on this side of the cross
the shadow moves
with the morning sun
slow motion,
the angle more acute
as the length dissolves.
had we patience,
or set a watch,
midday would bring
a new direction

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 world is God's own concubine,
Naked on this April morning
Cool enough to perk pink buds
Of a hundred billion roses,
Expectant of the yellow bees
Whose needs are close to mine.

Two more mass shootings overnight
Get scant reporting being less
Body count than the one last week
Or the ordinary bad beat.
Our heart goes out so much it's lost
The way back to it's own door.

I drop the beat, it's my own fault--
My mother bought the dimestore books
I wanted more than toys, and read them
Till I knew the words, correcting
Any one misspoke so I've got
Them now--will trade for your kisses.

My great teacher, Guy Davenport
Told of the time he put out Sartre,
On fire in Paris,
Set by his own tobacco pipe
Stuffed back in his jacket pocket
On a park bench.  Imagine that.

My own mistakes overshadow
Yours, and I'm running out of space
To sustain this unlikely conceit.
If verses ever did part lips,
I'd keep my pen in hand all night,
Exhausted lay beside it.

A taste I can't forget what sings
At your command--Oh how I love
The narrow path on which you glide,
The lies that only look like clues,
Discarded wrappers of long dreams
That I have slept through every way.

When paradise gets tedious,
I have it on God's word he'd trade
Eternity to hear your sighs.

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.

The new firehouse  stands where the old
Hardshell church used to be stationed,
and across the road new houses
have replaced the once fallow field
where the Methodist tent meeting
took place when I was twelve years old,
accountable for my wanton
gaze, at the cheeks exposed by shorts
that would not have been allowed on
Sunday morning this Friday night,
if you took the freewill doctrine
unpopular now in circles
philosophical,  canted like
the hooks we used to turn sawlogs
on the carriage where I offbeared
in the summer and after school,
saving cash I would one day use
to court those long-legged ladies.

That sound--that sound you hear
That makes you come alive,
That makes explosions + relief,
That blues broke down
In a  half-filled bar on Beale Street,
On an ordinary Wednesday night,
An ordinary woman
With dark curls and a small face,
Blue eyes, who walks in
Through the front door, past
Your table in a modest, patterned
Mid-length dress, pleasantly round,
Not tall and about your age
Or a little more
And you think maybe
She's come for the night shift,
Pouring drinks, serving
The occasional pizza, cheeseburger, wings
And steps instead onto the riser,
Nods to the band
And takes the microphone.


                        II

Old black guitar player Herman &
The trumpet player,
****** thin and white as flour,
Who accepts the occasional, ordinary
Hummer from your friend Jane--
Not Chet Baker but he's got
Chops--
An adequate sunburned drummer,
Double bass obscuring all but an Afro.


                         III

Smell of blue tobacco smoke,
With just a little ******
And in the dim light you reach out,
Put your hand on top of your lover's hand
As soon as you hear that sound,
Echoing Etta--Steal Away.
And then she parks the mic
Back on its stand and leaves,
And the glow of just lit
Cigarets
Is all the evidence
The evening needs.

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.

straight up this middle of the night
awakening and jotting course
its pull a pattern not much worse
than habits said to risk good sight
long hours with our sin displaced
responsibility in dreams
dealt more than winking jack's and queens
by some grim counter of the days
this steady need to find a lost
connection to the human cant
leaves games hard played with thinking bent
against all necessary cost
slip out your unrepenting tongue
by which dark mysteries get sung

to find the finest things things the night
permits needs words & flesh subsumed,
an alchemy of second sight
from chaos yet a smidgen mined
of ecstasy through horror sung,
the pleasure of a mortal realm
where ripe fruit strangely falls unhung,
sweet taste beneath the bitter elm.
whose will can guide the hunter's barge,
forecast his raucous wanderings?
a raven or a dove in charge
of carrion and olive sprigs,
a turkish van set swim for shore,
as black and white as ancient lore

Because the morning has easier
Decisions, the old rise early,
Coming to our coffee and eggs
In bowed appreciation
Of the harvesters and hens,
Opening the paper
With bent fingers
And lowered expectations
Of good news, prepared
To see familiar departures
And a history of marriages
That have somehow survived.

