You find a shinny penny
In the alleyway with the
Broken light. You swing
The blinds back,
Picking up the parking lot in all it's glory.
Inept, disheveled,
He can barely find his way home, Until an Angel
Picks him up, brushes him off, Drops him off safe and sound.
Leaves without a trumpet,
Says something to the wind
He hears only in a dream.

Aurora, leave the crystal
Beneath the leaven bread.
Shine the last light on the
Tabernacle rising in the desert as the blood red sun
Lays darkening shadows
Upon the wall.
3000 birds rise with night,

I lift among them,
I am among the stars.
Aurora, I love your countenance spilling across the stars,
As we lapse into pink clouds
Rising in the East.

I lift the Chalice to the sky.
I follow the river rising,
Silken, it shines darkly
Among the ruins.
The river is the water and the way.
I run with it faster, faster,
I rise above it, among them.

Aurora, I see you in the granary, Rising with the barn swallow. The white sunlight
Lifting wheat and chaff,
Catching the sun between the slats.
Aurora, take me with you
To the place I cannot go,
The place behind the sun,
              The moon, The stars.

My blue love weeps
In a field of silver.
I think to comprehend the mute sunlight,
Dry wind through the field
In winter's cold disposition,
Lovelorn to the night.
Weeping in blue love
Poaring to a glass
Of vermilion and gold,
In this fever dream swelling,
In this night descending.

Your eye settles beyond.
Into a cold country lit in briiiance, a space in time...
Separation.
Drawing inside the other.
I dream of carnivals in moonlight,
Exploding in a million suns.

I wake to cold country.
It takes me to kingdoms
Of long ice cycles and deep shadow.
Night and sun and cold...cold.
The carnival explodes in Supernova, Falling to a place
Of water.
You enter it's wake"
Carrying you where it will.

The Other all acoustic set
Features tambourine and lute, Bright Makimbo dancers, Skyscrapers ready to take on the world,
Strange meandering in this psychedelic pie. The mean child within has since
Given up sharp objects,
Some used with bad flatware,
Well, what can you say,
I guess that's the price for
Doing business on the boulevard. Looking for the
String of pearls in God's eyes.
But you only see them
After they fade to dreams.
A sitar and a scythe,
Cutting the the psychic air
With the fluidity of a mantra
Sung by Holy Angels, pondered by Saints and drunks on the avenue.

The other all acoustic set
Draws poet's dreaming of
Lauds and sonnets and pink and blue evenings, As I draw
Little but the wake of sunset
And somber cello, drawing
Infinite sadness of a world
Turning slowly away from the sun. Yet I walk with the
Wings of Seraphim and choirboys singing the eternal
Songs of Angels passing over
Broken tiles and tilted streets
Under a silent moon lavishly
Grinning at the absurdity of it all.

Your teeth smile like pearls
Though your eyes are hollow orbs.
You smile and the snow
Is black and silver.
Inside the negative
You smile with me.
We smile to the camera
In the sunshine cold that winter day.

Chrysanthemums chatter
To a blind moon lisping
Over a city where
Junkies and lovers
Embrace they're torn Heartbeats to a night
Devoid of stars.

Looking through as glass darkly, Silhouettes and shadows gathering in the corner, with old books and half burned candles losing their scent,
And you knew you'd end up here, riding out the off season. Where cars fade
In the window, And
Pilate washes at the sink.
While Grandpa shaves with a straight razor,
Smiling without those Sunday dentures.

C'mon all scruffy behind the ears, Let up partake of evening, with the ghosts of dead Uncles.
As dreams remember what we've forgotten,
As an eyelash falls to the floor.

The moon rose pink and silent, an adornment on the lawn, I bet 9 whorls around
This thumbnail sketch the
Sun rises red near Cairo.
Too bad you lost it on a
Good strech,
An operational hazard,
Some lame 45, long on memory, short on talent.
Bet you cleaned up on the margins, but I bet you can't explain the stain on your shirt.
I think it's a hoot.
All those dark horses,
Come creeping in under the radar on a blue Sunday
With the sparrows lifting
One way then the other,
Silent, back to the wire again,
As cars hiss below the marginal scenery.
It's a dreary 9 to 5,
Nothing shaking on semanics
Catching 500 buses for the coast. Those suckers came and went while we watched
The moon rise over Memphis
But the sink drips and I think
Of olives stuffed with pimento, As a sweet thing
Walks across my window,
All legs and shining in the sun. When you make it free
You only make it worse.
Until then: create mythical
Creatures in the air.
Redo the blue laws every
Seven years. Tip the Triple Crown toward the sun.
Leave your shark tooth smile
At the door.
Its not really misinformation,
Its a hundred dead dreams
Lying on the stoop.
As the fan sails silent overhead. And trains run backward
On the other side of the Earth.

