(Authors note:Dear Reader, in 2013 I got hurt, put on pain meds. Never in a million years did I think...Well it did.
And here's the story)

But how could that be?
Was it the law that caused my doom?
The wrong I don't mean to do, I do anyway,
Though every higher thought
Within me Screams at this outrage....Led to be a monk,
I fell from the top rung,
I'm a martyr in motion,
My own worse dream,
But I got a woman in the other room,
Know what I mean?
She tries to keep me out of Romans 7,
But she only pulls me in deeper,
Between the pills and the drama, It's psychotropic
Hades before your eyes.
Seems I have to have it by 4
Or its a bumpy ride all the
Way home.
It's a whirl-ago,
A real wild ride.
The perfect storm of fate and circumstance.
This Act Of Contrition, I've brought on myself.
Nowhere in Romans 7,
Do you go it alone,
Yet there remains an isolation,
Even in the presence of others,
There's a sense of isolation,
Aloneness,
A shrinking of The Spirit.
Crying out to Him,
I sometimes feel only the coldness of wind,
Then silence.


At the bottom of the stair,
Here at the bottom of the stair,
The shadow casts its pall over sunlight.
And the only shadow I fear
Is the one I create.
Is there anyway out?
None you see from here.
Ah-alas, two 10-325's,
Climbing the dark stairs to the bottom.
Zoom, Zoom- here goes nothing to Nowhere.
Where's God's love in the depth of addiction?
Closer I think, I gather.
But when I get closer,
I seem to let go,
Take another ride down the stairs.
Roman 7 is my name, my horn, My albatross.
I want love yet end up
In the dirt,
Making mud pies in the alley
Instead of sand castles on the shore.
There, another Heineken
To wash it down.
I sift flowers in the gray afternoon,
Sketch my despair in the dust.
How far I've wandered
To find where I am.
As darkness has it's own light
I so have mine,
As the eye adjusts to the darkness,
And I hear the whisper of God through the mist.
And love makes me naked
As ghosts begin singing
A solitary bird rises to the sky.
   Mar 13 2013/Apr 22 20.

Shadow, Shadow upon my door,
What wake you bring of Evermore?
Raven,Raven upon my screen,
What tale of blood you bring?
Flesh, Flesh you curse and rhyme,
What dark clock you chime,?
A graven image,
I do expect,
A word of sorrow,
A thought neglect.
You tear and smear and pull asunder,
O what dark garden do you plunder?
You live of ash and beetle root,
And dry blood speckles Your black suit,
You speak of death and call of ruin,
What harbinger of malice you bring soon,
You're pale moon,
You're bloodless friend,
O what curse you soon descend?
You call a fate, A rusted loom,
And weave this madness I must presume.
I call, I lie, I leave a doubt,
What shall I clamor and shout about?
What tale of folly,
What madness you bring,
Dead hauntings of silent spring.
In dark halls I do beseech,
You mock and scorn and wave and preach,
Of God's loving promise do you breach.
Footfalls, footfalls, of graven ground,
A clanging knock, an awful sound,
A dank body upon the ground,
This mound, this mound
Of mournful dirt,
Your ****** lie, your evil smirk.
You clash and clang,
A mindless cymbal,
You fill dark cups, a ****** thimble.
You prance and wave,
You are so nimble,
You are a bug, an evil symbol
What odor lies, A ****** musk,
It's but a folly, a stab, a ******
You chime the hour,
An Evening Laud,
You are a death mask,
A witch, a fraud.
O shall I haunt and weep amok,
You are a raven, what horror you cluck.
What stately ruin waits for me,
No shining hour, no serendipity.
Shadow Bleeder, killer of dreams,
My throat is closed,
A silent scream.
I shall beseech your waking hour,
And see your scrim,
Your blackened tower.
O how you ply this broken vase,
This weeping lie, this false embrace.
How shall I sleep,
How shall I tire,
This one last night,
This one last hour.?

The insects rise with the night,
Outside, you walk the dog,

A little poodle
That hates your guts.

It snarls and snaps at you
Every chance it gets,

The little ankle biter.

But that's been your lot in life
In life,

Remembering things
From way back when.

The lesser moments
Come back the most,

It's then I embrace
All the moments.

