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.

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.

The truth hangs caught between your teeth
Like some unfortunate rodent
About to give up the struggle,
Fleeing when you tire of the game.
Your lips still tell me everything,
The vowels insisting on a taste
And all about you a halo
Streetlamping this September rain,
The thunderbolt still rattling
Like a Johnson outboard motor
On a runabout,  me tethered
By a fraying rope, doing tricks
On one old narrow, wooden ski--
You glancing back to see me smile.

With no more thought than lovers give
To morning or the rising tide,
The future of the universe,
Or what it takes to tell the time,
The spectre covers all our bets--
The coins unseen, cash for the boat.
I'll not insist on innocence,
The taste of something not foretold.
Your wilderness has my regard,
Less charted than the deepest floor
Of any ocean riverfed,
Where rain is born again, again.
The beautiful need not delay
Such unrepentant leaves and wind.

It's too fine, with the break in the weather,
This strange humility that's found
Me wanting,  still not knowing where
My mind has been,  or what surrounds
The afternoon, its slow despair
Confounding every effort made
To make amends or clear the air,
In which we each pass too afraid
To use it in the evening damp
When less self-conscious animals
Avoid the halo from the lamp
And touch the night with mating calls.
I'd barter souls,  of heaven blest,
To offer you the morning's crest.

The fortune teller's twisted heads
See past the time you might have stayed,
And how we might have made our beds.
Did you have need to be betrayed,
Forsake your soul and take your meds?
Confess the way you've been afraid.
Who's with you isn't where you've gone.
He's with you now, you're still alone.

I've no great fleet to sail you home,
Though you are ever beautiful,
As Helen with her careful comb.
Call yesterday your interval,
Give me your scent of summer rain.
We'll face the future, heal the pain.

That scream of thought holds damaged wits
Responsible for absences
Long overlooked or spiked in fits
Of badly scattered witnesses,
Yourself the more exemplary--
If such sweet modesty allows--
For having landed here with me,
While others mouth consuming vows.
A useful god would not condemn
Such pecking at the heels of thought,
Unbowing to the seraphim,
Or even him the shepherds sought.
Tonight that child has much to grieve,
Whose mind has nothing left to leave.

We play on themes of an old faith. You know
The story as one who fought it believes
In the war, and then doesn't believe it
Was worth the price she paid for believing.
A quick step through the graveyard gets you past
The carvings, cut flowers wilting on the
Rocks and a line of ancestors beneath
The surface of a small hill here or there.
New Harmony.  Golgotha.  Palestine.
In the light of day the granite glistens,
The weathered old stones lean toward the trees,
Patient with their stories. Come back tonight.

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.

The darkness in a country spreads,
Collects more space and settles in,
Asphyxiating kith and kin--
Kids slogging through the latest meds.

We deserve some affirmation,
Brighter rhythms, smiling faces,
Love & peace among all races--
Make again a grateful nation.

****** 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.

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.

How absurd to find myself still,
Despite the years of evidence,
Believing that a word or two,
Spoke plainly on a winter's night,
Could warm your clever, unseen lips,
Just enough to call my name.

How fine would these lines need to be,
To find their way inside your mind,
And move your body southerly?
Could my words even be that kind?
Erato, lend your song to me,
And teach my lips the way to find
My missing lover's broken heart,
To give her back this swollen part.

Come live with me, my naughty love,
If only in a fevered dream.
I'll swan you need a god above
To hear you when you laugh and scream.
So please yourself & picture me,
How perfect was our ecstasy.

If I could conjure paradise,
I'd place it here, in this soft light,
With day trips for the groceries,
Occasional short strolls at night,
And visits now and then from friends,
Who'd bring good wine and never fight,
Would love the music that we play,
Transcend some way our mortal plight.

