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?

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?

Fro and yaw,
I've taken on water,
Jamming the frequency with static.
A strange adjustment of ratchets and pawls.
Hot Cherry, bane of my life,
I get your final comedown.
Some feely f#€k encounter,
**** the story,
It's here,
And here, and here.

Moonlit, the silence of dirt,
I've got to tear down these walls,
You swore it was Heaven,
The way the carwash was lit
With the last of summer,
A blip on the cosmic calendar
Wanderlust.
Everything pales in the plain,
Silverfish run under the streetlights,
Put it all on dust radio,
And it comes down when it **** well pleases.

It all pales in the noon,
Some obscure ghosts,
Brandy Alexander's in the moonlight,
Practiced Pretty Boy nod off
At the bar,
Some swimming nighttime dark Enchantress,
Vexing succubus, Waking
To the stench of smelly sheets
Drawing in this manifold nightmare,
Red toenails and blood wisp at midnight.

Like a hollow drum I pound,
Pierced and yellowed
And worn clear through.
There's a fog along New Gloucester
And a monster prowls the highway,
Running along darkened trails,
******* what light there is.
It has some fact and form,
It's mostly obscured by clouds,
Hiding in the scrim of a bare field,
It moans the hour of waking.

Suffer the children to come to Thee,
There lies the Kingdom of Glory,
While I bide my time in this Habit,
Cinched up tight for your disapproval.
I may mire and muck the proceedings.
I'm like a train wreak at noon
And a wheel turning in the sun.
And I'll mercy your begotten Laury,
And ****** away the light.

Weak words like tea in an old woman's cup,
There here amongst the clutter,
Perhaps in this room with a broken clock,
An old wristwatch,
A dusty beer bottle stood on end.
Broken records with pirate songs of old,
More a distant cry,
A mournful calling.

O sure, I've spent time on the Du Da Ranch,
Dreaming potato pancakes,
A Denver with coffee.
Who said time would sneak up like this,
Nipping at our heels?
Stealing time like a thief.
It's a swan in the lake,
A spider in the room,
Shoeboxes of old photos covered in dust.
A rusted ***** stuck in the jamb.
Bleak moments in the rain,
Holocaust survivors in grainy images.
Here comes Herman Goring
Dressed as Santa,
All smiles and candy for the children.

It's a mad dash for the Happy Trails Back Home.
Venus, my baby, tell me
Something on this naked night?
Good God Night Love,
Grab the rails.
It's a dinosaur running the highway,
Overloaded from Michigan
To Indy City,
Funky info to nowhere.
I got another Disco Mania Movement
All drew up in my mind.
Nothing in the pipes, no matter,
No more pizzazz along the avenue,
Kinda lay out and lay low,
Get my drift,
While I pick dead man's bones one at a time.
I got 209 of em-
What's your story?

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.

Soon it is over and dust covers pages.
You come to the page with blood on your hands.
When you turn around its always the past.
And rain falls forever somewhere.
Inside we empty the minutes to hours,
And the days are horses running the hills.
I wait by the door of unknown tomorrow,
And gaze at the past's unsettling dream.
This ensemble draped in scarlet begonia,
I breathe night's intoxicated hour,
As all the days have fallen to dusk.
In days of dripping sinks and emptied vases,
As the hours used up are spilled from the cup.
A sheen of rain falls on the living,
As the dead dream of Heaven no more.
A whisper of wind scattering pages,
A church of words built from the ground.
Where's my specter, the color of silence?
Caught up in echoing air?
Where are the Exiles, they're hands smeared with berries,
Do they witness to a choir of clouds.
A lute of dark birds gathered in shadow,
As wind stirs the dry husk of leaves.
A void overtakes the yellowing pages.
A dark house consuming my winter of words.

Jacob over the bridge town proper,
Gas lit streets, a string of yellow parking lights
In a slow fog turning to threads,
Barely remembering their colour.
Waking to predawn gloom
The town looks small and elderly.
I light a cigarette,
Spy the old Yankee town.
Here, there be Tygers
Night races up the steeple.

A pale horse riding
Atop a dark Vista,
Knowing what name
Is writ in the dust

Eschewing lineage
Of Abel's dark brother,
Red roses bleed
In Neptune's cold sun.

