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

The blue bear lying on its side
In the dumpster, atop the trash
Was meant for Kevin, apartment
Seven on the second storey,
Whose father came by but was not
Let in because an argument
Developed over missed payments
He admitted he should have made,
And wished he could have made, eight bucks
An hour and staying clean not
Being enough to pay his rent,
Restitution on the damaged
Trailer where he used to cook ****,
And avoid the repossession
Of his pickup truck.  Later he
Calls her, his baby mom, and asks
About Kevin, and if he can
Come back around, now that they've both
Had time to calm down, with the cash
He got for Christmas from his own
Dad, a little less than half what
He owes, but enough to help out,
And also, if she doesn't mind,
Since he'll be a minute getting
Back, will she go downstairs and check
The dumpster to see if the bear
Might yet be rescued and restored.

Smoky used to sell pills and write poems,
Had to make a living somehow, payments
For a disabled mind, combat ruined,
Being less than the cost of rent and food,
So he sold his prescriptions and then some,
A little bit of grass as well, and shrooms
He raised in a little closet, lived with
Two mutts that barked at every driveway tire.

He sold his El Camino, bought it back
Wrecked and hammered out the damage at night
In an old friend's shop on Bondo alley,
Turning down the **** observers offered,
Then lay down in its shallow bed, alone,
In a closed garage, with the motor on.

The brown leaves holding fast
To the grey branches
Of the post oak tree,
Above the unblemished snow,
Are more beautiful
Than apocryphal angels

I call on Blake for energy,
And Dickinson for everything.
And you my dark and distant muse
For new directions, founding stones,
The resurrection of a shrine,
Where I, an idler, hear your song--
Asleep and dreaming or awake,
Imagining your warm return.
White feathers of the world descend
On you, clear-hearted child of Jove
And memory.  I made you smile
Once through the night.  I'll try again,
If you're inclined, if you recall
Just how it worked as we reclined.

What calling beckons long gone memories,
Those scattered prodigals, sad mother's son
And father's daughter, sailing troubled seas,
To fight upstream a washed out riverrun,
Convinced that something  not yet understood
Will recommend this fallen universe
Of wood and nails to shelter brotherhood,
Through mothers' tears and winter's harsh reverse,
Inspire another backwood symphony
Of blue and green?  Come over now and see.

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

poor white out walking
too much beer and crystal
do cellphones flash like handguns
in the afternoon sun?
five bullets in his neck
grand jury understood
the deputy's decision
knew what the DA wanted
or didn't
the promotion to detective
came sooner
than might have been expected

For this place late comes early. Insurance
Men wait until they're told to go & then,
"To what?  Go home to what is what I want
To know."  A small thing changes when the bell
Rings, cracks open night's unholy rhythm,
Lit only by the SKY BLUE WATERS sign.

Considering the comical
Conception & the tragic fate,
Our clowning on a party night
Has shadings of a miracle
When even on all spirits' eve
We drink the wine that turns to blood,
Then spit it at the axe man's hood
And turn as if we meant to wave
Toward the setting evening sun
That calculates the time of day
And asks for change like errand boys
Who hold out *****, upturned hands,
Expecting less than what they need--
Repairs for broken bones and wings.

On cold mornings, before school,
And before the mill started,
I could earn two dollars
By shoveling down the top
Of the sawdust pile
As steam rose around me.
A drag chain brought bits of wood
From under the circular saw
That cut railroad ties,
Two by fours and tobacco sticks.
Twenty feet high, the view
An eagle's,  I had not read
Of Sisyphus, though when I did
It came with understanding gained
From those mornings,
The smell of fresh cut oak
And the need to rearrange that dust,
So it wouldn't throw the chain
Off its sprocket.

slide down impulsive lover spring
give succor to my ailing soul
i'll not repent the imaging
of soft mayflowers round the pole
some sweet & innocent warm air
you make where my recovery
in seasons that do not despair
remaking ground from aspen tree
mercuric goddess come again
that i may find that hidden song
discover what should long have been
pure joy which comes where you belong
reclaim slick pleasure summers bring
accept my ardent reckoning

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.

Come back from darkness, find a light.
To anger show forgiveness, and
To accusation self control.
Surprise the world with honesty,
And clean the air, the earth of spite.
Give touch the holy place it needs,
And calm despair with love and hope.
Seek wisdom with the suffering,
Give truth a chance, don't hurry it,
And leave all hatred as you go.

How beautiful the children's feet,
Mothers at the border crossings,
The cellist in the war-torn streets,
Resplendent in the evening,
Who know that evil has a name,
A placid face, blue eyes of death,
Who murders with a toxic rain
That sears the skin,  that takes the breath.
The earth grows dark with fallen leaves;
Blood brothers, elders, innocents.
Say nothing of the amputees,
The blinded and the minds that went
Beyond recovery.  God's hooks
Were never meant for common folks.