Our maladies would disappear,
Financial worries all dissolve,
Eat every fruit available,
No ****** mysteries to solve.
No hatred, spite or jealousy.
Around your body I'd revolve.

you wouldnt know why would you know
to see him wearing cardigans
from pampered lambs and leather shoes
exported by italians
her eyes disguised by powdered base
and shimmer that accentuates
unbruised remainders of her face
that they had argued very late
designer shades pulled forward strands
a matte upon discolored neck
conceals the pattern of his hands
white hat long earrings misdirect
our short attention from the fact
that silence speaks repeated act

For all things mortal,
Love has time--
when nothing else
has reason--
stays past the time
one not staying
would be gone.

All words eventually miss
Their mark, so what
I say--no matter
How well said--remains
An insufficient testament
To your embrace.

Sometimes these words are all we have & you
Know I don't use them with a supple tongue,
Would speak as lion if I could, or dog
Or even snake--at least a subtile beast--
While I have thoughts I never recognize
Until it's too late to make any use
And what I mainly want is physical,
This ticking passage of the intellect
Is not about the things that matter most,
Yet here I am, staining the sheets again,
As one who lived a hundred years ago
And hoped to slide between the legs of time.

When flowers turn their faces
From the sun,
Only then
Could I look away
From whatever you are,
To disregard
The blind child's arrow,
The taste
Of your shoulders,
Movement
Of your fingers,
Almost magic.

almost you know who you could be
aside from words with blue shavings,
scraps really,  importunately
curling through dark cool evenings
when i could never reach your full
attention,  nevermind affect
your wandering feet, constant pull
through fathomless,  sullen aspect,
humility my wooden tool--
by now quite nearly petrified,
as if you might embrace a fool
whose words were never qualified
for verses with steady beat,
pray yet you somehow love the heat

at seventeen i couldn't wait
to blow this town discover more
the world itself an open door
my innocence an unlocked gate
how anyone explains the time
since then is fine with me tonight
it shouldn't take this long or quite
so many failures underlined
what's done is done the world goes on
its seasons full of reckonings
too powerful for knaves or kings
whose plots are often ****** upon
rock solid etchings stood in rows
as all ambition ebbs and flows

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.

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 ******."

How easily affected are the minds,
God's children moving shakily between
The scripts and benedictions. Anon
Caffeine and cigarettes, some chewing gum.
A sketch of what goes on inside the brain.
Confessions, passes, stigma from the nurse
Who holds the pad at management. Pain talks,
At times it shouts, and who are you to judge?

Complete the course, it's all spelled out.  My songs are just excuses for the life I've lived.
Not much of one at that, not ever worth
Enough to pay the bills or right the wrongs
That lately have accumulated here
In my thick head, Golgotha of the soul.

Of course it's three a.m. again--
Time long encircled in the blues--
And grateful for the company
I pull out old shellacs;
Dinah, Eartha, Big Maybelle,
Then Tina, early blues with Ike
On a long playing record, songs by
Little Walter, Blues Boy King,
Songs Ginny used to sing
At juke joints in northwest Tennessee,
Before she made her way out west,
Vegas and L.A., when cheap scotch at midnight was enough.
And now, somehow, pure grain and Percocet
Have stopped her, some say accidentally.
Man trouble too,
Horn players with habits,
Car dealers and one evangelist,
Backslidden but believing,
Tapped now to speak well,
Ignore vices and regrets.

Culled from
         The Feeling Good Handbook

1.  Anxiety, worry, or fear
2.  Feeling things around you are strange
3.  Feeling detached from your body
4.  Unexpected panic attacks
5.  Apprehension, a sense of doom.
6.  Feeling tense, uptight or on edge
7.  Difficulty concentrating
8.  Racing thoughts, having your mind jump
9.  Frightening fantasies, daydreams
10. Feeling that you're losing control
11. Fears of cracking up or crazy
12. Fears of passing out or fainting
13. Fears of heart attack or dying
14. Concerns about looking foolish
15. Fear of being isolated
16. Criticism, disapproval
17. Fears about something terrible
18. Racing or pounding of the heart
19. Pain, pressure, tightness in the chest
20. Tingling or numbness in the toes
21. A discomfort in the stomach
22. Constipation, diarrhea
23. Restlessness and/or jumpiness
24. Tension, tightness in the muscles
25. A sweating not brought on by heat
26. A lump or tightness in the throat
27. Trembling or shaking legs or hands
28. Rubbery and /or "jelly" legs
29. Feeling dizzy or off balance
30. Choking or difficulty breathing
31. Headaches, pains in the neck or back
32. Discomforting hot flashes, chills
33. Feelin easily exhausted

       All of the above, accounted

Unhappy poets understand
The blues that testify despair,
And force the fortune teller's hand
Through smoke and ash instead of air,
Their breath uncertain where to land,
Or what it costs the heart to care
For songs and dreams, the holy ****
Left drying on the forest's mat.

