We move the world with
Bold assumptions.
Without their breeze,
Would the time pass
Or do any of the things
That it does?

I am known by silence,
Unremarkable, necessary
If anything
Heard
Is recognized,
Is comprehended.

The parting gifts of lovers
Are the faces and the words,
Where I myself have overspoke,
If only for a minute,
While the flash
Of pain confused sin

With redemption,
The collected misunderstanding
Of the childhood need
For a tall and quiet man
Who answered the world
When needed.

So much of this song
And shuffle is giving
A dog a pill it doesn't want.
Experience helps,
And a love of dogs--
An easy reach for the Buddha

And if the universe--
This one--
Was the size of a baseball
Once, it must have come
Hard, like a high
And tight fastball

Out of the hand of Bob Gibson,
The year before
They cut down the mound.

could this be all you need to see
my misdirected feet turned late
in reassessment of the need
that someone banging on the gate
must have for human consequence
for breath that moves the dust again
the spirit no less hesitant
beneath this inconsistent skin
long parched by lack of festive nights
rough sanded by the loss of time
that somehow wasn't added right
with all results disqualified
we should be keeping this discrete
well knowing it must not repeat

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.

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.

Considering the comical
Conception & the tragic fate,
Our clowning on a party night
Has shadings of a miracle
When even on all spirits' eve
We drink the wine that turns to blood,
Then spit it at the axe man's hood
And turn as if we meant to wave
Toward the setting evening sun
That calculates the time of day
And asks for change like errand boys
Who hold out *****, upturned hands,
Expecting less than what they need--
Repairs for broken bones and wings.

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.

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.

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.

****** 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.

Ignore me if you will,  I've tried.
I think the thinkers may be wrong
About this thing free agency,
Hardball being better since Curt Flood
And who are the owners anyway
To tell us where our interests lie
As if some overbearing deity
Got jealous of the lesser gods,
Or even me, with my
Great Pleasure in the flesh,
Disputing life and destiny,
Not waiting on a starry crown
When thorns will make a fitting laurel.

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

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.

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

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

If words could transport, you'd be here,
Come south again romantically,
With Amorous Particulars,
To whisper most emphatically,
Your quil gon penetrate the veil.
Good English words cannot define
The love you sing, the way you wail
This canted language of the vine.
I'll wet your lips with syllables
Your other wouldn't understand.
Come taste new pleasures, break some rules,
And move until you come undone.
These bits well moisten underthings,
Come be my love, unsheath your wings.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

when this soul doesn't rise or fall,
no other places to be found
aside from dust and ash and all
the senses come at last unbound,
entangled in a glass of time,
that ever-present chimera
as silent as a painted mime
posed briefly for the camera
that shutters light and snaps like some
outrageous hound convinced that clowns
share nothing of the cumbersome
disrobing from their vested gowns
when all is taken, stones returned
unearthed and more than ever burned

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.

These letters bid you come again,
Not just in dreams but in my arms.
Let pleasure find its best way in,
Set off the devil's own alarms.
I'll play the fool, an old one now,
Who yet believes your batting eyes
Outspeak the misdirected vow
That soon enough proved bad disguise.
Long living takes a need,  give leave
I offer my sincere repeats--
My pen and ink, my sacristy,
Another round of wrinkled sheets.
Unless your heart bends otherwise,
Our foolish pleasures soon seem wise.

What I have learned to do is place one thing
Beside another, using nothing more
Than sharpened sticks to guide them into place,
Where they never fit quite perfectly. You
And I were perfect once, or as close as
Apples side by side on an old canvas,
Unthinkable that one should decompose--
An accidental knowledge of the fall.

Astonish me again with those green eyes,
That see me for the fool I've always been.
One passing taste beneath the lonely sky,
A coupling held against the night
Where lovers have no need of hungry words,
And I no more than breath have need of you.

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.

Such elegance and opulence
Beneath this highway overpass,
Where rocks provide the sustenance,
As winter culls the underclass;
Gimcrackery of transients,
Guitars and spoons and mattresses.
Police come charged with striking tents.
You can't live here, the city says.
One level up, on 2nd Street,
Old cars and vans make living space
For down-and-outs who still compete,
And teach their kids to ask God's grace.
This kingdom come, of what's been done--
Earth daughter, mother, father, son.