The other way was magic then,
Left roadside as the animals,
Uncomprehending speed of men
Come slaked with fire from banquet halls,
Front-slanted as the rising sun,
Whose dangerous appearance mocks
The dark,  where lovers come undone
And hearts are picked like rusted locks.
Your singing is the holy sound,
The wailing of the innocent
That brings the spirit up from ground,
Where lust renews from passion spent.
My words come slow, unbent to taste,
As love is unconcerned with haste.

The path to paradise is not well worn.
I think I see it, but it's never clear,
Just scratches on a rock or silver streams,
Not deep enough to navigate, so I,
The awkward wader, stir up silt and sing
Off key, a howling animal, unclean.

Little boy, go tell your mother
That the rains are coming,
And the horrible winds.
But don't scare her.

time is the sun we move around
through shadows and reflections
expecting more
a prophet or a sacrifice
how do we hold the sound
of any place without a name
some avenues allow return
their beauty having lingered
i find myself convinced
though why remains unclear
that we've something more to learn
some word or some experience
something that would obviously matter

if freedom could be earned
then i might see the one
who brought me here
as someone i have loved
almost well enough
to recognize
in evenings when the stars and moon
are less apparent than the rain

They got pills now that take the place of words
So I'm thinking poetry should give it
Over, being unreliable at
Best and dangerous used as intended.
No quaaludes anymore so that rules out
Ballads, but with serotonin juicers
We could all of us be Rod McKuen.

What can be ever sung, a fraction of
The pain that's splintered on the sun & moon,
Ignoring Venus with her clouded cuff,
Swift Mercury in retrograde till June.
Red god of war, the ******, marches through
The stations of the terroristic cross,
As body counts become the evening news.
And Jove, enormous father,  albatross--
The rings that sing of sky & earth devoured
High sons of water & the underworld,
Anticipating wearily the hour,
The tenor of the unrelenting sword.
Should love be born again, how would we know?
The ocean offers secrets for the crow.

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...
.

& would this or that have.made it better?

With eyes mistaking order for the truth,
Another generation
Scrubbed clean behind those eyes,
Teeth set on edge--
Should all the world be gained,
A poor exchange.
We gone these days, kingdom come again,
Dot arrives before the eye. Once more
The seeing could not convince.
You understand how
                            it is for anyone
Inconceivable
                                  to make a world
Of words
And yet
A paper-thin foundation
May be all
We have.

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.

should i be excused from thoughts
indeterminate as they were
not ever knowing how they sound
in occupation of the space
a poem seeks, taking notes
on its ambitious song

not long this measured
universe
shall entertain
my thoughts,
if they be fancied
mine
you understand the
the infinite uncertainty
loosely scattered in bright flashes,
dark skies,
increasing silence
laced between
the thunder

You and I are different now.
What could be said last night,
Or earlier today, has left
Its meaning far behind, so
We continue, starved for company
On sheets or under words
That might or might not celebrate
The ritual
Of acts that won't return,
Or if they do will not be recognized
As yours or mine, no fast
Or fascinating gesture having caught
A breaking second or a moving hand.
I say this knowing it has not been
Long enough for bitterness to pass
Into the future, or your eyes--
Blue as heaven's door--
To once again meet mine.

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

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

A little drunk, on new year's door,
She calls to say she might come back,
And I, who steeled myself before,
Say sure, and feel a little crack.
A frightened lover's midnight moan
Brings back the flood, the thunderbolt,
The once connected lips and bone,
The song, the night, ecstatic jolt.

I'm done with words that break & fall,
Need legs & feet & dampened hair.
Reluctant ink disdains the ball,
I'd know your motion anywhere,
Who moved my world with mortal sin,
And ushered chthonic rhythms in.