All the moments
Leading me

To the place outside,

Where the insects
Rise with the night,

As symphonies
Smash through my head,

The oboes and cellos
Rise with the insects.

I switch off the music,
Feel the blind silence,

I strip naked,
Night ticks

In the quiet
Of clocks,

Movements of hands,
I breathe,

The end.

It starts again,
This starting over,
This breaths of faces,
This shine of places,
This recollection of second graces
This movement of twilight,
This line of shadow,
This symmatry of streetlights
This movement of sound and silence,
This parable of time and motion,
This moment of birth,
This second passing

Is it possible
For your virginity
To grow back?
                      (yes maybe)

It it possible
To live in the past
And dream of the future?
                     ( roll again)

Is it possible
To lose yourself
Yet find yourself again?
            (anything's possible)

Is it possible
To be so full of ****
And not know it?
                  (ask later)  
                        

Like Hitchcock,
These dark things appear,
This darkling,
This darkling down.
Some conjured from shadow,
Others crawl up the psyche.
Slings of recognition,
Lust in pink light,
These pounding Marauders,
They are here
They are gone,
While light and darkness
Subsist forever.
This still silent pen,
This flowing aromatic,
This sparse confessional,
This alchemy of logic
And light.

Shadows, like Hitchcock's Vertigo,
Falling to the still image,
Brushes of black and light.
And you light a cigarette,
Prowl the room like a leopard.
And the trains run East to West,
And somehow this comforts you.
And the sun roars against the window,
Your face,
Gliding up the road,
You think Of Yeats,
Poe, the Shaw Of Iran,
Perestroika, Persian Rugs,
You know your friends,
You know your enemies better,
You keep a mental list,
Cross check it to later entries.
Listen to Bortok and Liszt,
And the lights come up in the theatre,
You make your way to the car
As streetlights shine in the mist,
And rain dots the windshield
As cars hiss up the street.

Poe took Tylenol,
Hemminway's passed out on the floor,
I'd rather drink blurry-eyed
With Ginsberg,
Beer stained beaches in the afternoon.
Throwing up prose to the dying light.
Cicadas rub the summer wind-
Me, I barely connect the dots,
Writing rubbing in the dirt
For Shelly tanning in the sun.

I long the long sleep,
I walk the plank of shadows,
I give over
To the
Hum
Of televisions,
Cars, shouts,
Bright music
In town squares,
The drip of trees,
I ask the moving wind,
But he tells me no name
But mine.
I say my name is Nothing.
He replies in kind.
I forget myself
At this point,
Move into another
Wavering line-
This expedient,
This concurrent beast,
This dissolvable nightmare,
This summation of bones,
This heart shaped ******,
This magpie luncheon,
Dark winds of disorder
Whirl elliptical orbits,
They are what you are not.
This that turns in silence,
Giving little,
Asking less,
Yet fills hollow spaces.
Its all the realm,
This atonal search,
For coats on rusted hangers,
Dead Aunts smothered on perfume,
These red horses,
Charging up hills of desolation.
I am a shadow turning away,
I'm an orange rotting in the sun,
I'm a broken wheel in the moonlight,
I'm the jagged glass cutting your finger,
I am a nightmare you cannot wake from,
I am a lapse of memory,
The wreak on the highway,
The footsteps behind you,
The second nail in the coffin,
The symphony of glass and wire,
I can't extract myself from this.
I am barely breathing.
I've lost my shadow to the sun.
All I can do is shut down the switches,
I am not the house you live in.
But I am the color
Dripping through the spaces you cannot name.
I am wanton and I am lust,
A beggars bowl and a soup kitchen,
And violins sound like bees,
And the leaves a choir,
And pride comes before the fall