I can't compose myself today,
Have no imagination left
That's worth the time it takes to say
What might reflect somehow what's felt.
This odd pursuit is no escape,
No recompense among the just--
If anyone could claim that shape,
Who rose and fell among the dust.
As morning scrolls to afternoon,
Long evening to outer dark,
The wailing heard, the gnashing soon--
The trinity of heads that bark,
Until the music stills their breast--
In dulcet tones, then sudden rest.

even augustine could dream--
of freedom, women, men?
and god, salvation
of the fittest--
nevermind the terror of the night

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.

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.

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.

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.

We've outdone Father Abraham
In sacrificing girls and boys;
Along the border, in the wars
That serve no cause but oligarchs,
Who reassign the deity,
Call Moloch to America,
With powder, pills and poverty,
While celebrating liberty.

Don't fault the peasants, red or blue,
Whose votes have been corrected by
The players in the party rooms.
The unwashed--unbrushed teeth on edge-
Come out of hell for processing,
Discover yet another ring.

The rain this morning falling strange,
Unheard for weeks while grasses browned,
At first unrecognized then changed
To gratitude that heaven frowned
And cried again on broken land,
Healed cracks and succoured trees and vines.
Would that were true of everyman
And woman born in these hard times,
Observant where the seed will drop,
Terrain that takes good faith to sow,
That generations may not stop,
That rain will come and ice will hold
Our struggling sons and daughters,
Who cleanse the heavens with their tears.

dance in bright daylight
dance in the dark winter night
dance, time disappears

Unti the end is dark enough,
The mind will not quit reckoning.
I've heard proclaimed the life above,
Where righteous mate and angels sing.
Of course the getting there is tough,
My shoulders don't suggest a wing.
Perhaps you have some other plan,
Some unrepentant, feckless clan.

Unless you're something more than wise,
This pale excuse is wholly mine.
I don't mind thinking otherwise,
I wish I could at desperate times.
Two lines complete the son his fate.
Not what you're thinking, I can wait.

some hidden cause breaks
fever soaking early afternoons
of still cold sun
days in the lovers' month

where seeing isn't quite
come past believing
would you ever or would i
find pitch dark path
so close the smell still moves

concealing all the consequence
of singularities spaced
where too easy crossfire
has no wheels
no combination
and no pleasure that's remembered

you no longer name this world
spent casings loosely scattered
guarantee no evidence
that i was ever in your eyes
imagining the sliding time
when snow fell on the wall
the street the lovely hill

old boneyards made the perfect sites--
the residents content to wait,
through late-night fornication rites--
for judgment at a future date

sly little sisters took their turn,
when breakups offered openings
to quench the adolescent burn
by covering a load of sins

with stories that got passed around,
a currency as firm as gold,
assuring they were never found
without a little death foretold

next day the brimstone sermons ruled,
in nodding pews post Sunday school

Days without much news,
The ordinary pleasure
Of lovers,
Homecoming,
Dogs inside from the rain--
More the thunder,
Not understood.
No more than the time
That won't stand still
When the question of death
Cannot be quietly ignored,
The absent father shadowing
Eternity

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?

Cold silence makes the day run long,
The night as well.  She misses most
His chin, clean-shaven as a palm,
Her slanting fingers touch a ghost.
He never talked about the war,
Liked culture of the harvest land,
Sometimes an evening at the bar,
Cold mornings waiting in a stand
While  counting antlers,  powder dry,
Field dressing, hauling, freezing meat,
Indulging dogs with half the tripe,
Then sleeping in his favorite seat,
The old recliner, much repaired,
Now empty as the winter air.

So deep in the blues the devil couldn't
Wake me up, she said Bob you blow my mind
And I said I don't care about any
Of that stuff you got and I don't think you
Ever loved anybody, least likely
Yourself and she cussed a little hearing
It put that way by a fool who hasn't
Lost his innocence and repeats himself
A thousand times in a bad night like now,
When the wind is up and even the birds
And the insects give it a break.  You know
What I mean, better than I can say it,
Which ain't that good lately, deep in the blues.

Five-thirty has its own regard
For my reflection in a flat,
Tripartite looking glass above
The shaving sink where a trick of
Light removes it from the middle
Panel as I carelessly leave
It slightly unclosed so that my
Face is displaced, the mirror not
Returning recognizable
Information concerning my
Disappearance, which is no more
Amazing in the early light
Than the evening carnival with
It's unrelenting fun house view.

Only we raised crosses,
Gallows poles, ever spiked
The heads of enemies
Along the road to Rome,
Quartered our
Kind--horses being driven
Without understanding--
Ever made slaves a stock-in-trade,
Built cages for refugees
From places worse than here
In class distinction,
Worse leaders--imagine--
Than our own.
Breathe deeply and continue,
While in the place incomprehensible
Another slaughter,
Then another,
And who would give himself that
Name?  Reaper?  Personification
Of the inhumane, political.
A sleepless nation, terrorized
By lies and accusations,
Fear of swarthy siblings,
Ishmael, El Paso.
Pens and pencils, paper, crayons.
New shoes.  Notebooks.  Erasers
Left on the tile battlefield.

