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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.