The sun that rises in the east,
Despite the longest night we've known,
Reveals an unaccepting beast,
Whose mind held strong till overthown.
Anxiety has steady feet.
Unhappy poets know their beat.

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.

I chose a place you might find me,
Settled in and opened a road
Without making it too easy
Traveled,  waiting like some misplaced
Monk, who hasn't vowed to give up
Anything, knowing it would all be gone
In the devil's time and we'd sure
Have less to show for it all than
A preacher's feast on Sunday when
The prodigal daughter needed
A rededication and spoke
Her mind instead, saying this place
Could be Calvary, you know it
Maybe is.  I wouldn't be shocked.

From watered seed, who knows what grows,
In fertile, broken soil.  Your choice--
Who coined that pregnant word, and how?
A woman has decisions, yes,
Confusion and a life to live.
Gone past those gates and flaming sword,
Long legacy of guilt and shame,
For those who keep the world alive.

Your lips impress love's mortal claim--
Wild nights, red wine, fellated mind,
Where I have loved you long and hard.
Cold fingers beckon, crow beaks shine,
Confirm the cropper's shadowing,
Dark cloak that augurs closing time.

some potion seller's dream
encouraged our acceptance
bitter fruit
brittle words
stored in old vessels concealed in ignorance with lines so well
rehearsed that freedom is
a foreign question
they ring almost as true

In buildings left abandoned,
         A cold collective forms,
             Sick for a fix, trading
  What's available, devalued
                          As it is
Tonight, what once wore better
                        underwear.

sun slanting as the trail begins
a first rate region of the mind
this month of bringing harvest in,
of leaving summer days behind
occurs to me not unlikely
that the dog outside is a real
dog, tugging at the leash of she
who must be obeyed as the deal,
a shepherd mix and woman soft
of skin, dark hair, white leather shoes--
a third my age just old enough
to buy a cigarette & *****,
as if the magdalene had come
again and this world is my home

We say the same things, same things that we've said.
I wish our words meant more than words can mean.
So little can be said without the heart
Expanding, fighting, breaking, growing old.

no need for conversation here
chet baker on the stereo
reminds me of the words we share
when time has no place else to go
immobile as a broken clock
still on the wall a bird inside
long separated from the flock
not knowing where to find a ride.
the need to flip the record soon
Inspires me to lay down my pen
move through the crescent-lighted moon
and drop the needle once again
then listen to the falling man
bend summer into one last stand.

and when you lie awake at night,
unsatisfied with what's been said--
what can be said--is any heart
articulate and unafraid
of saying things unhearable?
October is a crucible.

Where do you go,
When you're back in town?
Do you drive by
The torn down church?
The old graveyard famous
For fornication, or the old-style
Dairy Queen with the good
Milkshakes?
Downtown's too young now--
Let's put it that way--
No one there you'd know.
Try to remember
Where you left your heart,
When you see me
Looking up the road.

Unruly truth, your sharp array
Marks tossing lovers--hostages--
Gives aspiration to the clay,
Whose pornographic images
Come through the open basement door.
Fidelity, unreckoned thief
Of all the lies that promised more
Than visitations cloaked with grief,
Defy my moving hand tonight,
That's found the place where life comes in.
Reveal your ugly face and fight.
This thrusting pen comes jammed with sin.
Submersion couldn't call your bluff.
I'm done with this.  I've had enough.