Here at the bottom
Of Mickey's lost hour,
All rails terminate,
The end if the line.

The pen is my muse
A linier connection,
Writing Mozart's
Concerto of rust,

An ill wind finds
It's way with the weather,

A muttering stranger
Lost in the rain.

These bleating words coming
In hollow smoke signals,
Chittering of nothing
Drunk on the stoop


Pinned to your sleeve
Like a hag in a *******,
A crumb for the gods
So easily amused.


Dredging the dregs
Of one's own possessions,
Setting them down
In buckets of rain.

A sad reminder
Rimmed with compulsion,
A harbinger skittering
Alone in the dirt.

Here in the mill
Stinking of textile,
Memories haunt
A crumbling wall.

No need to mention,
It comes when it wants to,
A brutish devil
Whispers obliquely,

I cannot remember
What dream I've become.

I kneel in the night,
The tigers surround me,
Strange dreams in half- life
Blue saucers of sun.

Here in the dark square,
Ring up Odessa,
It presees the future,
So fast and so numb.

In the depth of the Maelstrom,
Abyss in the darkness,
Hollow upon
A billion blood sea,

As fish swim Lakes
Black at the bottom,
Ghosts of oblivion
Dance in the clouds.

Twice what it's worth
Is half it undoing,

No I remember
What dream I've become.

Shh- swirl the golden cover art
Naw-its the sound of aluminum foil
Redux- it ain't Lucky Strike cigarettes
Nothing- but the swill of oil
In Lieu-of ten cent bottle return
Except- Oregon and Maine

The moon, cold and unattainable,
Hangs over the Earth's edge,
Unfaithful in its last light.

In another world
Children hit a tether ball
Around a pole,
Creating a brief, elliptical year,

The weightless, unclarified light of the sun,
Lies like a lover over a lost city,
Westward windows go up in flames.

And here, where the swan revolves in the moon phase,
A black pool invites its cold depth
The night is fixed in motioning stars.
            March 17 2021

I am the water,
The second wave of summer,
A tsunami,
A wall of gray wind.
I am night,
Behold! A black sheet of rain.
Hobbled over the bleak and red ants of fire;
Baring a becoup of wild thyme and sage.
And all that exists is terribly near us,
Like you my dark light, my love, my rage.

If were lucky, it's all a terrible time.
Tattered goldfish smearing the bowl.
Its more a failed distraction,
An instinct driven drama,
It's like fish swimming in anxious sleep,
It's lame excuses and narcotic visions,
All these trippy hours.
Chopin lurking in shadow.
It's the all organic experience,
I brought nothing but light off the levee,
The stink of Reynolds Aluminum,
Copper and mud.
A thousand noxious cars passing the window,
I don't mean to meddle,
Like a drunk hag hanging on your sleeve-
But where the hell is Shambhala?
It's such a drag doing penance in a bathrobe,
I hear Pharisees and jailers are there,
Doing straight time in Purgatory,
Tinkling like a million bad dreams.
It's rusty bells in little black cups.
Sorry about the clock tower,
It warbles electric.
It's use to substandard time.
I'll perch a Screwtape Letter.
It's obtuse when hungover.
Baal and Beelzebub boogied for the coast.
It's a pestilence of petunia,
A trip to the triage,
The same lame reaction.
Assuage with me to the vat of ammonia,
Its a train leading to Leipzig,
It's Brahms Nocturnal Dream In A Minor,
It's a mansion on the moon,
An olfactory schism of the senses,
Stealing time in half-hour segments,
A volatile mixture metered for meltdown.
Eponymous splotch of illustrious nails,
Railed to the cross one by one
Pilate washed at the sink,
He was clocking in overtime.
I've assembled mirrors to my hobnail boots,
It sluices the sunlight
Gets the light dancing every which way.
Its like being at the circus,
It. So captivating.
What hour is it?
I come awake to a tomahawk tapping.
I'm historically hysterical,
An unknown tangent.
The factory affiliate controls the production.
He measures the sunshine in fabulous droplets.
Let's grab the Metro for a ride through the ghetto,
While you draw designs on lovers faces.
Counting backward from zero to one.