Shadow, Shadow upon my door,
What wake you bring of Evermore?
Raven,Raven, at my screen,
What tale of blood you bring?
Flesh, Flesh you curse and rhyme,
What dark clock you chime?
A graven image,
I do suspect,
A word of sorrow,
A thought neglect.
You tear and smear and pull asunder,
O what dark garden do you plunder?
You live of ash and beetle root,
And dry blood speckles
Your black suit.
You speak of death and call a ruin,
A harbinger of of malice you bring soon.
Your pale moon, your bloodless friend,
O what dark curse you descend?
You call a fate, a rusted loom,
And weave a madness I must presume.
I call, I lie, I leave a doubt,
What shall I clamor and shout about?
What tale of folly, what madness you bring,
Dead hauntings of silent spring.
In halls, In halls, I do beseech
You mock and scorn and wave and preach,
Of God's loving promise do you breach.
And footfalls, footfalls, a graven ground,
A whispered knock,an awful sound,
A dank body upon a mound,
This mound, this mound
Of mournful dirt,
A red lie, an evil smirk.
You clash and clang,
A mindless cymbal,
And fill darks cups, a ****** thimble,
You prance and wave,
You are so nimble,
You are a bug, an evil symbol,
While your odor lies
A ****** musk,
Is but a folly, a stab, a ******.
You chime the hour,
The Evening Laud,
A death mask, a witch, a fraud.
O shall I haunt and weep amok,
You are a raven, what a horror you cluck.
What stately ruin lies for me
No dark wonder of serendipity.
Shadow Bleeder, killer of dreams,
My throat be closed, a silent scream.
I shall beseech your waking hour,
I see your scrim, your blackened tower.
I see you ply this broken vase
This weeping lie, this false embrace.
How shall I sleep, how shall I tire,
This one last night, this one last hour.

The rage of the lion
The dream of the lamb,
As symphonies crescendo,
And sun's blaze in ruin,
As engines sputter,
And semi's jacknife.
I am a lion among the leaves,
I am a shadow upon the ground,
As the dark machine rattles,
And broken gears grind,
And the stricken sparrow
Falls from the sky.
I'm a pale horse rising
Over the last broken hill.
And beauty is a bug
In broken roots.
And war's the final insult,
And truth it's first casualty.
And laughter God's response
To a flame of sorrow.
As I walk in solitude
Of a world Sheltered in place.
As stores lay shuttered,
And fear lines alleys,
As broken glass
Sings as stars,
And the gutter and sky
Are equal,
And the ration
Of food our portion.
And the media
Is our Bible,
And walk in suspicion
Of the sun,
And walk in suspicion
Of each other.
And question the dust,
And ask the wind,
And pore you this solace
From a broken cup.

I bury myself to this rusted root,
The sum of the sun and moon
And the synchronicity
Of car horns and bleeding streetlights.
And you *****,
And it gets no better.
And you **** down A celery stick,
And the cops turn down the street,
And I put on Coltrane,
Rue the Muse from his slumber.
I knock,
But not too hard,
Shuffles papers,
Invites me in.
The ancient fan whirs slowly,
And you reach
For a switch, you ***** blindly,
He leads you
To the place of water
Where fish cry,
And I drink in night,
And I take by no right
What is mine,
All this monochrome reflections,
As you dwell
On playwrights,
Editors,
Poets,
Symphonies,
A hulking Brahma
Raises on his quarters,
You steady him For the charge,
And he breaks the gate,
Terrorizing the clouds,
And he runs burning the sun
And your racing with fire,
And it's rawness burns your belly,
And he snorts the red dirt,
And your carried in his madness,
And his name is thunder,
And you Boom the heavens,
And you crash like an ocean,
And his madness is your own,
And I rise in the fury,
And I sleep in the pages,
And a rush of wind building,
Taking my words with them.

Under the radar,
Moon list like a pearls,
And I spike the test tube
Down round the circle of the sun,
Under a blue cowl of clouds.
Night lies jagged,
Profane in it's beauty.
And Cicero dreams horses
Falling from a canyon,
And I draw dinosaurs
Leaping over deserts.
As Angels and Sailors
Sing far off sea.
And I lisp on the page
As Jericho crumbles
In the awake of the sun.