All I want
Is more verses
In this room
That I can read to you

I shouldn't mind tonight this rain,
Could follow it along the street,
From gutter to the grated drain,
Then back up when it tugs my feet.
The future and the past complain,
Unsatisfied at where they meet.
The sun has left, the pale moon hides,
Conspiring with the gaining tides.

Consoling verses aren't the kind
That lend this year its bitter bark.
Another ring around the mind,
This damp December leaves its mark.
New year begins its life tonight,
In coruscating, falling light.

i want to make the good things last,
or failing that, good memories,
those moments when the veil is torn,
and sorrow is a secret prayer

of all transgressions recognized,
the worst is what misuses most
the power of a lie disguised
as love

The night Chet Baker died,
Dropping from a second floor balcony
Of the Prins Hendrick Hotel
In Amsterdam, we spent the night
In lover's arms,  a brief menage
Unstable as ozone
Or a note held
Past the point of breathing
And she, the young one entranced
By jazz and rock and blues,
Even poetry,
Wine & **** & wrinkled sheets
Said I must be
The happiest man in Kentucky
And briefly I was

Got trouble again in Memphis
or she wouldn't be back
in her hometown
with a teething two year old
her mother tends to
when she picks up delivery work
or has a meeting
and she goes along
Sunday mornings
with more eyes on her than the preacher
not because of interest in salvation
so much as to mollify
her anxious mother
who believes she'll find
a better man
than the Tennessee hustlers
whose provinces are underserved
by streetlamps or revivals.

True magic's not in books, but rhythm has
It's own reward. Words waiting for a song
Are no more use than rocks laid out of place
And I have no more words to tell you why
The rocks are lately misarranged or where
We left the path, how you were once a song
And I a misplaced stone, who never cared
For anything so much as hearing you.

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.

at loneliness the edge defies
a gentle passage i no more
than you can bear the silent core
of what accepts and what denies
disintegration through cold space
a meeting on no other side
no ticket for another ride
no place to taste much less embrace
so think of less than death tonight
hubristic thief of borrowed time
think more by our edenic crime
swept loose in this romantic light
your lips can speak the truth or lies
to say much more would not be wise

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.

All colors and their absence mourn--
White page, black pen design the mind.
Bare bodies blow Gabe's copper horn.
They leave a twisted trail behind.
What's left unwrit is lionspeak,
Transcripted worse than poetry
Encaged in shops that smell and creak
From correlated symmetry.
Unbending letters, cold steel rails
Truss up irrelevant decrees,
But broken grammar jams and flails
From supplicants on what were knees
Aa ee ii o u
Come hear what's lost, spit out in blue.

Shall what cannot be finished
Be abandoned?
What should be done with love,
So strong and mortal--
The answer
To a question
Impossible to frame.
Hard work with poor material;
We should have made
A better god
I suppose,
Though what we have now
Must suffice,
Patched up and resurrected--
Blasphemous poets,
Lovers,
Something overwhelming,
Undefined,
A path not going
Anywhere we haven't been
And yet tonight--
Good earth our destination--
I see you and cannot
Reply,
Except to say,
As simply as a stubborn fool,
This is what we are.
And knowing that
Is far too much
To leave behind
Or otherwise believe.

It feels like freedom, skeleton
Lock clicked and a little money--
Enough for bus fare and a room
In cheap places already seen,
Maybe for a couple of weeks--
The strength to go straight if choices
Overcome the tempter that speaks
Louder than the other voices.
You won't freeze in Florida or
Southern Alabam and might meet
A woman again,  with flavor--
Coarse salt and sweat, yet almost sweet--
And she might share a slight worn key.

My thoughts of you as I awake
Are not as pure as angels' dreams,
Unless they spent their night on earth,
Carousing at some roadside inn,
Leg wrestling on an unmade bed
To learn the mortal ways of man,
Which gods themselves scarce understand,
Except at certain festivals,
Or on a mission comically
Disguised as fowl or serpentry,
Beguiling those less innocent
Than you, my love, could ever be.
Small wonder that I'm losing sleep,
Imagining myself in deep.

