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.

Time Is treason to my freedom.
It bends these words outside my will.
The question, if I understand
Correctly, has to do with love--
Some say it can't, some say it must
Endure, must overwhelm the church
Bell, explosion of at least one
Universe and the possible
Mistake$ we've made in naming God
As our witness to the gallows.
Meanwhile his daughters lay in hell,
Distracted by the devil's *****,
That offer up a homesick blues,
An unsprung harp, a slide trombone.

On my good word, this broken line
Began to praise the light at five
And I had much to move and find;
Light lunch and laundry,  heat arrives--
Slow traffic in necessity
Endangered by the solar flare--
This mid-size star has need of me
As god must need the polar bear,
Whose ice is breaking in the sea.
My window frames pedestrians,
Progressing on the concrete walk--
Slow pilgrims mixing prayers and sins,
As I should talk or you should talk
Of anyone misunderstood--
Distorted through the glass & wood.

assurance isn't evident this year
our lord not keeping time
but speeding up
an amateur ill
fitted for an old folks band
whipping the skins
like there's no tomorrow

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's 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 are worth the price of fun.
this world is world enough but time
makes your reluctance mortal crime.

Rough endings somehow fade, and how
We laughed grows stronger.  Tears you cried
When he was gone reminded my
Rough hands how soft to hold a love
And not insist on anything.

As if an illness
Long endured
Lost its grip,
You have that feeling--
Seeing your own self clearly--
Of new life,
Not looking back.

How 'bout that mad monk
Larkin's elephant
Slow dervish
In a Chinese hat
Around the notes
Big holes

The fat white man on the court square
Calls out at the white college girls
Who have joined the demonstrators
Gathered around Robert E. Lee,
Rock image of hero/traitor
While a black man passionately
Speaks of the need to move the stone
To a more appropriate place.
The elegance of the moment
Is shattered by the white man's words,
Born of fear but nevertheless
Shameful, emblematic, obscene.
These daughters of the commonwealth,
"You ******, n- loving ******."

For nights you lie awake in bed,
A thousand miles away from sleep,
Still whispering inside your head
Some promise that you didn't keep,
Or else forgot you ever made,
These words are recommended less
Than paperbacks and lemonade,
Or magazines that dare confess
True stories with a shot or two
Of hookers trying hard to guess
Who's easy money coming through,
Or who needs more than sympathy,
Pays well for late night company.

Those nights when I lost consciousness
Embracing wayward women who
Would soon be somewhere else are blessed
Among the things I chose to do.
I don't repent my so-called sins,
The hours spent on wine stained sheets,
Long nights and mornings that transcend
Departures & ****** up defeats,
Still set  my tongue on paradise,
Yeah you got yours & I got mine,
& fools rush in right past the wise--
But oh how those dark evenings shine.
I'd go through hell and back again
To taste those lips, spring wide those shins.

Who knows, as the evening coughs and starts,
What thing will call attention to itself--
Some poem or the fire, or the window
That breaks in shards as Randy collapses
Through it, having held his whisky as well
As a groundskeeper can be expected
On a fall evening to hold whisky,
Finding himself inadvertently now
Bleeding on the bedroom floor of Nora,
Beside the bed where she lies *******
Sam and another guy whose name he can't
Remember but has seen somewhere before
As parties tend to run together more.
He lets himself outside the bedroom door.

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.

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

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.

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.

it's what you find and some of it
get down, out of context maybe
yet still there like broken concrete
in a yard in Alabamee
where it might interrupt a blade
and you understand, could save a life,
could sift the fear out from afraid,
then paste it with a putty knife.
these flakes are not stories, they're stones,
eventually a cairn, and what's
allowed is all that sticks and bones
can divinate in passing shots.
assess the risk,  i won't advise--
existence has its way with lies.

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.

pray tell me all your plans tonight
that I may live in them again
past president future running tight
as i most fortunate of men
rehearse this eve of your return
with staggering redemptive lust
for what we still have need to learn
before the ashes and the dust
i'll count the days i'll sing love songs
just let me know i hold your heart
the sun itself no more belongs
in mornings where we're left apart
imagine my insane embrace
when you return to haunt this place

Damnation's doing well this year,
Fine crop sprung up on city streets--
Or get it free online, I hear.
My reading list includes the beats,
My playlist too, Pop smoke in peace.
We park the ice cream trucks for morgues,
The unmasked emperor, his niece
Unveils; psycopathy, call out the guards.
This will go on, it could get worse.
The heat don't help, we're on our own-
The preacher's wife believes we're cursed,
Infested by the doubt we've shown--
I think of Dean, the railroad track,
With no one there to have his back.