I do not like you,  Donald Trump,
You're what they also call a ****.
Your life of crime is such a  shame.
You should go back to where you came.
Except they wouldn't have you there,
Not even if you comb your hair.
Disguise yourself as Putin's clown.
Sell out your country going down.

Don't think about the end, not now.
No poet's words or prophecy
Can fill the void, no sad slow song,
No prayer or self-inflicted scar,
No philosophical dead end.
Our dancing fails, with hobbled feet.
Sleep tight, sleep's not an easy step.
It doesn't rhyme, or fit the lines.

Apologies to all who need
What's fallen here, suspiring this.
Can't go. Can't stop.  Comes late the taste
Of something that should not have spilled.
Such thinking isn't sanely stayed.
Say what can surely not be said.

the muse drops in
on a lazy man,
an easy mark
reclining as a well-fed cat
in a spot of sun
that slants its ways
past the crosses in an old window
stuck shut yet still transparent

Something resists understanding
The early exit of a friend.
I do believe in accidents,
The unpopular opinions
Of poets, children and lost dogs,
Finding anything but false hope
A good reason to continue,
Without the promise of success.
Her beautiful smile and the dog
She loved gave up life together.
Now you and I sleep fitfully,
Foresworn to secret shatterings.
No use to speak of mercy, God's
Own grim partner rakes the land.

She stares outside the open gate,
Convinced she can't pass through it still,
And leave the world she's learned to hate.
Perhaps she'll eat another pill.
Scorched character has settled fate,
Has undermined her sovereign will.
The cost of freedom set too high--
She loves her gold too much to try.

The hungry ghost, tight-lipped and sere,
Stores up the treasures that corrupt,
Refuses love and succors fear,
Finds living always too abrupt.
I've said it slanted, but today
The cage is empty anyway.

Empty eyes where you
Once reflected all the world
As it existed

tonight we have good wine good song
no talk of any old remorse
no judgment of the the things gone wrong
just life encouraged on its course
such courage as siddhartha shared
outside the gates on any road
that anyone could take who cared
to ease a pilgrim's heavy load
eavesdropping on the universe
sad echo by the waterside
whose pleasure falls denied and cursed
you come to me another's bride
unsatisfied and passionate
your trembling lips so delicate

the sixties ended with a folded flag
handed to my mother's sister
in a family cemetery not far
from where we lived
just down the road
from the baptist church
site of the wedding
six months earlier
the merry month before danny left
for training and his first real job
a full year after walter
gave us news
that this fight
was one that lies
sustained
while boys just out of school
married and shipped out
and came back in pieces

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.

it is enough
to be in your arms
when all the stars are falling
nothing i have found
approaches your
                                   embrace
no words of prophets or messiahs
have your faith
what you so innocently touch

Our ***** have long erased the lines
Stone-chiseled into  monuments,
Fresh minds distorted by the signs,
Persuasive wine and sacraments.
The old salvation of belief
Hangs out like fossils by the creek,
Sustaining some with sure relief,
Who seldom give the other cheek.
In fear of lack of more than this
Untimed, uneven passaging,
The slow decline & emptiness
Of vanity and preacher's stumps,
As bridges see increasing jumps.

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.

should it all be quantified,
this spirit-laden world,
broken to its smallest piece
without a secret left
except the love
that contradicts
all circumstance, defying language,
stone carvings and disease,
unguided shots at shadows,
my own transgressions sacramental
and profane,
with which
the fruit
of paradise
is tasted
on
a dying tongue

Things for which there are no words are good things
To consider.  Words that proved imperfect--
Though we never did know why--can't make us
Understand the cause for separation,
As if disorder needed reason, no
Explaining it's the other way around.
And where once I wore a reasonable
Face, now you get around it with a smile.

look close, the old world moldering,
unsightly damage year by year,
the yellow sun yet billowing,
indifferent to all we fear--
the sacred disappearing,  god
reduced to holding seances
behind an aging, thin facade
of emperors and witnesses,
whose outer dark is just the street
gaslit by hawkers selling shade
half guaranteed to stand the heat
on sidewalks chalked where children played,
as life gets marked down, sold by lots,
and mothers visit mounded plots

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.

Christine reached Knoxville overnight,
Gone missing in a stolen car.
Her friend, a fifteen year-old boy,
Took turns along the interstate,
Warm night enhanced by felony.
Her mother gets the call. She's found.
Drives down with dad they've not seen much
Since things went bad a long way back,
A fractured family like all
The others underneath the smile.