In the tombstone gleaming,
This discordant singing,
Whoosh- says the seesaw
On the arc descending,
To the sky beaming,
Down the coil,
Up again swinging,
We start as snails,
End up as Angels singing.

Tepid air, still in gray twilight, not how I imagined.
A thousand dreams gone by,
None of them like this,
Yet all of them are.
A grainy film,
Drawn through a blind man's
Window. Taking asylum
In the Narthax of the church.
Miss September with child.
Madonna in the beauty of roses while you lie sleeping,
As her Son gathers mystery
In the dreams of children
Seeking pearls of wisdom
Falling to the floor.
Does it make a sound,
Dredging the dregs of life
Along like a possession
Drug from place to place.
Intrepid loner, looking out
For the loser charging his heels close behind.
Sure as a spark takes to the wind in a dry field
On the edge of waking,
As the light pale in the meadow, And Angels
Lie sleeping in the dust.

Blurring the pages,
I never know where to begin.
I mean its all a process,
Lax,I'll say, not like Philly Steaks under a crimson moon
Only Cessnas hovering the airport. 5 years down the pipe, What's to show?
As the wit runs dry,
And it all feels so fake.

Its all readily super imposed,
Like the steel chips I dig
From my work boots.
Saul sold his eyesight
For a broken figure raised
To Light.
And I ponder it's meaning.
Well, I guess its all 8's
From here on out.
What a sleek subterfuge-
And I lost my train of thought.

Dreams of tavern hell,
Then you wake me once more to sweet lamplight.
There's only two ways
Out of here:
One requires gasoline,
The other skilled dexterity.
Wait for further instructions.
Perchance to dream,
She walks as a thousand moons. Where turning away
She turns toward Kodachrome. So elusive,
I mean deep in the *****,
Where they go loop de loop
All night long.
And it's so callously dropped
On this ludicrous calibration
So out of square, going nowhere
In a hurry.
You said you saw it coming.
I did too.
Not that you would care.
I did so once.

Jewel pink pony
Frozen in your scream
Studded blue carnival Adornments,
Your muted agony
Goes on forever
Only to move in circles
     Endless circles,
While your painted eye
Stares into the blindness
Of the sun.

Jewel pink pony
Frozen in your scream,
Studded blue carnival Adornments, Your muted
Agony goes in forever,
Only to move in circles,
      Endless circles,
While your painted eye Stares into the blindness
Of the sun.

Chill baby, it's the all acoustic set. Going home for the holidays.
A few laughs with Pops,
And never mind the drumsticks, her comes the *******.
Here comes weeping
In a Shiite village,
400 dead in Sadr City,
And pass me the yams.
Did you see that interception?
Here comes the 3rd and long.
         Here the sun falls away
In the twilight of winter.
I dream the Electro Light Fantastic. I'll see ghosts in
The mirror when I'm dreaming. None the wiser,
I saw it in fits and starts.
Better than waking on
New Year's morning in jail with the crazy lady 2 cells over yelling for a cigarette
Every twenty minutes
" Officer, can I have a cigarette?" I want to tell her
To shut up, Instead I ask
Her to get me one too.
And then I knew it's all come round.
Young and Stupid reporting for duty.
Not that it's my rag mag
Sad rag, nothing doing while
I try these new wings on for size. Its just the all acoustic set in a world of static.
Hazy cigarette voices
In trebelo. Though I threw
It out with the cookbook,
I have it all hanging on my sleeve. I thought it was all the rage. Later I found it was
Taxing on my soul.
This all acoustic set, away from the city lights and cyberspace. Left to one's devices, one sinks further into the page. What do you
Expect when candlelight
Falls across the flickering wall?

