Ain't this the s*!t.
Burning reruns come Sunday
Better round out the order
Of sad days and glad rags.
****** Tonk dreams
Busted down in doldrums.
Zithers and atonal strings.
And here I am.
More auto focus tied to repeats, said contract
Available upon request.
Such vegetable starlight,
Passing on the false bravado,
Burning out the backside,
Ready to blow out the wick,
Ready for one more lap
Around the track.
I've got a silhouette to write
Out the business end
Of this badass pencil.
And I'm spitting hellcat North,
Crunching these work boots
Worn in the heels.
Each day a death,
But one at a time.
I light 'em up, hope they don't
Fizzle out halfway down the line. Its all suffragette,
And it out poops Dresden
On a black night of bombing.

Moving away from center,
You spy an ending to this letdown. O well, what did
You expect? High priced
Prose from some well heeled snob? But I've got alot of
Postage stamps. I'll send
This drivel to anyone who has a pulse.
See, I've got to shut it down.
I don't need the neighbors yapping after ten. As you see,
I've got one foot tripping
Over the other.
And sometimes Sunday slaps
Me back to coherency.
As I dream of a sojourn back
To the seventies.
Now I see it so darkly,
As I try to shed some light
On this dark matter moving
Elusively through the microscope. If you find
This terse drama enchanting,
I'll send you these sad remains of this little endeavor gone to wind
By morning.

This rich experiment ran out
Of beakers and Bunsen burners. I wore my glasses
And lab coat to little avail.
No blue moon in the cupboard tonight.
So much for the well worn thesis. Here's where it runs out of gas.
Only tinkling flowers
And bare rhapsody, Shivering
Like a ****** in the night.
It's here, and here, and here,
Places I can only show
In the dark.
Things which have no name.
But here, and here,
Feel their shape?
Dim, Oslo in the rain.
And the Nazis occupy
The last of the city.
It's here, and here, and here.
It's nowhere, nothing.
Dry places, bones of dust.
It's here, and here, and here.

Denver blows my ring
In the dull doldrums.
In the darkroom
I kick a dead horse
Like a dark dream.
I see you dark one
Disappearing in the negative,
Hollow orbs for eyes.
You swim in the solution,
Your stop bath smells as vinegar, And everything smells of roses this side up.
Its a long nihilistic trip.
Down the dark wire
I draw my darkroom
As a black feather
In a dark dream.

The yellow stained blinds
Lead to the alley with no breeze. As I watch hookers,
Predictors, victims,
And the other lost cling
To railings drinking what they have.

The women are once again
Ready to feel the pulse of the bar, bleeding red and purple,
The back door open To the swelter. Bob Segar And Stevie
Nicks, Pasty Cline and Elvis.
I laid above the heat blanching the small window with the yellow blinds,
Beautiful and ******.

I stiffed what I could on the rent, pawned what I could,
Cigarettes and coffee,
A piece of toast,
The only meal for the day.
Sometimes a sandwich or a Hostess pie. A burger after
Two days hunger tasted like
Heaven on Earth.

Sometimes running out of smokes, you search the ground for half smoked butts,
Coming up empty.
No soup kitchen where you lived. Survival of the fittest friend.

And I let my poison arrow fly,
Finding it's trajectory through juke joints With women and music.
You lean into the bar, and the
Glint of the mirror provides the harsh ambiance to the racket inside the Black Rail Lounge.

You rode its tide to the one room above with the yellow stained blinds soured by
Still air and stale clothing.
And the small window let's
In yellow light and little air.

And you must rise this day
And go to work.
But you cannot rise from the bed. You can only groan
As the room spins, and shut
Your eyes to the bloated morning, with hot plates and coughs from other roomers down the darkened hall.
And the Black Rail beneath
With Janis Joplin and Fleetwood Mac, and the steady beat lulls you insane.
And you cannot rise to the task at hand.

But you must.

Marshalling your forces to
The bus and the El down
The ghetto streets of Chicago.
Past tenements and junkyards, hock shops and winos taverns, where you made rubber plates for box stamping. And the winos And barflies line the taverns along Skid Row. Mostly black,
All poor.
Beautiful and ******.

And the hand of God reached down touching my ravaged soul.
Lifting me in Love.
Beyond the Black Rail and the one room. I've since drank an ale on this first night of vacation, watching
The nightfall to sounds in the meadow, As the first firefly
Lights my Window in a time of Passion and Passing

I bury a butterfly Beneath
The second tree of the College turnaround. I sat with him as he slipped away. The shade and the cool breeze flutter
His black and Gold wings.
I walk out wondering
If anyone saw me.
And then not caring.
Goodbye gentle friend

Shadow, Shadow
Within my dream,
Have I dreamed you awake,
Said Lizard King To Peace Frog? Peace Frog says it's
Old anchovy, Rare bits of beef
And I can't remember the last thing I said,
Except that which I see.
Is that just a dream
Within a dream,
Or just a brush of Raven's wing? But Lizard King I dream what I dream awake,
How can that be?
Shadow sees what fades to passing, another dream
Within a dream.
And I look at the burning sun
Bleeding paint like a river.
And I think of my job,
And I think of nothing at all,
As a baby night bug crawls
Along the spiral of my page,
Invading worlds beneath my fingers.
Oceans, Worlds, Suns and
Arcs of light beyond our being. Nothing moves in silence.
Wondering of stories
Forgotten as a child,
Yet nothing's forgotten,
Yet all is forgiven.
Conciliatory Shadows,
Reckoning light,
Pink and blue and coral
Dreams of light and line
And space and Shadow
And Shadow.

Therin lies your answer
Peace Frog says to Lizard King. This welcome mat beneath you, this simple
Weaves of straw an steel,
And the streetlight bends
Behind me, then gone.
So are Lizard King and Peace Frog.
Where have they gone?
To Shadow,
To the realm of Shadow.
And I see my Father's face,
Darkening, lighting
In the streetlights.
As the stink of the factories
Fill the air.
And my Dad would talk of jazz, while I turned the radio
To Donovan, Mellow Yellow,
And its 1966.
And I think of my job,
Revolving wheels,
Sparks and Sun Dogs,
And I think of Shadow,
                          Shadow,
And red headed women
In Capris,
And the light of the sun
Blinding in noon.
Dreams of bright nothings.
Bon Bon's of scarlet.
Shadow, Shadow,
What to make of such things?
Shadow smiles as Buddha,
Says a sliver of sleep
Is all you need.
Do I cipher a riddle
From the air?
And I wonder of Shadow,
Will he haunt me forever?

Light through winter windows, blue black snow
In quickening night,
Sweet Friday evening,
In the last, the last of it all.
As I turn down 113,
I know the drill.
Whatever future's down the cycle,
My madcap diary.
Retro reentry true to form.
And its better when it rains,
With the eves dripping in the streetlight. Instead,
I found a way through,
Down by law,
Up by love,
A silent moon casts light
On that it which will.
None for the taking,
One for the road,
And it's all An exercise in futility.
One is the other
Then so is the premise.
A poem for no one,
A hundred words spilled
Randomly on the floor.
Such an elemental comedown.
Save it for the sunset,
Sell it for some speakers
Boy, I think it's better,
But I'm really not sure.
C'mon, it's all a first draft,
There's got to be an ending here somewhere.