The new firehouse  stands where the old
Hardshell church used to be stationed,
and across the road new houses
have replaced the once fallow field
where the Methodist tent meeting
took place when I was twelve years old,
accountable for my wanton
gaze, at the cheeks exposed by shorts
that would not have been allowed on
Sunday morning this Friday night,
if you took the freewill doctrine
unpopular now in circles
philosophical,  canted like
the hooks we used to turn sawlogs
on the carriage where I offbeared
in the summer and after school,
saving cash I would one day use
to court those long-legged ladies.

Inside this wilderness I wait,
Temptation having ample time
To waste suggesting miracles
That my misguided mind should want--
Delight consumes my will, my thoughts
No longer innocent at hint
Of your return, your lips that part
Expectantly, so long ignored.
Your errant latitude so long
Endured, I  promise nothing more
As evidence than things you know
Already to be true, your steps
Adjusting to the dark where I
Have stumbled lacking even words.

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.

some questions don't have answers
a hole too big to fill
words placed carefully in the abyss
the love in an old portrait
barely faded, black and white,
from a one-room school
the need to be needed
the astonishment
of desire

She always needed cigarets.
I'd put on shoes and start the truck,
Allow the heater time to warm,
Then she'd get in, barefoot and drunk.
I didn't care what argument
They'd had, just that she'd come again.
Some nights we only talked, or watched
Some cheesy movie, rom coms or
One night I put in Annie Hall,
Because she'd never seen it and
We made love.  She  missed the  lobster scene,
So I  switched it back once I could
Move and she stayed till morning, not
Sure if she could go back again.

No sight without the sun, which blinds
The close observer, melts the wings
Of anyone whose father finds
His labyrinth has need of strings
For sons and daughters sacrificed
On city streets and gravel roads,
Where pills & guns & powder's priced.
America the great reloads.
No mother's child can satisfy
This ancient need for blood and bones.
Beguiling lies that justify
This everlasting, cratered jones--
Give way to truth, in slanted rays,
Declaring beauty through this haze.

The poor are big tent acrobats,
Not looking down at broken nets,
Expecting angels, miracles--
Some meaning in the universe--
Believing freedom, other myths,
Regurgitating Bible school,
While makeshift morgues have openings
For politicians promises.
Red novel death, unmasked to see
God's children, faithful, crucified,
Hard praying we can't understand
The ways of God, just being man.
Enlightened rogues--forgive me Gregg-
Know this is not, this is not right.

She hears herself
When no one else is there, rehearsing
What sustains, intransitive
Awareness of an ancient ground, words
Lined and ploughed, bloodwatered,  humble sown
And harvested, now swallowed and recast,
Choked I am (one a.m.) bic pen,
Tam o' Shanter working through the darkness
Still surrounding mother earth.

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

You may be patient but the dream
has little need of time tonight,
collapsing any measure deemed
sufficient for the tempter's height,
slow leaving questions in its wake,
crisp flavors of the early frost
on carvings that the children make
in stone & fruit or newel post,
abrupt cessation of the slide
down slanted stairs at harvest time,
when color has no place to hide
and reason sees no need to rhyme.
We'll soon enough lay down the dream,
releasing it to what it means.

And in the new world, were you whole?
Or was it just another day
Of innuendo, particles rearranged
And your feet on different sidewalks
As you made your way each morning
To the new job, came home at night
To the new man, new inside jokes
And less accumulated pain?
Steve was a good man but he broke
Your girlish heart beyond repair
By losing interest in your touch,
And everything is touch, is tongues
And grooves and pieces of puzzles
That once seemed almost together.

On my grandfather's deathbed,
The one I sleep in now,
Which he shipped back from Detroit City, on a freight train in the
Nineteen thirties, when his father died
From typhus and he became head of the family here in Western Kentucky,
I remember his wavering lucidity
Through a past midnight thunderstorm,
How he asked us to sing
Rock of Ages and
When we had finished said
That was terrible, which it was.
Who could sing,
At a time like that--
His son, my father's bass voice
Quavering as it never did
In church, but there we were,
And then the last words I ever
Heard him say--
How do they count the time?