The best words ever written couldn't change
The color of the leaves before the fall,
Or how your eyes tonight give up their pain.
True love is marvelously strange.
So close your eyes and change the way you see
This language born of darkness and disease,
Slow-footed, naked, treading burning coals.
A scarring, then the soul comes free.

A sawbuck won't go far these days,
Enough to get your sick off, not
Much more--a Chinese toy, 3 plays
At chances for the biggest ***.
Sometimes I'm happy still, a fool
Soft selling so much misery,
With platitudes of Sunday school
And politician's finery.
There's not enough when no one shares,
When blame is disproportionate,
And hungry voices strike deaf ears
That call the lost unfortunate,
That call compassion socialist,
And gall their name on heaven's list.

Something resists understanding
The early exit of a friend.
I do believe in accidents,
The unpopular opinions
Of poets, children and lost dogs,
Finding anything but false hope
A good reason to continue,
Without the promise of success.
Her beautiful smile and the dog
She loved gave up life together.
Now you and I sleep fitfully,
Foresworn to secret shatterings.
No use to speak of mercy, God's
Own grim partner rakes the land.

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.

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.

The lottery gives better odds
Than sonnets penned to win the hearts
Of beautiful librarians,
Who place them on the shelf unread,
So this one I'll fold up & fly,
Like some unruly boy in school,
Where you might find it underfoot
And wonder at the sort of man
Who knows no better way than this
To get back in your hands again--
Unlikely paper avatar,
Slow gliding like the yellow sun
To places it has not been seen
Since you were last alone with me.

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.

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.

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.

Somehow the words you whispered then
Seemed nothing worth remembering.
Not so the flavor of your skin,
Or how you set the phone to ring
At my house when he called your line
From jail to see if you were home,
While all the time you lay inclined
On feather pillow, mattress foam.
We borrowed time from userers,
Who claim their interest near the heart,
And reappear as raveners,
Insistent while the days grow short.
Would now those words could buy some time,
Spent here in this outdated rhyme.

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?

A dozen young men clear debris along
The highway, not chained together but not
Free to go, yellow-jacketed, watched by
A supervisor in a uniform
As you and I pass by unrecognized
For our transgressions, not righteous enough
To challenge gravity for redemption,
Just pleading not to fall again tonight.

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.

This slender evergreen should scratch your name
Against the perfect sky. You're not alone
While someone loves you, if anyone knows
Still what it means to hold a fragile heart
And not be frightened by the memory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your husband called again,
While we were making love again,
This time in my dream.
The room was showing light already,
Cats perched on the chest of drawers
Like vultures but expecting--
Insisting upon--
My resurrection,
While a little foggy
I'm wondering whose fault
This is.
I can't be responsible
For everything,
So next time--
I'm asking in advance--
Please turn off your phone.

He's found her in the gallery,
This spotty neighborhood
Where cash is king
And what's available today
Might not be back tomorrow
And he's the one who's out of place--
Suspicious eyes on concrete steps--
In his short-sleeved shirt.
He hands her fifteen folded twenties,
Says call your mom, she misses you.
She nods and slips the bills inside her bra,
Says something not quite loud enough.
He takes a step, looks back and says,
Your brother scored two goals last night.

were we on devil's holiday
3 lovers in the strength of may
ignoring any other world
than that wherein our legs lay curled
and was it sweet for that bright morn
to be the dazzling unicorn
who clattered off less innocent
of how the tempter's time is spent

Nobody's heard much more than what's
In the paper and that's only
That Hill got killed by an off duty
Officer when somebody called in
Suspicious behavior and he was only
Half  a mile from his house, along
Hill road in the woods
And his sister said sure,
He was gacking,
But he didn't have no gun,
They didn't have to **** him.
I guess they're used to this
In Nashville, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
But here we know each other some,
And his sister says he wanted
To get straight but ****'s
A disease and Hill had it bad,
Had it from high school,
Through two tours in Iraq
And five years now since he came back,
Couldn't seem to hold a steady job
And started dealing it to pay the rent,
Sold grams and eight *****,
Coke or Ice,
Not smack and never packed
More than a knife since his felony,
Because he gave it to me, she says,
I've got his 9 and that's it,
He didn't have no gun.
So I tell her it isn't right
What happened and would like to say
Justice, etc., but
Seeing that's unlikely
And she knows it, I hold her head
On my shoulder
Because last night
They killed her brother.