Two league below, a U Boat
Swims the Atlantic, Lost
In possibilities. Some mind
When I'm tongue tied like a lizard.
Kinda brings up Helsinki,
And she comes in all bells
And whistles. Me, I'm
All acoustic, something like a blank face, Low on cash
And overdrawn on character.
And the sun lights before
Columbus dragging up the rear. Man these ghosts
Linger in the hallway,
But it's better than crashing
The car into the statue
One Thanksgiving Eve.
The all acoustic set says
Death is a bore, Especially
After the ride in From France
I gave up meat some time ago, I gave up on you after
I got to the moon.
Well, it gets me out of the sun awhile. We'll get better when
The world catches up.

Sorry I changed the end around, but I thought it
Was the only out of Knoxville
Never mind The sage gravy,
I've got to tighten the lug nuts. A tither, but nothing on the rent.
And Hitchcock does the math,
While I corkscrew around the truth. While others weep
I dream of women laying in the sun. I guess it's better than ice cream in the rai n.
Who said pumpkin pie?

The wind turns northeast
The first October day,
When a squall
Blows down Erie,
Battering boats
And belting cars,
Blowing umbrellas inside out
With wind lifting skirts
As too busy people
Rush along Jackson
To whistles and hustlers
And high Commerce.
I perch like a principality
In the long avenue
Falling in shadow
From the 59th floor.
The rain blows sideways,
The lake disappears
In a wall of gray.
I'm a cat licking it's claws.
I wonder of the frivolity
Of everything else.

( three short poems of unease)

    From The Shadows

The ghosts within the room
Stirring to the outside of periphery, Blending
Within the shadow,
Silently they wait.
They await my passing
In forgotten rooms
Silent, but for a passing moon
Over books and broken horses,
          Shadow dust
Ghosts within the wall
Vibrate they're inner mantra
Turning in dreams of dust

               M.O.

Chrysanthemums chatter
To a blind moon lisping
Over a city where
Junkies and lovers
Embrace their torn heartbeats to a night
Devoid of stars.

    Another Town

Jeweled pink pony
Frozen in your scream
Your muted agony forever.
Only to move in circles,
Endless circles
While your painted eye
Stares into the blindness
Of the sun

Handful of stars
Falling between my fingers,
Catching a saucer of moons.
Dreaming of bicycles With red and white ribbons,
Wheels spinning in elliptical
Stars strung in the sky.
A paper bag spins
In a last winter wind,
Rising to the motioning stars.
I love you on your bareness,
As Sunday night falls to shadow. We fear death
In the passing of moments.
We collect our thoughts
On fraying strings,
Alight our hopes, bash our fears to the dying of the light.
Sweet as rain, all falls down.
Wake to shiny symbols
Etched in Sanskrit.
Loose our meaning In
The blindness Of the sun.
A billion birds lift to the sky
As snow falls in a lazy dream.
I close my eyes,
Open them, reaching upward
To catch a Handful of stars,
Burning eons in my palms,
I open, release them
To the sheltering sky

The insects rise with 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 you lot
In life,

Remembering things
From way back when.

The least moments
Come back the most.

It's then I embrace
All the moments,

All of them
Lead me

To a place outside,

Where the insects
Rise with the night,

And symphonies
Smash through my brain.

The oboes and cello
Rise with the insects.

I switch of the music,
Feel the blind silence,

I strip naked,
Night ticks

In the quiet
Of clocks.

Movements of hands,
I breath,

The end.

Sometimes you see something in the eyes of a stranger, And ponder it's
Dark division, Or what the world gives,
And what you take in return.
You wax philosophical,
Yet its hard to remember hunger. But that's what you
Observe so close In your mind. You see, I've put
On this coat of armor,
It shines like Jericho.
In it's bareness it surely does.
Its then I throw my star map
To the sky.
It's a strange vibration,
Picking up subsets of information, Not that peculiar to what's already known. A hazy retelling of
Dreams we recall
In sunlit Rooms of morning.
This sensory yawing, this come hither, This de facto drama, This temporary breakdown of transcendental machinery, Nervously factored in the equation.
This sackcloth of ashes we carry, This ponder, TIS dark stone, shiny and cool,
This question, hurled from the sun, this dark advisor,
Ready to draw us due west.
I play jazz music, I draw
The rustic image, Castles
Crumbling in the sand.
I see the flitter on the screen,
This turnaround from the ditch, A bad day in Mexico,
The arc of the sun returning.
A roadmap of red and blue highways, I wish to pick one,
Perhaps end up on a dusty
Reservation in Utah,
Or a dark avenue, a pale ******* in heat and hunger of night. It's wild fate, And you haven't broke through yet. A shell game you just can't win. This
Strange world of lamplight.
Earth and roots and dark back roads, A spare key
Under a rock,
A slip through the slipstream,
In a rising beyond this dark vale.