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.

The hoofs and horses burn in the twilight,
As you count breaths between the stirring Of bees.
Oncoming traffic like a beads on a string,
The Woodworker's rasp,
The beekeeper's screen,
Diamond headlights,
Oncoming rain,
A transparent light,
The stirrings of leaves,
Gravity ground in a ceiling of sky.
In a dry place, the Oracle's
Lost meaning,
A hole in the center of the Sphinx blind eye.
I ply my hand to broken wheel moonlight,
A servitude of stars,
These muttering clouds,
A musty collection of shanties and shacks.
I caught the last sleep to black and white rails,
Slap boards passing, a flickering screen,
In a a theatre of stars and orbits,
A string hang on a ceiling so sweet.
As dogs and birds welcome Blue Heaven,
JESUS SAVES plasters Route 10, Is it West Mex or East Tex
Or is it the same?
Dark buttes, silhouettes, bare bulbs and bugs.
Ariels deep in dark desert valley,
The scent of box elder set in the sun.
The Oracle of day draws you in deeper,
Like a reptile burrowed in the heat of high noon.
A trial by fire, a light like no other,
What wildflowers lurk in the Devil's dark garden?
Witch grass and juniper smelling like rain.
A limestone Chateaux dreary long hours,
In a place surrounded by four walls and a bed,
Scavenging shoes in the dark of the day.
Black spiders in closets hunt along runnels,
A quivering fly caught in a trance.
A brief disconnection,
Ten thousand night and five Fridays ago,
So said the tombstone to each blade of grass.
Gravity Good Mother, teach us a lesson, tied to this tether,
This searing vibration,
A rust belt corrodes the American Dream,
As gulls wheel industrial blight.
Cherry Blue Jewel, the last drop of water,
Glass curtains cover the winnowing storm.
Twilight and half moons,
Long shiny autos,
All the starlets rise with the night.
Pieces and fragments, in abstract arrangement,
Aged black men fishing rivers of cattails.
Asleep in the dusk, a tinkling currant,
My own echo leaving a hollow in air.
Times emollient, 5 beads on a string,
Pharaohs and Pharisees,
A beekeeper's screen,
Shadows caught in a quivering dream.

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.

Tracing the hour,
The distance I follow,
Wands and Auroras,
These echoing phrases,
These expiates of shadow.
Angels and Sailors of far of seas,
Ghosts ships of carrion,
This unknowledgeable surrender,
This last ember,
A blazing Supernova.
This rung down the ladder,
Barkok and Liszt,
Stickball in high summer,
Unraveling spector
Of chariots and Pharaohs,
Matresses of mourning,
Days of black shoes,
Pairs that tread the same dirt road.
Venturing clouds,
These invisible evenings,
A burned mound of wheels,
Converging signals
Alinged to one.
Horses braying a symphony of dust.
The end and the beginning Never touching the middle,
Straddling curve space time,
A stratosphere of clouds.
Cobweb hung planets,
Their rings revolving
The shining simmer
In the final arc of sun.
Just outside Nebraska,
Down Highway 1A,
Charles Starkweather Haunts
Gretchen lost ghost.
The dark specter residing
In old Elmer's cornfield,
It moans and shudders
The grave hours passing
Like strands on a string.
Bombardiers blasting
The last metal gun tower,
As Churchill railed the invading Blitzkrieg,
Sending out the Valiant
To apocalypse the hour.
Long rainy seasons,
The trees weeping
The last wilting flower's lonely despair..
The rim of the hour
Dialing shadows dreary filing
Down corridors of clocks,
A Canticle of stars, the dark night revolving,
One billion Angels sing to the light.

The day flutters like ticker-tape
I smile like Buddha
Unzipping the night
A pocketful of whistles

A dark ceiling of stars.

The needle is threaded
Night wide open
The engine cranks over
A cello of moans.

A tattle of gold
My ways of turning
To ripples of silver, a hush.

Was it you who bring
Red lines of lupus
A world of wheals and whirs.

Through the terminus
Blue walls of morphine
A corridor of trains
A thunder of hosts.

Buzz of blue flies
Slip through the eyelet
Me gluing a matchstick of men.