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.

Ridiculous Eros aiming blindly,
This cold fortnight of the shorted month that leaps,
Your sonneteer--approaching unkindly--
Breaks into a fevered back beat yeah creeps
Her way beside a fiery  salsa step
By step, with some erosion of pursuit.
Apollo's got it bad for you,  can't help
His slipshod rhymes, cracked rhythms destitute.
If any more can ever yet be said,
Your golden arrows strike the syllable,
While lightning spikes inside the maker's head,
Induced contortions of the mandible.
Straight shooters miss the mark as oft as not.
Come let this winder take another shot.

no way to pay the city bills
and not much reason anymore
the turn of the key the lock's click
step back inside her mother's house
who'd tried hard to wait up but slept
instead in the small recliner
the television left on low
with food still warm in the oven
next morning unpacking her truck
she speaks to the neighbors next door
says it just didn't work out well
she saves the long story for me
brings pizza and knows i'll have beer
enough to go back twenty years

I

It's true I volunteered tonight
To be the village Idiot,
The competition--not that swift--
Left me the darkness as a gift,
While I accepted as a fool
Who couldn't quite be tamed by school,
Or taught what others seem to get--
A prayer book full of lineament.
Lines coming off the crescent moon
Slant in this open-windowed room
The light that finds its way to me
Has burned already, coming lean.
A soldier kneels and scoops the stream.
I've brought along this old canteen.

                               II

Start again woman, again go up
With your sacrifice
And say the longer truth
Of what it means
To be conceived with sin
Or close in its shadow.
Whose right to summon the old demons
Of hysteria and bleached rags?
I'll meet you when we've lost our way,
And can't make sense of words we've brought
Down from the mountainous moon.


                                III

You could not have known how
My mistakes and yours were good
Enough as decisions go,
Or why we could endure
The minstrel path that's come
Upon us, unclear if it's
A back road  or a boulevard
Until a destination
Approaches.


                           IV

The  notebook of the imbecile,
With its pages missing,
Is scripturally infused.

Come into the moonlight prepared
To be dressed down
By its innocence.


                              V

May I  ask if it's different--
Really, oddly not the same--
When you find yourself
So far north that your accent
Is a definition?


                              VI


How much light does it take
To distinguish the way
You've put yourself together?
I recognize you miles away,
In total darkness
Do you understand?
I didn't even know.


                             VII

This frightened fool well
Versed but lacking comprehension
Could live beneath your scorn
Until you grant reprieve.
Forgive my patient lingering,
If secretly you're glad I'm here,
In contrast to your misplaced bed.


                             VIII

Perplexed by the fright
Of your return,
What if what you needed
Wasn't love
Or it wasn't enough
And you were more aware of it than I?


                             IX

The spot we made for landing
Wasn't clear.  You somehow
Understood this while I
Jumbled the exit,
Calling you a mythical creation.


                               X

I love to come from this smiling
In your beautiful teeth,
Between your lips a flower
Not even knowing you were here
And then so long confused
At who you are--pent.
It frightens me in ways I shall
Never describe
Outside my dreams to see you again.

Gas moms.  Beat up vets. Oregon
Catches a wave.  This is the new
Authoritarianism.
Is anyone surprised that wealth
Has resources?  Propaganda
Sells a psychopathic uncle
To the poorly educated,
Whose votes are needed for the fall.
Under the rubric of control,
We lose our right to speak.  Russia
Contemplates our self destruction
With a sly grin.  Poison the well
And the fountain will sacrifice
The holy child.  Revolution!

Hard called sinner, get the spirit.
Myself, accountability
At stake stood, faced eternity
With boyhood sins in my pocket.
Imagine if you've ever burned
Yourself, you know how much it hurt--
Revival speaker sweats his shirt--
And I, respecting what I'd learned
Fast from a dirt bike muffler dropped
Against my leg in some bar ditch,
Could understand this preacher's pitch--
What if that burning never stopped?
Outside the men smoked cigarettes,
While ladies spoke low-voiced regrets.

If I  could do some other thing,
I'd take it up, unhesitant,
Give up this self defeating game
Of rugged words that finish slant,
Rip off the face of wind and sun,
Renounce expectant casuistry,
As if we'd really just begun--
No sacrificial history.
Whose will can ever be defined?
Forsaking words for altered skin,
Stretched tight enough to bend the lines,
Where like a thief the blues come in.
Such thinking born of hollow bones,
Whose yard collects a set of stones.