Leading the page like a drunken sailor, Dreaming
Of blue sea taking it all.
Washing to sea and sky.
Best sit up straight,
Buckle the gallows and eves,
Rushing this long song.
We have a thousand sunlit mornings, until one morning we don't. Our name tied to our toes. When the first blue day goes on with you.
Like a Saturday drunk on the avenue, stumbling through the thickets of his life: Perchance a gamble, A dream
Of Sunday asleep on the couch, while the world hums
All around you.
And it's become your scarlet letter, A threshold of sun and moon. Care for another? I've
Knocked myself silly on this one, What should I call you
When you come knocking?
cont. tommorow-

Hear the heart bleating
For the lot of us?
Me, I've suffered the
Dullard's jenune
Once too often.
I've begged off another,
Hoping for lights out
Before the final words are stripped away
In a final comedown.
Night, with it's visceral lassitude,
Adding insanity to the notion.
I'll say its random,
Not much lately,
But enough anyway.
I saw a dream once,
Falling like light
In a doorway,
A tulip dying in drought.

I sit,
      Watch it go up
       In a cigarette haze,
Dreaming of pools
And tan women,
A beer raised
       In the sunset,
Wondering
            How far
              Can it go?
How far
         Have I come?
How far
       Has it gone?
I must be silent,
                     A cat
Licking it's paws,
                   Patient,
Watching from the dimness,
                     Waiting
On the mouse,
             The woman,
                    The word.
A sleek cat
        Sliding across
                    The sun.
The breeze
            And the beer
                The breeze
  Across
        My arms,
            My legs,
               My toes.
The cat returns
            To his quarters
                 Purring,
                  Waiting,
On the mouse,
         The woman,
               The word.

I spray saline in my nose,
Calamine on my foot,
While I fumble for words,
And the window's stained with seven years of cigarette
Smoke.

And you wonder if it's all
An experience?
Pinache and Chinese mustard
On the rug.
Its all so transcendental,
Reality in all it's vibrant montony. As a lace curtain
Lifts without a care,
And I ponder for words in the night breeze.

And my third toe hurts,
And it matters little To the surroundings, Except for the
Slick salesman heading up the walk with his wares
And a shark tooth smile.
While I dream Mozart
In 3 stanzas.

As the neighbors begin arguing in Spanish,
And doors slam and Voices
In the street.
The moon sets to the west,
And my third toe still hurts,
And the ache reminds me to
Be still. And I sit listening
To Brahms, Breathing in the
Shadow you create,
And the silence of a refrigerator running, the
Settling of time in a hazy window On a Friday and my
Toe hurts as a car peels
From the lot, As I strain
On the 4th stanza.

And my 600 pound neighbor
Above me settles in for the night, And I wonder of
Load bearing floors,
And overcooked dinners,
And how did I ever survive
My misspent youth,
As I dream of new ways
To wax electric.
I've since sold the copyright,
Discussed over drinks
In the terrace...

And I wait on the words,
And the beer settles my toe,
And I wait on the words,
And at last they come-
But my pen's out of ink
And the pizza's done.
So I guess I'll listen to my Neighbors argue in Spanish instead.

(A true poem of teen angst)

It's not lunch, it's my life,
Some pointed remark
In front of a friend,
And it stuck in me,
And my friend said
"Dude, what's your Ma's Problem" and I said"Me".
And he said it was weird,
And I agreed.
And I was a captive stranger
In the middle of this saga.
It was terse, this flimsy repose in this farse.
And my Dad rode her train,
And most times I got
The stiff rebuttal.
And I was 16,
And it sounded blase' to me.
But I didn't know **** either.
Mostly listen to Hendrix,
Get ****** before school,
While inside it wasn't
Like that at all.