The days drag behind
Seven hours in a sack
Spilling stars
Through a *****'s blind eye.

Unloosen the screws
The singing of prisoners
The clouds fall away
The snow drips impossible light.

I arrive at a point
It is elliptical
It is motioning
Many clocks
It is peaceful
And perfectly cold

I am aligned straight as an arrow

It comes like roses full of thunder
It comes like ravens and Van Gogh

It comes
Like
The
Last
Night
Of
The
Earth

I am sending up
My vacant cloud

It stinks
Like a flood
Rushing

Into many birds

I am
Cobra light
And fuming

The yellow leaves
Wink and wave
Their little mouths
Open
To rain
      December 09 2020

Trundling through shadows
To a lone stone wall
Along a ridge an old Yankee farmer tended 'til he died
Slowly overtaken by time
And the wild bloom of flowers
The stone wall crumbles
Back to the field
Silent as the dry passing wind
Only the sound of a river washing stones whispering
We were never really here.

I am in the aerials,
Where the birds have their burials,
Down among the rushes,
Where the warm blood pulses,
I haunt along the hallow,
Where the river follows,
Weaving through the branches,
I put the birds in trances,
And live among the brambles,
Where the river rambles,
I am the Olden One,
I am the Second Son,
Spread along the stones,
I sleep among the bones,
Down where the mud seeps,
Down where the earth sleeps,
I am the poison arrow,
And I love you to the marrow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A silence consumes the cold depth of winter,
I wonder will death be as silent as dusk?
A cold room unlit in shadow
Winter holds the the small death of loss.
The cold comes taking birds with it.
Finches and sparrows nettled in branches,
Worry for the hawks ravaging claw.
In dusk I leave no trace my shadow.
My spirit gone to wind by dawn.

Arcane wove the gray
Before morning,
A windscreen of fronds
And muzzling bees.
Birds weave they're own dreams
Littered with red berries.
All the words have dissolved now,
Disappearing in green *****
Avenging the clouds.
The day's final doing,
A rapturous melody
Of audible wind.
In this vale
I'll smoke out the sunrise,
Dawn limping along
On one bad foot.
As earthworm and frog
Form they're own pact,
Dividing the pond and
Lilly patch between them,
They share they're own secret with the sun.
We grieve our loss
As dry husks we sheave
From the plow.
We have assembled together
Here in our nightshirt,
To remember old Clancy's field of ghosts,
Quaking night dreams
Of voluptuous roses,
The winnowing echo
Gathers the storm.
Autumn waves dark wands
Chasing the gray winds.
Where will it go,
Can I go with it,
Will I remember
Who I am this time?

But how can that be?
Was it the law that caused my doom?
The wrong I don't mean to do, I do anyway,
Though every higher thing Within me,
Screams at this outrage...
Led to be a monk,
I fell from the top rung.
You're fate at your fingers
( yeah, I'm at war with those too).
I'm my own martyr in motion,
At war with my wanton ways.
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 gets me in deeper.
Ah- between the pills and drama,
It's psychotropic Hades before your eyes.
Seems I have to have it by 4,
Or it's a bumpy ride all the way home.
It's a Tilt-A- Whirl, a real wild ride.
This Act of Contrition,
I've surely brought on myself
Nowhere in Romans 7,
Do you go it alone,
Yet there remains a certain isolation,
A turning away.
Even in the presence of others,
There's an aloneness,
A shrinking of the spirit.
Crying out to Him,
I sometimes only hear the wind.

At the bottom of these stairs,
It's shadow looming over light.
And the only shadow I fear,
Is the one I leave.
Is there a way out?
None you see from here.
Alas- 2 10-325's,
Climbing the dark stairs to the bottom.
Zoom, here goes nothing to Nowhere.
Where's God's love in the depth of addiction?
Closer than the sin I wear.
I offer my sin, and take it back up again.
Romans 7, my salvation and my despair.
Making mud pies in the alley
Than castles on the shore.
How far I've wandered To find where I am.
As darkness knows no presence other than it's own.
I know this other light,
And Who Within it Dwells.
His name is Peace,
He who comes to to set the captives free.