Black horses breaking red gates,
Horse steam and whips,
A thousand hoofs on the ground,
A dream building
In a thousand cellos rising
In the agony of the sun.
And ten thousand daffodils
And a million lilacs
In the Phoenix sun of 1956.
As ancient maps unfold
On long tables,
And hydrogen bombs
Explode off Fiji.
I wander this distant sphere
In a pink flamingo summer,
Chewing ice bones and Juju
And John The Conqueror Root.
The Saints and Minutemen forgotten,
As Grandma's ghost Haunts
These dusty shadows.
I ply my hand to the wheel, this manifold nocturnal dream,
And I serenade the silence,
I scream and shout about.
This dark charm in a low watt play.
I search for interlude,
                       Pause,
How do we let go the light,
Yet not lose illumination?
Salt to the ground,
Water to the sky,
I see you curled behind a cloud,
I dream of swing sets,
A wheel turning in moonlight
As my shadow falls beneath it
It's brokenness taken to the ground.
A flight of fancy for a boy
Poor with math but good with writing,
A strange and sad boy,
I didn't get it, but I do.
I finally woke at the way station,
Between this dream and the other,
Passing time in megahertz and pixels.
And slow but sure I travail
Blue vistas,
And night dredges a thousand dark stars,
And phantoms of blue horses
Seep through the valley of midnight,
As their hoofs chase
A thousand fleeing shadows.

I bury myself to this rusted root,
The sum of sun and moon
And the synchronicity of
Car horns and bleeding streetlights. And you *****
And it gets no better.
And you **** down A celery stick,
And the cops turn down your block,
I put on Coltrane,,
Rue the Muse from his slumber, I knock,
But not too hard,
He shuffles papers,
      Invites me in,
The ancient fan whirs slowly,
And you reach
For a light switch, a connection,
And he leads you
To the place of water,
Where fish cry,
And I drink the night,
And I ******* no right
What is mine.
All these monochrome reflections,
As you dwell
On playwrights,
Editors,
           Poets,
Symphonies,
Ready to buckle
From the gate.
A hulking Brahma,
Raised on his quarters,
You steady him
For the charge,
And he beaks the gate,
Terrorizing the clouds,
And long highways
Carry you to the same destination.
You know them all
By name,
And they throw dirt and grit,
And bust up your tires.
And the day doesn't
Turn out like ice cream,
It just turns out,
As you fall in your snowsuit
In 1962,
Winter light cold in the sun.
And your four,
And you cry in
Your hot cheeks,
As old cars
Smile with metal teeth
And glinting glass eyes.
And you turn to your Mother,
But she's not there,
She died in a photograph
In 1987,
And all you have
Is a pockmarked moon,
Ragged in it's glory.
As I sleep between the page,
As a distant fury of winds
Build on the east,
Carrying my words with them

My, my, sweet sun rain,
It's the Tupelo Line
Past Wilkes-Barre,
All flash and twilight
This side of Pentecost.
And Donald Trump
Has his pulse on the Nation,
And I've got my foot on the gas. Armageddon to the left
Of me, Covid to the right,
As I gaze this sad metropolis.
And I squeeze the turnip dry.
***** the Calabash,
I've got strange maneuvers
Halfway to the sun.
I since lost time to the clouds,
Counting sheep in this psychedelic Insomnia.
And Newton thought The Bible was a code
Written in Men's hearts.
I see God in a solitary bird
Flying a gray sky.

Dante, the Inferno's here baby,
Look up and down the avenue sweetheart, Ain't
Nothing but chicken ***** and chicken hearts,
Lining the gutters and grocery stores, While I Got
My pincer moves down to mechanics,
It's like an art form baby,
Machines that drum dumb dull all day, As frenzied housewives Fight over toliet paper,
I tear up the avenue,
Spitting hellcat North,
Looking for the remnants
Of a once great civilization,
Red balloons and bicycles ribbons Float by my intoxicated eyes.
And Mozart plays handball
Off the prison wall.
And politicians line they're pockets,
And poet's reside in madhouses, And the wealthy
Rig the game,
And birds fall from the sky.
And it's just like clockwork baby, And canned beets
Are the main course,
And hands raise
To a silent sky.
And Dante baby,
You hit the nail on the head.
And nothing calms my ******* heart, And the sun screams
At the blood of the day,
As fans whir in ghetto windows,
We throw up the last of the day.
And the walls come crashing
And never make a sound,
And it's a one way ticket,
And never look down.
And Dante sports wings in Heaven, and I have two feet
On the ground,
And I guess it draws even,
And the best laid plans
Are no plans at all.