It was more a reflection,
A stirring in a pool,
Light along the edge of waking.
Definitely Fringe Dude,
Get off the couch Son,
That's reserved for the
Big Shot of the family.

Light burning dark and glowing through my window,
I'd crawl out To the night,
Looking for love slipping away. And the rock n roll
Spiking my head.
And I'm smoking
And I'm holding.
And I'm a punk
And I know it.
And I'd slide out the door
With the LOOK from her,
And what I'd find was mostly
An even keel Of boredom,
A little pick up ball,
Maybe a joint down The woods.
Mostly stupid ****
Until I met Cathy,

And the levels changed
Red to blue.
And the feel of her skin,
Shadow and smell
Along a river of love.
500 miles long
Cresting to an Ocean.
And the Ocean Boomed,
And the crest rose
Crashing to the rocks,

And I wake to shiny pebbles
In glittering moonlight,
I'm naked and wet.
I move toward moonlight,
Following the sound,
Night opens like a flower.

(A poem written in real time)

Empty beer cup and a new bottle opener on a blue May
Evening. Cessnas an Cubs
Circle as endless drones
With no map or meaning.
In this settled night, a lone boy bounces a ball off a croquet mallet:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka, The ball,
The court, the mallet,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
Until he tires of this solitary habit. Him with his mallet,
Me with my pen.
Now and again, he swats it like a baseball,
Across the court and into the fence- Both of us to silence after. Soon I hear:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As he retrieves his ball from the corner,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As I strain for words like a sad ape obsessed with a flea:
And finding none.
Soon the solitary boy with the ball leaves the courtyard
To the silence in a isolated
Moment in the American Fabric.
Into this mask of
                Light and darkness,
        Shadow and Imagination
A playwright, looking for a chorus, a melody.
Summer sounds and the race of engines. And the voices
Overtake the silence in the hours of ten 'til one.
And tires and arguing,
And sometimes the cops,
Or an ambulance
With bored fireman
And two paramedics.
And there's a drip in the hallway from the roof.
And I guess its not bewitching, All the noise for a small pocket of silence.
And I play Brahms,
And the police turn down my block, As the moon lurks pale
In the back of my eyes.

I barely made it out of the shadows. These symbols
Etched in eternity.
I look in the water,
I see a ghost vision,
I walk in a field at dusk,
I feel the leaves beneath My boots. And you remember..

Alone, by the torn tree
In the prairie You walked
That day,
9 miles of turning road.

And you walked out of your house of brick And cedar shake, down to Main
By the junction,
Along past the hospital
On the outskirts of town.
You walked and you don't know why.
Partly out of boredom,
Maybe out of frustration.
And she's at work,
And you were on call to nowhere.
And you walked and you
Forgot about that six-pack
You were going to buy.
And you walked The turn
As cars blew by,
At first they were surprised,
And then they were annoyed,
As a thirty-something slightly
Overweight man walked
Alone sown Route 113.

I finally got there,
To the torn, barren tree.
And somehow it reminded
You of your life.
And my feet hurt,
And my marriage was not so good. And the new house
Was too much.
And I walked back to town.
Stopping for coffee in the afternoon.
And the waitress looked bored. And I was
Just another nobody drinking
Coffee at 2 in the afternoon.
And I walked home
And turned on the news,
Cut up some vegetables,
Starting the oven,
I wanted to jump in.

I call my friend once a year,
I'm glad to hear his voice,
At first..O what can I be thinking?
I hope for a disconnection,
Instead of a reconnection
To a time I tried hard
To lose for the last twenty
Years or so.

