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...
.

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.

Is it weak to say I don't know
What I am without you?  Can't think
How the sun will continue its
Illusion, or how the waters
Will divide for my safe passage?
How to make it through the minefield
Of memories, or the maze that
Starts sometime before the morning?
It's hard to wear an expression,
How to find one less unnerving
Than my own reflection.  I guess
That's why the followers of God
Make black the mirrors.  But I see
Nothing anywhere except you.

a couple times i've been too drunk
to appreciate anything
more than hugging a toilet bowl
and let me say the whisky no
matter how it's been aged tastes bad
in the wrong direction woman
and a love gone backwards cuts worse
than cheap scotch coming up again
yet i love those wasted evenings
even screaming stupid curses
and the sail boat runs and hot tubs
in the snow when no one knew the
future any more than we could
step up ladders to a distant star

Could I sleep tonight in your dreams
I would live again that cold night
We made love on the leather couch
At your friend Karl's stone house outside
The city limits past the farm
With the field of llamas and the
Windmills cranking ecstatically
In those stolen hours when brides
Before their second marriages
Give someone much less practical
A ride to be remembered long
After the cans behind the car
Have rusted or been flattened by
The side of the road that leaves town.

The almost perfect story chose
A lamb for innocence of blood,
A dogwood post for martyr's pose,
Survivors from an ancient flood.
God's daughter would have questioned him,
Regarding some original
Temptation hanging from a limb,
That led to such a horrid fall.
What makes you think you're always right?
Who gave you birth? You honor her?
Have you no doubt on Friday night
A miracle will soon occur?
Your son's obedience is fine,
But he got his & I got mine.

These awkward moments, in spite
           of ourselves,
When we see enough,
Surprise pops out, head
Of Jack, priapic toy
Held down by hinge and clasp
Until it's cranked again
With music or a spilling
Verse, some ***** minded
Woman's tongue complicit
With the subtil, chosen
Charmer of Arcadia, good and evil
Bifurcator, dancing in the grass.

Last night I rearranged the world.
You may not have noticed it yet;
It's just a little friendlier.
The sun still shines almost the same.
Ain't nobody changed the darkness.
Increasingly, appetite for
Paradise has worn through black shoes,
And the new road needs a future.

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.

On this good night, love calls me home.
Unsure if I deserve so fine
A place, not knowing anywhere
That well compares, I'd call with eights,
Displaying Aces, Paradise
Still on the table.  Who needs God's
Mansions, I'll stay here, with leaky
Roof and broken window, cats, dogs,
Unkindness of ravens across
The street, with whom I've struck up a
Conversation.  Breviloquent,
As always, they only want us
To know, despite the harsh rumors,
They really do love their children.

Supercession of the wordgod,
So to speak, is what we need love?
Likely repetition cold sod,
Sky the only scene above.
Could I or you believe this world,
Accented back and forth in time,
Serpent orange and green uncurled--
My garden tree a simple lime.
The sun it moves my shadowed hand,
Draws circles, hearts, cascading leaves,
Cool water inbetween the sand,
As overwhelming lust conceives.
Released from sin, this river flows,
Comes rising as the evening glows.

Cold night spent needing
Something more than scribbled thoughts
Regarding April.

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.

It's quiet on the street tonight,
With staying in suggested now.
This city pavement's silent vow--
A gravel boneyard road late night--
Collects my mind and rattles it.
With little left to interfere
For those of us who've made it here,
Inside and out the counterfeit
Cross stages of this brutal script.
No angels left to take the call?
Tonight my friend learned how to fall,
And targeted perhaps the crypt.
Eighteen years of common hours--
Counted up on asphalt flowers.

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.

The rain cooled things down, what had been
Hot afternoon yielding to birds,
A squirrel on the wood border fence
And us, in still life on the porch.

My friend John, who saw through
His preacher dad's Presbyterianism
By the time he was fifteen,
Still searches for unicorns,
Keeps his metal detector ready
By his underwear drawer
And last night dreamed
He was Marco Polo.
Imagine his surprise this morning,
This very morning,
Pulling out his favourite boxer's, black silk,
Extra large with the yellow
Batman logo,
And there behind them--
No idea how long it had been there--
A smiling rhinoceros.

As commoners endure the truth
Of calculations bent to fool
The innocent, this barker's booth
Conceals the reaper's tripart tool;
Religion, prejudice and shame,
Cruel conflict built on mockery,
A shallow huckster's facile fame,
Insipid, feckless trumpetry.
Some plainer spoken hope survives,
Green mountain wild bred patriot,
Dry powder of the children's lives,
Who see their future from a rut.
Moscovian chicanery.
Foot soldiers for democracy.

She said I was an *******, and all due credit
Being given, I understand where
She was coming from.
She also said magnificent,
Which makes it better maybe--
Be good at what you are--
And I miss that kind of sass,
The price of fun, if you will,
Certainly kept me from getting
Overconfident
Because you know, when it looks easy
Someone has put in a lot of work.

The strength of my companion's love,
Hegelian against this dark,
December night when nothing else...
When nothing else has quality,
Gives some direction, reckoning
From yarrow sticks and founding stones,
Inspecting bruises on my heel--
Misjudgment of the starting point.
Believers' voices shout me down,
Gainsaying reason's starting gun,
While traitorous, self-conscious death
Goes nowhere without company--
The sundial estimates the night,
Lies waiting for the angled light.

The words fight back,  accusing me
of moving their broke syllables--
a painful attempt to prevent
their distortion of my language--
into patterns they have never
become comfortable exposing,
apprenticed to the bonesetter
with no time for anesthesia,
working from memory and not
expecting any gratitude
from the flesh now decomposing
as we speak at four in the night,
unconscious of the pending dawn
and what will get left in the dark.

You feel like you've escaped and then
It's back, that feeling that you've failed
At everything that matters when
The world and you have separate sailed.
Man overboard, call strike the mast.
Unwax your ears and hear the song;
Those sirens that you won't sail past.
Collapse your angel wings, go long.
Reclaim scorched ground in sanity,
Dismiss the cursed curriculum.
Host sacrilegious deity,
Liscentous offerings to come.
Axe whittle down your enemy;
Poseidon take a whiff on me.

We've been through Telemann and Talking Heads this morning,
Tubes and Zoso all archived and streaming--
Last year's peaches.
This afternoon I'm reading
Eliot, and after that some Ellison,
Invisible.
I miss the small town circus
Of the evening; sawdust, tents
And cheesy acts that sold
The tickets,
A high wire act escaped from
Someone's senior prom,
Sad clown who's done his act
Since Richard Nixon's second term.
Not the greatest show on earth but good
For a night out with the kids,
Who might rather be at a Kiss concert.
They've not come to this small town,
But Bob Dylan did
And everyone, almost, was
Disappointed when he didn't do
His greatest hits.

Uncertain as the view tonight,
Before your eyes have had the chance
To focus on the innocence
Of children with a human right
To play outside and then be fed,
And not expect the sky to fall--
Not be shoved up against a wall--
To dream in a familiar bed.