The news is not good news today--
Hide from the wind and run from rain,
A boat on fire, gut sick gun play.
All told, a litany of pain,
And I, perhaps I should feel worse,
Should give anxiety its due,
The medications being cursed.
And yet the sky outside is blue.
I claim no sense of innocence,
While holed up here--a sonneteer,
With lit incense and cupiscence
For that woke fear this craft can't queer,
This horrorshow, this pixeled glow--
Trade winds that blow where words won't go.

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.

Stone shadows fill the seer's eyes,
Soul singers, jacked philosophers,
Cold necromancers' boney dice,
Unearthed beneath a willful curse,
Stale fear of morning's sober skies,
The augury of captive birds,
Whose song goes long unrecognized
In yours or mine or Karun's dirge.

my friend reminded me today
of barefoot roy, great-uncle roy,
who rode the baler chute all day,
and twisted wires like christmas toys,
before grass string & knotters ruled,
then big bales bucked with tractor forks
and kids were told to stay in school,
his feet resembling bottle corks,
the only man i ever knew
could walk a stubblefield full speed,
through cockleburrs & startled snakes,
without the notion or the need
for brogans where the hay's been raked;
he picked on her, he picked on me,
and prayed to god to let him be.

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?

Up before the birds
Have anything to say, preferring--
Except the owls--
Daylight to this protracted night
And none of them in the odd habit or need
Of recording that which might not otherwise
Be remembered, this linear
Declension of an oral pass along.
The cats are glad for an early meal,
Before returning to their torpor,
And my lover--whom I'm careful
Not to rouse--
Has better sleeping habits than
My own,
And will listen,
Once the birds are singing,
To this redacted song.

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.

That past is least predictable,
Which might have cast the healing spell,
Slim echo of the madrigal
Drawn out of some abandoned well
Where wishes once flowed easily
And fast enough to be construed
As miracles and prophecy;
Small crosses fashioned from old wood.
All offerings anticipate
Such future unaffordable
Without the fire that's said to wait
Some place beyond believable.
Lost words lay stalled on blotted page,
Conceived like orphans sent to rage.

When I awaken, inevitably,
In the middle of the night, the black cat,
His slender, aged frame beneath my feet,
Accompanies me to the Frigidaire
Where his food sets waiting in a tin can
Outside of time and space and just beside
My next stop, the modest lavatory,
So good to have inside at three a.m.
On a winter's night, then comes to my chair,
Found outside on the sidewalk, improvement
On the one before, and sits on its arm,
My partner sleeping on the other side,
Stretched out on the sofa, infirm but loved,
As I graft another line on St. James.

touch our shared confusion,
once more portrayed
as good intent,
black ink
in darkness so profound
as gravity tilts
what otherwise might stand
as roses
on a twisted stake,
unclear the aspiration
of an intermittent beauty
falling loosely
on an unmade bed

Come see black night.  Black night proposes
                                                      mo­re
Than madness in a prophet's dream, sets free
A lean uncertainty, sweet taste of all
We dare not see.

My sweet Kathryn, you were older than me,
Knew all the black mountains--Olson, Creely, Duncan, Morley, Dorn... While I
                                           was learning
Levertov.  Your dark, unshaven armpits
Drove me wild.  I understood the honor
Of that crazy night--how could feather leave you--
               our dance at the outlaw bar,
Your sapphic gaze bemused by coal miners,
In cowboy boots, as the band played Haggard,
Coe, Willie, Waylon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson
& Emmy Lou.  I wouldn't trade it for a date
With Miss Brazil, or Russia as it were--
Some people say you made that up,
Changed heritage and grew the hair to seem more European.  I couldn't care
Less. A great dark mystery I loved
Now thirty-seven years ago with me
Just old enough to drink and you come down
From Bingington, I loved the way you said
That frozen town, where your husband lingered,
Teaching English to native speakers.
I know you still loved him. I think you loved
Me, but needed a woman's touch the same
As I.  Strange how a night can be recalled
More than years, one drunken naked sunrise,
Pillow talk instead of class.  I ditched the speech
At PBK, can't remember what they
Fed us, coming for you in a straight shift
Chevy pickup, red as the night was black.