Its all tickety boo
Mnemosyne,
All the squirrels go swingeling along.
Here, have another.
How did you hear about yourself?
Perhaps from the flatware,
They all had lunch one us.
Voluptuous potato pancakes
In pickling brine.
Who would draw up such schematics?
Prudent farming engineers, that's who.
My lesions are legend,
I know them all by name.
They came up all Humpty Dumpty.
It configured a conflagration,
It was like a coming out party
We took up a collection,
It was a formal gratuity-
Like graduating from Radio school.
Who said "ALL ****"?
Sounds uppity at the cocktail convention,
With the swaggering lounge music.
Its really quite benign,
Like sipping soup through a straw.
Its been factory sealed for your protection.
It's safer than a school of sleepy piranhas.
Have I blown the 9 hour interview?
I wore my best Captain Crunch uniform,
It's standard issue.
I checked the latest at Phlegm Central,
They said I best check my shirt.
Then we had light refreshments.

Later that Century,
I was feeding the current machine.
Greedy Son Of A. B!#ch,
It was such a de-happening.
It became much to empirical.
Like a month of Tuesdays every other weekend,
That's the price to be paid
When you haul it up. Snaggletooth Mountain.
It was bemusing, if not hunderstruck.
We crossed into the International Sinus Zone,
From there it got a bit hazy-
All the trains were late.
It went well with the weather.
Cletus wore his camisole nightie,
While I was in my haberdasher hair shirt.
It effulgent, in mocking undertones.
It's peanut pastime of reinforced paint peels.
How does that make me an irregular object.
Let's all get up and March
To the swinging sounds of Sherezade,
Forgetting your conscience as we sidle along.
Hold up the Opera while I make up the lyrics.
How do you turn this **** thing down?

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

Where the trains run parallel
I run the perimeter,
Looking for a way through This heat covered flesh.
A new kind of madness
Invades my brain,
I cannot describe the freedom
****** on the edged of the rim.
A subliminal contract
With no strings attached.
All the clouds run counterproductive,
Its a new kind of system.
I've jammed all the frequencies,
Only radio transmissions
From 1953.
Caught in the warble,
I'll drop the pill in the vat,
You'll will feel it momentarily.
You will surrender to its properties,
A fugue of dark wonder.
You will enter it's pinkish light,
You'll hear your Mother's voice from the womb.
You'll not transcend this new kind of madness.
You'll fall into it light a cliff diver in Yucatan,
It will be your friend,
Your great undoing,
Clock towers and spires will Resolve your transmission.
You're in curved space time now,
Nothing can touch this unlimited freedom.
There will be no further interruption.
Come with me now to the place of still water,
Let me show you the shape under the sheet.
Can you smell the rain?
It's an acid bath of elation.
Isn't it buzzing in your toes?
I've factored in retrograde,
Will be there within the hour
Them we'll see what else transpires along the realm.
We'll kick Baal down the steps,
Get him wobbling down
Where all the trains run backward.
The Christ figure will blind him,
Bind him in sackcloth and ash.
It will be a celebration
I figured in the overload,
Put it through sine and cotangent-
Then it's all peaches.
Like coming up for air.
It will be a beast,
A bull, a drama.
It will be a fly in the ointment,
And grease on the rails.
It's a symphony in the speakers,
Where nothing floats but saucer shaped thoughts.
Stick figures hang from a tree,
You'll wish to be one of them.
You'll want to swim in it,
Through it, into it.
It's a blue filter night dream.
A cerulean blue blaze of pixel
It will drive your dreams to monochrome.
You'll lose 27 minutes upon reentry.
You'll be through the stars.
It only requires gasoline and guts.
I drew the schematics straight out of nowhere.
They filtered down from Central,
Forgetting new Area Codes
I dreamt up last Sunday.
Its Arkansas in the sun,
It's a page witch dance,
It's ****** with a mallet,
It shines to a T.
Wait by the phone for further instruction.

It ended up a free for all
After the hotdog eating contest,
A maylay to the left of the stage,
As Steppenwolf
( one blind guy and four nobodies) sputter through
Sookie Sue
As someone jumps onstage
And turns it into a real Fourth of July
       7/ 04/ 2005

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.