He answers on the second ring, I know its no good
From the first,
He's much too hoarse,
And a bit manic.
I know where this angle
Of conversation is heading.
"Hey Man, how you doin"
I say, "Tommy I been buying
All my stuff on EBAY"
I congratulate him,
Aware nothing I own
Is EBAY. Before I get a chance
To formalize this, He launches into death And status, Tequila and cars,
Not once recognizing where
Time has gone.
Only his trip to Florida
In his Mercedes,
How I lost my footing
All those summers ago.
I tell him- attempt to tell him
Things change, They did
Or I'd die.
He's much too self-contained
To die. He speaks of someone
He knows( Louie I think)
Died, never slowing for a moment so I can ask The
Prerequisite question:
Who's Louie, I don't know
Any **** Louie.
I try to tell him Of writing,
A couple of poems published
In a small mag, Then he tells me....Hoarse, manic, he tells me, how he's become a model
Citizen, I congratulate him
Once more on his well found
Status. By now
I'm thinking of an out.
But I have no time,
Here comes the next ten minutes of grunts and affermations. And I want out,
But I want out With a little
Verisimilitude. Goodbye
To his 1800 Tequila,
And his 300 SL,
And his pomp and his arrogance. And my ear
Numb in the reciever.
And I'm looking to a place
Most never see,
A field waiting, swaying
With the summer,
Still in winter.
Outside, the blue of twilight's
Falling.... I crinkle a paper near me, I say my call waiting. I've gotta go.
He says call anytime.
I say soon. Talk to you soon.

I hang up, sit in the silence awile, listening to the night sounds.
Remind me to call him
Next year.
      
      ( For R.)

Sparks fly from the Hillbilly's hair. A mad conflagration
Up Rural Route 9.
Someone tried to douse It with moonshine.
The County cruiser rolled up,
The sheriff said " Boys stand back, I got a hatchet and shovel". Well, you should a
Saw the stir I caused.
Mrs. Johnson lost her denture plate In all the commotion,
But they was broken When
Missy Sue ran in with
The fire extinguisher.

Later, the hillbilly escaped
With some bruises,
One or two scraps,
Later he wrote a story,
This is how it went.

I see you Blue Brother
On the corner of Utah and Prairie, Bottle in a brown bag, passed, shared.
I stop and say hello.
We knew each other as children.
I'm offered the bag,
I take a hit of the burning wine, We talk of family, memories. Three kids
And no money. I tell him
A working man can't get ahead these days.
He smiles, sad in his eyes,
Says time's have been better.
I say yeah, I know.
But he knows it's better for me.
And I know too.
And he knows I wish for for something else.
He sees that also.
He knows the veil of blood,
The truth of the Holy Tree.
I scratch for meaning,
He knows it's older than the ground we walk.
And we smoke and we talk Of the desert and the mountains
Sharing the sunshine of memory. And he laughs,
And I awake to the sound
Of the city.
And the bag comes around once more, I look at him,
Trying to remember us as children. I pass on the bag,
Say I must be leaving.
I turn away, a light rain
Begins falling.
I reach my car, hearing a siren, Smelling the stink
Of the city.
My friend disappears In the shadow.
I turn the engine over.

I woke to hell bleeding
In humid night
So hot, no fan,
No breeze to cool me.
Women complained
The few occasions
I brought them home.
My love suffered-
Except for Judy,
Who came round
At the right times.
I forgot I had no job,
No money.
Judy and I would
Get a bottle,
Pretend its New Year's Eve.
But we'd remember
Its really Tuesday.
Crawling naked, wondering
Could we even go home.

Catalina headlights crawl up the wall. You lay in bed as
Momma and her new boyfriend spill drinks on the table, Slurring of love on Sunday. I watch for headlights sliding up the street. Probably to one of
The ***** bars with the watered down 7's and no
Luck at all, and bad breaks,
Strung out sad lunches
And a whole lot of lurching
At the moon.
Down by the bog with
With willow the wisp
And old black men with half pints of whiskey fishing
Carp from the ***** river.
And I mix concoctions, libations thrown to the sun,
Blind reasons cast to the moon. As I fill these memories to a bitter cup
Filled with clown tears and
Black roots of beggars and bums.
An effigy dug to the dirt.
While you dream of painted sails and sunshine buried
Beneath the rails.
Pink moon, pink moon,
What harbinger you bring me? Dead leaves and Black beetle dirt beneath your
Pinkish light.
As I cinch my my tall boots
For a walk in the muck.
I've got to scream yet I have no mouth. Though I can't let on, it may take me to darker water, As my mind turms
To gray cinema, Shadows and streets wet in the rain.
And I worry for a moment
Of waking on the sun,
As black clouds lead you deeper in movie,
Where Starlets sail off the canyons to the California surf
As I lie on broken bedsprings
And ruminant in saucer shaped thoughts spinning
Into orbits and Black hole stars.
A thousand lights on the river, These bright and
Dark sun devils spin
The stratosphere.
Waking to shadow,
The headlights run up the wall, I follow them
To the top of the ceiling.