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.

What had to be the way it was
For this to be the future, now
That everything has hour-glassed,
The question yet remains and how
Would I begin the rugged search
For lonely time still spread across
A frosted morning, swinging birch
Or any rutted road criss-crossed.
Where are you, in this place of need,
My long abandoned plans and who
Will ever mount that fiery steed
In seasons where the sap is low?
The mind still bends, as scribblers lean
To scratch out what is yet unseen.

if love is in your heart tonight
you'll find my foolish,
                                          failing speech
descending with the falling night,
approaching what cannot be reached

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.

To love so well is rarely known--
Incomprehensible but true,
This thing that you and I have grown,
That everyday comes out for view.
Surviving while the others fell,
This linkage has the strength of steel,
And when there's nothing left to tell,
Still how we lived was oddly real--
No grand illusion in the sky,
No better place than by your side,
No understanding by and by,
No chariot or train to ride.
Yes, you comprise my paradise--
Let heaven weigh the sacrifice.

Sunday evenings,  once a month,
Instead of going back to church
We drove to my grandparents' house,
Parked in two rows beside sedans
Belonging to my uncles--
A prison guard, two factory
Workers and a farmer.

Women brought food from the kitchen,
To men who put out cigarettes
To take a plate and a soft drink,
Then rounded up the kids outside.
Should I have been more than quiet,
When uncle told a racist joke?

It does no good to argue with a dog.
God knows they have the patience of a stone,
Devotion to a feckless masquerade
The wordy breed has ****** upon us all,
While shouldering the burden of the world.

Step outside the wires
Some winter morning,
With your wool coat and hat,
Before the world has wakened,
When and where walnut shells,
Discarded by the clever nocturnals,
Dot the snowy sidewalk,
Along with occasional ****,
Small carcasses and cigarette filters.
Watch your breath and listen
To the city--small town, really--
As it sleeps.  The medicated night
Has disappeared, into the meditation
Of streetlamps and the few remaining stars.
Having found this place, decisions remain.
You can strip down everything outside you,
Make snow angels in the neighbor's
Yard--imagine her surprise should she
Awaken--and then compose these lines,
In what remains of darkness of the sky.

What I need to tell you, what I can't say--
We're all fragile, trying to put things back
Together when they spring apart, until
We give up and we're not there yet, are we?

The right word not said becomes a lost cause.
I should know, whose only trick is silence.

Laughter after miscast stones, poor excuse
For a fountain.  No one believes in words
Like a liar looking for a story.

What I should have taught myself or somehow
Learned, the hardest rock being the only
Salvation, is where the pain goes at last.

Maybe it dissolves, but I suppose it
Reincarnates, finds new soul and body
Out of ashes, wrapped around another
Language, words not intended to be heard.

My sentences, they're a long time coming.
Years ago I said I love you. To tell
The truth, I was scared.  Backseats are the place
Saved for criminals.  Or children, drunks and
Idiots.  That was a long time ago.
I remember it more clearly than this
Morning.  I forgot to say how are you,
Forgot to say I'm not good at living.
You know that by now.  You know everything
I could say, but what I think is always
More.  Tonight I need to say I love you more.

It's what you make of Sunday when it comes.
It comes to this, unless you give up air-
Which isn't what I mean, we all need some-
To eyes that cover up with clouds and hair.

And if you could just get out of the deal,
How easily would happiness be found?
No logical connection spins the wheel-
No reason that the feeling comes around.

Of course you can pretend, or fake again,
When all you really feel is misery.
I've been there when it wasn't fun, and when
It could have been described as ecstasy.

A southern slant, a tricky smile, is all
I've got to get the things I want, a note
Of melancholy tasting skin in fall,
When green gives up it's shade to winter's coat.