Its begins with one word,
And one word become five,
And five words fill a line.
And the page fills with fire,
And fire consumes cities,
And cities smolder in ruin.
And the world revolves in eon,
And eons fill spaces,
And space fills with light,
And light fills stars,
And stars spin in galaxies,
And galaxies spin to infinity
And infinity is but a lash,
And lash is but an eon,
And eon is but a time,
And time is but a space,
And space is but a void,
And void is but a beginning,
And beginning is but a sea,,
And a sea is but water,
And Earth is but a rock,
And life comes from a sea,
And a frog is but life,
And life is but a shore,
And a frog leaps from a rock,
And a ripple wakes a pond,
And a wake fills the Earth,
And one word becomes five,
And five words fill a line,
And the page fills with fire,
And fire consumes the pen,
And I become the pen,
And the pen begins the word.

Never mind The implosion,
I've got all worked out on paper.
The implosion been delayed
By Person or Persons Unknown. Hop Frog and
Rupunzel were Lost to the wind. I dare not dash
My foot upon the stone,
Lest I end up on an island
Which has no name.
And I see patrons line taverns
At 7 a.m., but it may as well
Be midnight.
I pass them on my way to work,
Country music soured in the stench of beer and peanuts,
While I show all the chinks
In my armor.
I'm not here for semblance or
Plot, I'm here to keep the
Structure from falling in.
Hard to do when you
Willow the Wisp at midnight.
Try it with one hand tied,
Why I bet your old
Aunt Sarsparilla could give
Her a go, though I hear she was trained by the Old Masters, Though I hear they come cheaper on the Internet
I bet it's all jerry-rigged from
The get go. Just some discrepancy in the
Time/ space continuum.
Why I wore my knickers
For such occasions,
They gleam like pearls
In the moonlight,
And you save like 40 cents
In the long run. But added
Over a factor of one, The
Quotient of such division Remains a mystery.
I've consulted Witch Doctors
With the equations, They
Said to factor Venus in retrograde, But left to the
Wily hands of dietians,
It becomes pate in the end.
While you can serve it ala
Carte, it wears well at parties
I've wore it with or without shoestrings, though
It seemed a wash in the end.
I'll admit, it wears well on
My hair shirt, though it
Hangs like a hag after rinsing
And the epilogue been postponed by the latest
Outbreak. Its just hyped up
Measles on steroids, But
Will it sell on Wall Street?
That's why I consulted the
Witch Doctors, Perhaps
Medicine Men can clarify
This hazy recollection.
Well, I've just been Informed
We've been shut down
By corresponding radio waves, I'll bet 3 apples
And one petunia this goes straight to video. It may make
For late night titillation,
At least make you warm all over.
I mixed it in herring and cream sauce, but I bet
It won't sell in Nevada.
But that's a story for
Another day. Until then:
This is C.H. Mackelroy Signing Out.

The specter resides in ghost light,
A tree, a dark wind.
I saw her,My Love, My Ghost Light.
I saw her,
Over the rise of trees,
Her laughter,
I knew then the turning inward, The backing
Of the rusty ***** from the hinge.
A slapping, a screen door broken,
As the wind turns East,
Carrying you with it.

Nothing left,
Spilling over into the tank,
Running on fumes since Denver.
Man, I figure it's a trick,
Some play off the light,
Like sunrays blurring off an eyelash.
And I pass endless cornfields,
Lost in the Holy Bliss of isolation, Not even a woman
Can take that from you.

None taken,
I'll let you off by the Junction,
Down by the hallows
The poor region,
Where nothin good happens for lifetimes. Thinking of
Redemption and Original Sin,
The even draw that turns
Men Saint or Sinner
Since way back when.
While Sunday evening darkens quicker in late summer. Before the
North wind rustles the dry cornstalks.

Out here, it's only crickets
And a man's thoughts.
While I dream of warm woman, all leg and blue smoke,
And the cool wind carries
The harbinger of night.
A lone set of headlights
Sweep up the highway.
And the cornstalks whisper,
Calling out a dry fate
You'd rather not hear.