Sweet gutter flower,
Blue petals above the grate,
So much beauty
In a world gone wrong.
O tepid Intelligentsia,
Vapid friend of misconception,
Rooted in all we see.
Cornflower in the grate,
Blue in the sun,
I face it's singleness,
Pure in a way we can
Never be. A blessing
In which I'm not worthy,
Yet I take anyway.
On a night when truth
Seems fleeting,
A dream at the edge of waking, I can feel
The question forming,
And the answer So far away.

I don't like it,
I don't like it a bit,
The way night sneaks up on you as you have your back
To the threshing floor.

I've studied the tapestry,
The patterns draw in blood,
You stand back
Ponder its meaning,
It's diminishing shadow
Brushed on the floor.
You know It can get worse,
It usually does.
Yet you rise like a broken bird, Reaching for the sky.

Welcome to our show:
We have dyslexic jugglers,
**** retentive housewives,
Over retentive fathers,
The dark smiling stranger
Holding eyes of silver
In his sleek fingers.

You wake In this haze
Of a blue room,
The bebop tapping of raindrops running down the window. I look out,
A lion upon the night,
Running the veldt,
Feeling the power surging inside, running the page.
I eat it it up,
Filling the white noise
With sound and fury.

Its not exactly philosophy,
Just better than the low down
Fuckery that passes
As a way to live.
Underneath, the gears get out
Of alignment, as all the underlying muck gets
Brought to the surface.
And big events turn in small
Hinges, every now and again
Something works lose from
The fabric tying it all together.
Put on the flood boots,
Get ready for the **** storm,
Lay up and lay low,
As it builds out at sea.

Yet this roadside excursion
Draws long shadows.
Seeing her face at that angle,
Her aqualine figure,
I lied beside her,
I felt like a hoodlum,
I was a hoodlum,
Not of theft or drugs or violence,
But a thief of days.
I stole them from us both,
Never sure who I sold them to. But trying to buy them back in the end.

Burning with what's left,
******* every moment
Like a pimento.
You run, a lion through the
Veldt, as the words
Come rushing from the pen.

Its little, then less.
I thought I saw them through the screen, Out in the desert
With the Gila Monsters,
I should have brought my scabbard, but I brought
Jello instead. Better than
Maxing out your credit card
At the door, Then having
To ride the El back through
Bucktown to Lorgan Square.
Better to smoke out on the veranda,Ponder the winter
Moon flush full,
Cold in absolute north.
Better the ski lift to nowhere
In your mind, then the low ride to the bottom of the stairs. Almost post time
In the 9th race full
Of nags and nobodys.
Could have banked this ending to the trash heap
Of fine art.
I should have saw this coming, This blind swoon
In the dirt, kicking
Dust all around.
Sorry about your Pay Per View,
Left in lurching in the mud.
Said you lost the thread
Of it. Well I said the same
Some months back,
Now I only watch reruns
Of Wagon Train.
I didn't say it was good.
Hell, I didn't say it was
Anything at all.
I could have joined the
Union with my brother,
Stamping out uniforms for Confederates who still wear them. Instead the sell instant
Cameras to anyone who's looking.

I painted the lips on the clown, But it didn't wash,
In fact it was de facto.
My life was in the toliet,
And I was on flush mode.
Lost to hangovers and headaches, The stuff of
Bad dreams and sad sleep.
And it was all the same
As the red sun rising
To the stink of the highway
With the semi's belching
As I wake to the ***** window.
And the laundry needs doing,
And you have two days
Left on the rent.
And no cigarettes and no job,
And Little Joe's the color
Of avacado on the
Cheap Motel TV.