Insolent candy pop skull,
Easy on the eyes
Short on stature,
I get your final comedown.
Here, behind the nape of neck,
Exposed to blue sun-
Pruning the Sycamore for full summer.


It all moves in contemptible silence.
I rigged it from the go.
I see the sun once more
Along Amelia Avenue.
Such is the slant
Drawn up in low light.
Here comes a lover moon
Rising in dusk;
Where every Mother's Son
Hangs a weary star
On its crescent.


Night, with it's visceral lassitude Adding
Insanity to it's notion.
I'll say it's random,
Not much lately,
But enough anyway.
I saw a dream once,
Falling like light in a doorway
A tulip dying in drought.

Toward morning I draw the first words
From the place I came yet cannot return
As night crawls back to the hills

Pain is a bright room
Lit in florescent
Here the needle is turning

I wish for the waking of other worlds
The stars are all broken
The ghosts of time pass through me

My eyes are waiting for me in the dusk
I feel my way toward them

I'll find my name written in dust,
There again, I will meet it.

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.

In a time without clocks,
I dial the sun,
All these sketches drawn
In the dirt.,
My grief is among them,
Drawing dark clouds.
These mechanics of night,
The stars are a whirring,
Relics and rust, sand belts of ruin,
How does one fathom such loss?
This felicity of loss,
Why pander such madness?
At the rim of hour,
The sky holds no grievance,
The orchestra mimics the fifth movement if time.
They wave to the sentries,
The stars have all vanished.
Skylarks and Seraphim
Flit the high wire.
The stone farmhouse,
Still life in winter,
A decanter of dreams,
What were we saying?
Hands move in the motion of dark clocks of ruin,
Picture framed ghosts,
Sure they dark wonder,
Adjoining shadows of dreary
Dark rain.
Cobweb hung night dreams,
Rooms full of clutter never waking the day.
Vespers hung on a string of no stars.
Trembling already, God strips me naked,
Walks with me to a river of stones.
Shadows mingle around us so mottled,
While other shadow gather,
We remember their name.
Never touching the other,
They flee to the darkness.
Unraveling clouds, they witness to others,
In hieroglyphics boxcar of rain.
Wheels turning, the dark engines rumble,
Ghost sparks and whistles,
Through hillbilly towns that have no name.

Letter to self: Roman Numeral 17 drug up on charges unrelated to the home invasion on Milwaukee Avenue-seen fleeing with female.
Learned secrets of the Serengeti. A catch torn to pieces. Note: Roman Colosseum desecrated. A raptor in the fan blades.
A diamond in the zealous.
Man, don't ride dem bones.
Some doo-*** ditty- bop of Saint and sinner, stewbums and deadbeat killer clowns.
Open, thy cup runneth over.
Loosen the ties binding to the bone.
The Rorschach Tune-Up Allotment Sale Now Through
Apocalypse Day 7.
Memo to Bixby: Gyroscope Hot Tub Blowout relaxing the flow chart boys uptown. A filtered out flummox of impedance Bixby, Jimmywalk spared the lewd and lascivious. Spike the routers Roman Numeral 17 seen in vicinity, Apocryphal papers flown to Helsinki. Eradicate memo with extreme prejudice. Yours Turner.

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 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.)

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.

The poem arrives same as last week,
It's shirttail sticking out
Slurring of meter.
It knows form like the Devil knows Christmas,
Your free spirit simile
Has more holes in it than Sonny Coleone.
Ballads, sonnets and well metered stanza
Wake hungover in flea bag motel,
With empty beer cans dribbling prose.
Johnny Flip The Finger
Burps out and ending.
Checking his pants he finds 3 crumpled ones.

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.

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.

This serpentine shadow.
A ticker-tape wind.
It's a new constellation.
Planets pulse like an idea.
A gathering squall spells out our fortune.
Everything disappears in a wall of gray.
It's not a new form of suicide;
Its as empty as space
And twice as cold
In a dark with no stars.

the last wind of November
lashing the trees,
unseen rain racing the tiles
the wind rises and echoes
the clouds
the old trees and whithered
with dark branches
gnarled, bent over like an old woman
clutching a rosary at evening mass.
the rain whispers to the sodden silence
as clouds race the half-moon
and the sea is unknown.
is rain falling on the last place on Earth?