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.

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.

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.

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 ******."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Got room for your good time, pushing
Love like a street corner prophet
Needin' a place to lay his head
With an hour left before dark
And the wind picking up.  Why you
Would listen is the world,  innit?
The mystery of a woman's ears
When I can only mouth the words.
Some flowers get along as weeds,
Not needing cultivation or
Much more than a few drops of rain,
Dirt of course,  but it's still had cheap
If you don't mind the location,
So I'll be here where you're needed.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's three a.m. at the neighbor's.
Someone's always fighting over there.
This time it's only two squad cars
And no bus--that's what they call
The ambulances, at least on the TV dramas,
But I'm drawn away from the TV.
Perhaps if I had on clothes I'd step outside.
They don't stay long this time,
Just talk out in the yard
And if anyone's taken away I've missed it.
I'm Gladys Kravitz these nights,
Watching the witching next door
Because three months ago it was a friend of mine,
Recovering from surgery or not
With a port direct to her stomach.
Crushed pills in ***** aren't real food.
Didn't know she was dying there--
Who the ambulance was for.
I don't sleep well these nights,
Don't know anyone who does.
The world has turned into a dream,
And the moon reflects mortality.

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

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.

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.

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.

Waiting for nothing,
Impatiently,
In the absurd morning
Where the news reports
Assess chaos, statistically,
Amazed by the grace
Of the essential,
Who work
Through the night
That has come.

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.

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!

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

Men ate first at get togethers,
While the women who had laid the
Table waited and I, too young
To yet be called upon for prayers,
Shared a table with my cousins,
Who would later, as the sun set,
Shed their garments in the cow barn,
Just to see their difference from me.

stop measuring success by suicides,
imparting accidents with intentions
as if we had 2 choices to decide
or could on whim correct all convictions,
a double-edged word if there ever was one
my letters left unanswered w/yr prayers--
both treading water til dark evening's done,
with all its implications and affairs.
i couldn't be more honest if i tried,
while you, your dark and obfuscating eyes
come back with all the reasons you have lied
and i, of course, have given up surprise.
it doesn't matter lately who's on top.
your screaming has a most delightful stop.

I've learned this language better now,
Can hear each letter's tone of voice,
Who let me know I've sinned somehow,
Still leaving them without a choice,
Despite their subatomic strength,
That should be paired with more than mine,
And then expounded on at length,
As some apocalyptic sign,
When really I am less impressed,
Would trade them for another slate.
Not saying this tonight in jest,
They're insufficient, as of late.
Yet live with them and give them due--
Some nights they cast a lovely hue.

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.

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...
.