My, what a radish rose,
I must say.
I'll trade in Poe for this Zen.
I imagine it's all zithers
And strings.
I'll play you a melody
On my lute,
Most minors and fifths.
I can't explain the number
Or pattern,
Bells or Pennywhistles,
What can I say,
Losing 17 seconds on the reentry. Where the grainy
Black and write
Finally wears you out
While I wait on 65.
What a pleasure
As half the family dies off.
And what, with no kids and all.
And it all goes 180,
Even if you find a woman
To go Karma Sutra,
Its too little too late.
I'll cartoon this ending.
All blue and humming.
And hey, What's a guy
Gotta do to get a drink
Around here anyway?

Blue wind gathering brown leaves, Spinning them
In angry circles
Under snow clouds with a
Witch wind carrying the sound of freight trains,
Coal and syrup tankers,
Box cars covered with graffiti
Hieroglyphics of the inner city. Dark cars blurring
Brown and black,
In rhythmic clacking order,
One then another, then 126,
Then a caboose, with a conductor you never see anymore. And the gates lift,
And the cold wind rocks
The car as you drive along
Numbly. And you slowly learn the lows and highs
Run on parallels,
Like dark trains along the
Clackety rails of your life,
And the cold front defies
The sun, While I draw
This dark stone,
And the images of winter
Engrave my heart like a stylus, And the mantra
Of dark memories
Become my dark comforter,
And I draw them to me.
And I count the dark horses
Running over darkened hills.
And I picture a barroom,
And I'm lost among the wolves, And I study the **** on my finger,
And my life runs red in my hand, While I wait upon the
Spaces, looking for my pearl,
My red pearl of abandon,
And I draw the wound within me,
I am, I am my Normandy,
As I count my breath between spaces, As I
Gather the darkness around me.
Odessa, Odessa, lying in the sun.
What fable you bring me,
What fate have I wrought?
O tepid sunrise,
I beseech your graven order,
And laugh at your presumption,
And I draw the dark hand,
And the Joker smiles at my
Misfortune, While my millstone draws me to
Deeper water,
As I plummet the square root
Of infinity.
And it's a dark hole,
My dark star,
Pulling my being to abyss,
As I laugh, laugh upon the
Graven ground, And haunt
The dreams that haunt me forever.

See the sleeping dogs
And sea captains
With a pipe in the heavens
Out the back window
Of a 63 Oldsmobile,
As a storm front builds
Over the desert
On the drive back from Phoenix, As Grandma
Hums to the radio.
I watch horses jumping
Over pillows, Smiling
As their snouts draw
Into spinning wheels
Turning dark in the clouds
Building over the mountains

My funeral guide,
Shadow partner,
Silent enchanter,
You take my hand,
Lead me down a moonlit street, I follow, not knowing why. Something clouds your eyes. Dark in ravished moonlight.
I study the lines on my face,
My dark nature,
Darker cohort,
This connection fraying,
This dim receiver,
I ask only for a ladder,
A place closer to the stars.
Dear Shadow Sam,
My Sweet Delia,
Shelter from the storm.
Some slivered dream,
But it gets under your skin,
A red tick burrows deeper.

Feel my hand in the dark
Sookie Sue?
Stroking the nape of your neck, my Sweet Nothing?
I see you hiking your dress
In the moonlight.
Surely in your mind
You paint it black.
Are you afraid It will take you where you cannot go?
Where beneath the light
A beetle eats a rotted root.
And blood shine black
In the moon. And I thought
You gave up swinging gondolas,
As I lurch in the rain.
Later, we shall forget this,
In a dream of 1965.
And the slanting sun will
Cloud the mind.
As my pen drips upon the page, Greasing the rails
For the elemental comedown,
See the cut upon the finger?
As your face blurs in the mirror,
A dream upon this pinprick
In a lost adobe afternoon.
I'll not extend this invitation
Twice.
Are you with me.

Man, you've got to take a step back. I mean you come on a
Little heavy.
I know you've got to write,
But it can be a little intense
And creepy.
I know you'll vdraw me an
Expose on Ecclesiastes,
But I'll show you about baiting hooks in the wind
And learning to let go.
There's something more..
Some larger connection
To the moments we live
For more than ourselves.
The missing part we call
God.
That silent stirring,
A rush of wind, A whisper
At the edge of waking.
A brush, a feather,
Someone calling our name,
But we know not where.
In a moment's clarity,
Seeing ourselves for who
We really are.
A dry time turned oasis.
The healing heart rises
With the Spirit,
Both infused with God
And separate in Father
And Son. Sometimes my
Catholic heart bleeds through my tee shirt.
And I always end up where I
Should be. To the edge of the page and over.

