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.

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.

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)  
                        

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.

Trundling a shadowed vale
To a low stone wall
Along a sloping ridge
An Old Yankee farmer
Tended his field til he died.
Slowly overtaken by time and the wild boom of flower
The stone wall crumbles
Silent as dry passing wind.
But for the sound of a river
Washing stones
Whispering we were never really here

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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 with it the small death of loss.
The cold snow comes taking birds with it,
Finchs and sparrows netted in branches,
Worry the hawks ravaging claw.
In dusk I leave no trace of shadow before me,
My spirit gone to wind by dawn.

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

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.

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.

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?