A place where nothing else seems possible,
Where shoes have been removed and cast aside--
As children do at any chance to play--
Come listen to the harmony of souls.
What a word.  I wish i understood it
Better.  Once i thought i knew salvation,
Said prayers that helped a sinner get some sleep.
Some nights i lie awake and can't slow down.
Has anyone accepted love enough
To feel it in the morning like the sun?
I think my lover knows it more than i,
Whose wisdom has the shallow strength of words.
She loves me when i find myself undone.
She rights my mind when i am overcome.

Got a friend in Washington, the state,
says i'm the least judgmental person
she's ever known and of
course i wasn't even trying,
just my own form of rebellion
working its way through
the underappreciated universe.

Bodhisattva knows the blues, eight
Bars that give you the double pour,
And 2 safe ways around a fight.
They's steppin now, come midnight hour,
Slantin out back like kids in school
With one quick break before the bell,
A natural way to play the fool
Against a painted concrete wall.
Nine months ain't long to carry fire,
Get lighter and go back to work,
Respectin on the shoes you wear.
A waitress ain't got time to talk
You out of ending hell's night shift
On accident, tied off & hit.

If all desire is paradox,
Explain to me this history
Hard taught with combination locks,
Their tumblers still a mystery
That won't be picked till victory
Of rolling stone & empty box,
A complicated armory
Of spinning tops and winding clocks.
Your scaffolding is quite sincere,
And yet I choose some other way
To steal a message not quite clear
From thoughts I find no way to say.
As three a.m. comes round again,
I don't know why, or where I've been.

We understood each other well,
And both of us found pleasure's song
In languages we hadn't heard,
Slow dancing as the light grew dim,
Such effort spent denying death
The time of day.

when im thinking what i want to do next
wednesday, when i have enough pills put back
to make an honest effort at repeal
i remember all the suicidal
sick poets I keep reading every night
or listening in the case of  musicians
with a 6 pack & a 1/5 of whiskey
or whisky that won't last the night
good morning, or at least good day, i try
to remind myself--what the **** is that?
but anyhow, got some inspiration
from the sound of yr voice on the cell phone
come lie again beside me here my love
can't help recalling you fit like...
.

You and I are different now.
What could be said last night,
Or earlier today, has left
Its meaning far behind, so
We continue, starved for company
On sheets or under words
That might or might not celebrate
The ritual
Of acts that won't return,
Or if they do will not be recognized
As yours or mine, no fast
Or fascinating gesture having caught
A breaking second or a moving hand.
I say this knowing it has not been
Long enough for bitterness to pass
Into the future, or your eyes--
Blue as heaven's door--
To once again meet mine.

Bare hedonistic middle road,
So periled and yet amorized
By ladies I have soul adored,
Lean gentlemen who spent long nights
In speculation on the grave.
Ascension charts the harder shot,
With tattered sails on fire and grey,
Unguarded heart that's not yet stopped.
Fast falling stars escape my reach,
While dim & smoky neon dives
Swell up a piece of history.
Come lovers, give it two more trys.
The moon ignores my open ears.
I'll need your help to man the oars.

We live in confusion; who knows
whose words are strong enough cover
for the terrifying future?
Dare we expose the myth, my friend,
or is that why poets slant?
The ravens outside my window
Don't care that they're in this poem,
as long as i leave them alone,
which mostly i do except now
and then when i'm outside as they
alight to glean bugs from cut grass.
They're used to my distressed accent,
my pale reflection of the sky,
and my eye not on the sparrow.

For lack of better words, we say
Poems, prayers and incantations;
Numbers give us expectations.
Studying about that good old way,
Sunday afternoon river shore
Immersion is a passion play--
John casting for his Salome--
Few can remember anymore.
Of course we sang Shall We Gather?
Though not too well, acapella,
Afterwards risked salmonella,
As we broke the bread together.
I chased girls in my Sunday clothes,
And with the boys it came to blows.

In a small apartment, close enough
To the tracks he can hear the whistle
Twice a day, as the train--
One locomotive, boxcars, tankers,
And a dull red caboose--
Approaches the deadening.
Sometimes it wakes him
Enough he rolls over or goes to take a ****.
It's hard to sleep in the daytime anyway.
Nights he's stocking shelves--boosted
A little, when he has a dime--
Not a bad gig, except for the pay.