Soon it fades,
A breath falling away,
Something you always lose,
A dream,
Now but a vapor,
Somehow a window
And a field of flowers
At the edge of waking.
And the sunlight rubs away
The last of the dream
In the call of voices
Below the tenement
Reminding of drudgery.
And you don't blink back
At the dullness descending
For another day
As you fathom
Your loss
In the last of the wake.

My hidden muse,
My sodden sun,
Friend to outcasts,
Tripped of lounge music,
Shadowed and awakened
Reciever,
That space of twilight,
That hour between.
Turning in blue rails
We never see,
Peach and palmetto
Lisping in the sun.

My, this blue chip of loss,
Such passionate warfare,
I pale next to it's preponderance,
Of light years lying low
In the lowlands,
A flit of light upon the screen,
The first firefly this hot
And lonely season,
Self imposed by the Constable
Of Sonnets,
A priest of Psalms
For your rainy day.
I'll walk barefoot to the swings, Drink beneath the tree in the cool, wet grass
As the moon rises, slicing
The clouds in the last
Pink Vista of the sun,
While sonic booms and
Pennywhistles aft in the
Forefront of this visceral
Institutions along Route 41
Looking for the burned edges
Of Americana dying
In the grass.
We'll sojourn along the breaks and Alps,
Waiting on the ghost train
Vibrating up the rails
As we speak, Before it's whistle falls away to the place never seen behind the sun.

You don't ponder the dark division,
You reign in the lines,
The white and dark
Print of the land,
Kicking up dark dreams
Like dust mites in corners,
Before you wake to the
Blueberry alarm clock
Shrilling the hour like
A blazing *****.
And I open a wounded
Outpouring of blood and moons, Burning deeper
Then you thought they could.
And you study maps of
Old universities,
Bowels of Old buildings,
Cluttered with useless relics,
Old swage presses running
On hydraulics,
Old steam compressors,
And you still look to the sky,
With swing sets rising/
                              Falling,

Lifting it's motion to the sky,
Exacting your imagination
To the dark line
Falling away from the center.

Watch the dagger
Coming in your dreams.
You watch it like a swan
Shining silver

It melts into everything.
You become the night.

You reach up,
Swatting it
Like a fly.
Your eyes move rapidly
With the scenary.

Dear Desire,
          Waiting on the muse,
Even money she shows.
I mean the more I want her,
The less likely she'll come.
She's probably at a gathering.
Perhaps some Uptown artist,
Turning clay into vision
Of a man's soul through his hands, while I wait like
Some **** fool
Who's the last to know.
Well, she phoned from the
Hills- I've got some food chilling,
She should never have promised. I could read it on her voice, saying a bad signal
A tenuous connection at best.
Tonight, soon I say to the empty reciever.
Ah- what are ya gunna do?
Cut off at the knees,
I prepare the meal.
I see black and white fencing
Blurring before the snow
On 45, an hour plus
Off the highway, before
I met the likes of her.
She said maybe,
I even brought chocolate.
I hear the silent hallway,
Listening for light movements, the sound of
Her keys in the door.
I dream she's here,
Stretching her legs as
She kicks off her shoes.
I look for the falling of pages,
Whisper the dreams of children,
Fall back to obscurity.
Another poet waiting for light in the lamp stand,
Shining across the wall
Deep into Sunday,
When its quiets,
In the first cool
At the end of summer.
And I'll keep the light on.
You can let yourself in.
Check the pilot on the stove,
Would you Sweet?
If not, see you Friday.
              Yours Affectionately,
                   Bubbles.

Are you afraid
It will take you
Where you cannot go?
Surely in your mind
You paint it black.
Did it tank
In the middle of the suite?
Throw in the towel
When no one's watching?
I bet it swung out
On the laundry line
Before your old man
Woke to bakery trucks
And all night drunks
Sharing the same place
On the page where
No one shops anymore,
And they moved from the
Neighborhood 30 years ago.
And its never 1973,
But sometimes you think
You see it In a moon
Whisking white clouds
Above your window.