Hail Ceasar, sleeping on the grass on the edge of the woods. And never you said,
To no one until the cop woke
You saying you best be
Getting on. And Hoss
Tips his hat saying "Shucks
Ma'am " in his green
Slow witted smile.
While in the comfort
Of my cheap motel
The bloated afternoon
Goes on forever.
And I slipped and slid
On the brink of twenty,
And Matt Dillon
Eyes Miss Kitty.
As you remember the bronze
Young boy who dreamed
Of the desert and bats
Rising from dark caves,
Casting beauty in the shadow
Of the mountains.
As I practice this pause with such rare inflection.

Well, back to our show.
Canned beans and bologna
And nary a witness to the
Strange hell of drinking
On a Tuesday afternoon.
And Pa Cartwright looks
Resplendent the color
Of tomato.
And you drink down another
And wake to the stinking
Trucks on their way
From the terminals
To the blight of the
Inner city. And I blurred
Out for a few years,
Coming awake in the 90's.
And I write this poem
To the wind, Forgetting
The cheap motel TV.
I channel Bukowski,
Write a couple lines,
Catch the wave,
Bang on the keyboard,
Write these lines with abandon.
Go the way of the elephant,
Strong in life and graceful
In death. Sleep the long sleep,
Wake to forever.

I watch the harried blonde
Searching her car,
Opening the trunk,
Closing, getting in her *****
91 Lebaron, missing a hubcap
She drives around the corner,
Turns back down the street,
Stops, opens her door,
All legs and ***,
Slower this time.
I'm drawn to
Her pale skin,
The curve of leg,
I'm a well worn soldier,
Looking in the heart
Of darkness, Or I'm a poet
Caught up in lust.
Either way, I look up
The lane for the harried blonde with the curve
Of leg. I breath in the moment,the time invisible,
The movement of dust
Lifts sunlight through the air,
Through the cheap window,
The bowed frame,
Yet it danced around her
Like sun's in their brilliance,
And she was lit,
And I was red, and dust
Filled the space with light,
Swirling and blue,
Shimmering and red,
And I loved her essence,
Blue smoke,
Blue flame,
Sun blazing,
Motes and darkness
Filled with light,
Blue dust all around her.

A wave coming out of China,
A ripple widens,
Connecting a world.
An Aria, sounding as water,
Breaking in a Michigan stream. Glory in the
Expanse of God's Eye,
Below a peninsula above
Traverse while the Locke
Pours back to the inlet.
And you drive into lake snow
Piling 3 inches an hour.
And the woods take the nightfall,
Bury it to the hollow,
As summer sleeps
In the bogs.
This interruption of
Blue twilight overtakes
A neighborhood to a place
I cannot recall.

Starlight winks, awakening
A child gazing to a moonset,
Slivered, falling behind
The trees. As the night
Lulls to a quiet we
Only remember in passing.
A conversation in low tones
Of time passing like headlights across the ceiling,
Then gone. A time of forgetting.
A dog barks at something
Only he can hear.
As your Father snores
And your Mother watches
Macmillan and Wife.

And you drive the endless drive toward Mackinac
To the dirt road and runouts
Down near the channel,
As the water breaks in
A run, Laughing in the rush over the falls, As the planets
Arc across the sun in due fashion.
A pattern of stars revolving
To infinitude.
I point my arrow at the sun,
It falls below it.
Hearing the twigs crunch
Beneath my boots,
And the breaking sound
Of voices trapped in the rocks
I paid the fare, I'll ride it
To the end of the line,
Carrying me where it will.
And it never rains.
And gas is a rich man's *****. Under a blue sun
And the trucks grinding
Up the interstate.
And no more rain
In a summer gone to drought.
The grass brown in blight.
Wishing for color rising
With the fall.
I'll see it between Sun
And shadow.I'll dream
Of November. I'll await
The first snow falling
In a white haze to the trees,
In a darkness descending
East to West. As water drips
From the eyes, and sweet rain sounds as voices
In a rushing brook.
And the Michigan waves Boom against the rocks,
Breaking the island in two.
I hear the drip of the faucet,
Its in these things
All dreams begin,
Back to the place
From which it came.

See the palaces swinging
On their axis?
Hear the gondola
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 the lesson Dreaming fire from the floor
In peppermint nothings.
Then you wonder Who woke you before the movie ended
With the credits.
And it's 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
With her blouse spilling
Open to the moonlight.
And you die a thousand
Deaths as she draws you
Deeper into the dream.
                 BY TJ STRUSKA