
As any long expected wind,
Ill-suited to the penitent,
And those alike, whose stoic gaze
Accepts the loss of thought and dream--
All aenema a passing phase--
A balanced crossing on a beam.
Forgive me if I say again,
Come touch the wound, come taste the skin.

should i in love expose my heart
as you decline to recognize
this stiff endurance is an art
such long consideration lies
in measures laid out on the sheets
in melancholic midnight trysts
in black and white in crooked beats
in my misgivings mortal lists
be in this day a flowering
of all that's sown before the sun
a wager on the coming spring
where coverings are all undone
what slithers through your southern lips
it's own hard way finds heaven's slips

Long conversations are in order now,
This unrelenting season of decline,
Spent rearranging petals on the bough,
As pound for pound you always held your wine.
So come again and sit outside with me,
Beside the fire or under falling leaves.
I've never stopped imagining us free
To well regard the spider as she weaves,
Or god theirself though seldom ever pleased
By sacrificial gestures brought halfway,
Sick flowers you might save from their disease.
Eventually of course we've hell to pay.
So never mind the words I fail to say.
We'll find some comely mortal way to pray.

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.

These words will have no life,
Unless you take them in,
Revive them with your breath ,
Allow their lingering.
Abandoned letters
Have no aspiration,
No strength to move feathers,
Approach explanation,
Coerce your lips to move,
As one possessed or cursed--
Hell finds a way to shove
Its wages in your purse.
And when it's all been said,
Give praise for what you've heard.

if any man has loved a woman more
than i love you he must be heaven's seed,
as i expect a soul does not endure
without connection. what it is i need--
and i am much in need--your heart supplies,
unto the depths of fear while holding fast
to my uncertain, passionate disguise
as someone recognizable at last.
permit me one more privacy tonight,
that i may outweigh heaven and its sun,
give something to the darkness more than light,
and shout until the living has been done,
a sacrilegious lover and a fool,
whose throne has all the makings of a stool.

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.

She likes the baseball afternoons,
Better than the Sunday sermons,
Has waited,  sleeplessly, all night,
Now nods along the homilies,
Less certain of the trinity
Than how the 6-4-3 can end
An inning that looked perilous,
Or how the cardinal lately
Spending evenings by the fence row
Might be her husband back at work.

America, these unconventional
Blues got bags and stretchers
For the blue light special,
Chalk for the teachers
Of the wrong kind of freedom
My old co-worker from
The sawmill days
Steers a riverrun now,
Tugs barges through
The stations of the
Mississippi bridges,
Writes on FB
These protesters should
Get a job
So we don't pay
For their cell phones and health care,
Bullet wounds and bad decisions
Like the color of
Their parents
And the shape
Of their skulls
Phrenologically
Speaking.
He's got no ear for the music,
America's Blues,
Just get off the street
Son, it's yr own
Fault if yr head
Gets Kracked
Or yr shot in the back
By the Blues.
He'll vote for law,
Pardon vigilantes
And fire those *******
Millionaires that dare
To take a knee
Or fail to play the game.

dark goddess lover of the night
chaotic daughter even god
has feared give me the strength tonight
where wings of uriel may love
my undeserving tongue with song
releasing some new variant
to lodge beside what's lasted long
as any earthly supplicant
two boys beneath your slanted arms
bring mischief from the crescent moon
the dreamer and the end of dreams
let play long light in fecund june
late dark content to wait its turn
while chiseling upon the stone

Chattering squirrel, I beg you hear
This quiet sonnet plead your leave.
Yes, you and I count each sincere,
Refusing, Dylanesque, to grieve.
I offer you the whisky jar,
A hit of **** or mushroom caps.
Cold day is slanting into dark.
If I were younger, there'd be apps.
I couldn't write this, maybe you
Began it and I snagged this line.
What moves will drop, when time is due,
The snow, the leaves, your mind and mine.
No more space left for barking here,
Scorched words an antidote to fear.

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.

some hidden cause breaks
fever soaking early afternoons
of still cold sun
days in the lovers' month

where seeing isn't quite
come past believing
would you ever or would i
find pitch dark path
so close the smell still moves

concealing all the consequence
of singularities spaced
where too easy crossfire
has no wheels
no combination
and no pleasure that's remembered

you no longer name this world
spent casings loosely scattered
guarantee no evidence
that i was ever in your eyes
imagining the sliding time
when snow fell on the wall
the street the lovely hill

I worked here once is how I know the place--
A volunteer, but now I've come for food
For my own kids, to stand in line with kith
And kin and not discuss the kind of votes
That gave the rich a little more and us
Not quite enough to feed our kids or pay
The rent or buy a car or keep the dog.

reactions to the soneteer
have ranged from *** to calumny,
substantial offers of a beer
and nights that live in infamy.
supposing that i had a choice--
such suppositions have their place--
i'd give it up, this peasants' voice,
to see the pleasure in your face,
a secular beatitude
no less amazing in its grace,
that saved my soul from solitude,
than any sacrificial blaze,
or resurrection from a cave,
despite the way my songs behave

Wood cut in spring splits clean in December,
And though I've seen three score and should be tired
Of ending years, expiring decades and
Even one century I put to bed,
Should be tired of trees and tinsel,
Tired of tricks played on the children,
Tired most all of new beginnings,
Tired of poems I can't finish,
Long cold winter evenings, sleep
And dreams and anxious afternoons,
The platitudes come late to stay
                   longer
Than invited,
Laughing at us unrepentant
Singers, dancers, lovers, saviours.
            Start.  Live.  Go.  Now.

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

On a clear day the morning light comes through
The dining room window, through the open
French doorway and, now that the time has changed
To save daylight, pools on the wan face of
Ophelia floating on her back above
The mantle, Pre-Raphaelite splendor
In a second-hand dress at eight-thirty
While I scribble and watch the news. Today
A new resignation, an ongoing
Investigation. Something is rotten,
Madness encroaches. Widespread melancholy,
Floating through forget-me-nots and poppies,
Singing.

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 other way was magic then,
Left roadside as the animals,
Uncomprehending speed of men
Come slaked with fire from banquet halls,
Front-slanted as the rising sun,
Whose dangerous appearance mocks
The dark,  where lovers come undone
And hearts are picked like rusted locks.
Your singing is the holy sound,
The wailing of the innocent
That brings the spirit up from ground,
Where lust renews from passion spent.
My words come slow, unbent to taste,
As love is unconcerned with haste.

The green leaves fluttering against the blue sky
Where the moon has lately been,
Unapproachable beauty
On slanted branches
                         synergistically arranged,
My cranial nerves reflecting
What has been shot forth
In such profusion
As to lift
A humble soul.

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.

How something you didn't know you needed
Can come to be the thing you need the most,
A way to breathe beneath the waves until
Someone like me or you, unlikely friend,
Absorbs the pain, the sweet perfume, instead
Of telling you you're on your own. You've had
Enough watered down love, I know it well,
And yet a stronger shot could prove the cure.

This is not air, just music in a word.
I won't call it anything it isn't.
I've has my share of lovers hating love.
You come again and I'm the helpless man
Who gives you things that vanish in the air,
Thick now with my relentless submissions.