You can't have it all
With your hangover on Monday.
You can't have it all
Looking at nothing on TV.
You can't have it all
On Tuesday with enchilada sauce.
You can't have it all
Like shiny rays of sun.
You can't have it all
Said No Account to his
Wino buddy with
The last sip of muscatel.
You can't have it all
On Friday when it rains
In July, Or Monday when
The parking lot carries
The snow in a rush of wind.
You can't have it all
As the door shuts
And you don't have your keys
You can't have it all.
Just go back to sleep.

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.
As ideas scatter like ghosts.
Dry places, bones of dust.
It's here, and here, and here.

As far as the post conciliatory
Is concerned- It's been delagated to those just pulling out of Suffragette City
For those just entering the foyer, the bulb's been flickering for days. No mention of of attorney fees
At this juncture of the proceedings, Moonlighting
As high tragedy on the
Road to illusion, More a dull
Sideshow of sunny Saturdays
And blue Tuesdays.

And its all waiting just up the road of Monday morning,
While I numerate this dull
Reunion, Watching the ambulance light swirl
In the mix of Sunday night
Turning seedier by the moment. And the police cruiser's slow to respond,
And the parametics leave
Empty handed as another Sunday night comes to a close
And we run the race we know we're losing. And most
Times it's just eternity nipping at our heels.
Guess I've got to check out,
But not tonight. Meanwhile
I have a lamb stew burbling
In the ***. And there's
Wreckage on the highway,
Debris in the field.
And the first siren wails
In a place you do not hear.
And a rustic barn looms
In a dream of dusk,
As bluebird rise with the sun,
And the siren fades
To the distance.

I gave directions to the El Camino looking for 75, said
He wandered a bit off the way.
I don't know if he took it.
He laid up the highway,
I saw his car gleam in the sun, A half mile or so before
The slow curve of the Earth
Took it around the bend.
Later, I saw smoke and the wail of a siren. I wonder of
He wandered off the way,
As I sit on a half pile of junk
And some bad ideas.
I got a cream color couch
And a velour ottoman.
My, what a sight,
Unseemly in the moonlight.
And I refigure the abstract
Of cloud formations.
I draw it up close in my mind
Skin and sky and moonlight,
I watch it rise from the east.
I forgot about the El Camino
As the dry wind eats up my land. I pull back the blinds
To the yellow sun.
I wonder if they'll junk
The Camino, Maybe I
Can sell her for parts.

Spector, Sphere, haughty
Get togethers,
Passe receptors, holding twilight's canon to fraying
Possibility. Distant islands,
Dreams of dust, dirt and sand
Wind blown wandering,
Structures rotting in the sun,
Elusive direction,
Shapeless forms,
Dead ancestors,
Monsters hidden within the well.
Form, Formation, I draw
Nothing in the sand of time.
Only dead dreams, bad blood,
And family ties, broken
On the dark wheel
Of yesterday.

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.

First it got real,
Then so deep I couldn't
Get out.
So I just hunker down.
Here comes the cold rain,
I'll walk the pond before
The storm,
Watch the windshield steam
Before breaking into sobs
In the lining of a dark coat,
Alone on a lunch break
In the same afternoons for months. How does one
Ponder such felicity?
Do I pander such sellout?
I think not.
Only the bird man,
Feeding the flock
One eye out for the hawk,
A Sage, and slightly mad,
Pondering the downside of
Everything else.
Who lost the sun one summer,
Down in the crucible
Waiting on the acid test,
Sure in its measure

See the palaces
Swinging on their axis?
Hear the gondolas
Rocking in the sea?
See the horses falling off
The latitudes Beyond Norwegia?
I'll back petal this thought
Of late night.
Learning little in this lesson
Dreaming fire from the floor
In peppermint nothings.
Then you wonder.
And its summer with the
Coke machine humming,
And the night bugs
And the breeze
And the sound of car tires
Grinding up the highway,
Swinging on the moon
In the nightshade.
And the roses bleeding Red
As her blouse spilling open
To the moonlight.
And you die a thousand Deaths as she takes You
Deeper in the dream