I crawled into the belly of the beast,
It smelled of beer and *******.
It was as empty as a billion dead suns,
Hell between the tavern walls.
Sleeping off the new job at the cleaners, or the road crew, or the factory,
Whoever was hiring.
Happy to see your sorry *** go.
Picking your friends as you picked them clean,
Or they used you,
And you all went down together.
And you meant to shine like the stars,
But you spaced out to Pink Floyd instead.
Coke and voices and beer on the table,
You rode to the sun and shivered on the moon.
The glint of the mirror, coke on the table,
And everyone babbling at once.
And the coke runs out and you look like hell,
And someone cuts you a line And your somebody again.
Opening a beer in a cheap motel,
You come down as the day comes up.
And you dare not look at yourself in the mirror.
You smell like hell and your three quarters there.
You walk out the ***** motel
And the blind eye of the sun
Draws you back inside,
Back into the belly of the beast.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fill They may, fill the fulcrum,
Fill the feather dream.
And my bane is my doom,
And my dream is the desert,
And the horses blaze beyond
El Dorado,
13 months revolve in the moment,
And the moment is calculated
In that thereof.
As bees circle flowers
Erupting the earth,
I fall into a new type
Of madness,
Drawn in spires and suns
And dark whirring clock towers.
Ghost ships in fog dream the doldrums,
They creak and yaw
Their dead sailors inside.
And the moon never shines
In the blackness of noon.
Corolla, Corolla,
What do you bring?
Candy dirt, black lillies
And bugs in the sun,
A relish, a treat for boweevles to sup.
A stir of leaves,
A wish of wind,
One house below,
One house above.
What dark matter,
What sensuous core,
Red dreams of roses
Spread on the floor.
Alone at last, my name the dust,
I construct this tower,
A tower of rust.
Here I burrow among
The twigs,
A being asleep in the fulcrum of dusk.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

Now splashing through fire,
Now burning in water,
Night all drunk up and moonlit.
Now I'm insane and stare at wallpaper
The way one looks at a Piccaso.
And the worms sing my bones.
Birds fly fire roses open like smoke,
And words thread hot needles like wire.
I pray for California,
I pray for rain,
I pray a quick death
As a spider crawls up the wall.
And all the tunnels go down in the dark,
As we go down in the dark.
And I ask for a cup of myrrh,
And I'm handed a snake instead.
I dream like London
And blue carbon gas.
I float through alleyways of wine soaked fights.
Ravens cluck the hour,
The bottom of my soles.
Jesus sleeps in Nebraska tonight.
Adam and I both fall to dust.
There's a stone in my heart,
A fly in a frenzy
There's Tulsa and crab cakes
And 3 for a dollar,
And something for the little lady.
Watch a drunk slam into 7 parked cars
As the world go as mad as a roach.
While old St Benedect dreams in his shoes of endless
Bikinis and bottles of beer.
And my bottle goes Blam,
And I pick up another,
And I go with it.
My mind is a symphony now
Of wire and spit spray
And I go with it,
I go with it,
Into it now, Into the terror,
Roaring, Roaring, Roaring.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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


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

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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?

First it's a fish,
Then it's a rock,
Then it's an island,
Then its a play
For all the neighbors to see.
Then it's ready for the plucking,
Then it goes down easy,
Then you know your ready.
I let in the sun,
It died in the lawn,
Then I drug it out
To the frozen ground.
First its a dog,
Then it's an elephant,
Then its a cobra
Asleep in the sun.
First it's a lesson,
This is the sum
Of every blazing summer
And every wicked winter,
A blue orb circling
The last lonely sun.
This is my weapon,
This is my tool,
This is the place
Where my Mother lies
And does not complain
Of wind or weather,
Or rain or sun
Or the change of season,
Or sun or moon or lack thereof.
Its a fact born of fiction,
The truth and the lie,
Its glass in the alley
And chains gone to rust.
It's the last dream of childhood,
A dream of witches,
And a dream of earth,
It's ice cream stands
And cold shakes,
Its a dream of my Father
In 1967,
Its downtown
And cops and taxis,
Whistles and buildings,
Ice and slush
And black and white
Photographs of sad smiling children.
It's a moonrise
Orange and ominous,
A double locked door
And voices in the hallway,
Police and sirens
And blood at the scene.
This is me on my deathbed,
This is you sleeping,
This is the hour
That becomes you,
The minute that
Becomes me,
This is the second we share.
This is time moving backward,
This is a speck
On the sun,
This is an island,
A rock,
A fish,
Nowhere,
Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

No blue moon in the cupboard tonight.
So much for the well worn thesis.
Here's where it runs out of gas. Only tinkling flowers
And bare rhapsody,
Shivering like a ****** in the night.
It's here, and here, and here.
Places I can only show
In the dark.
Things which have no name.
But here, and here,
Feel their shape?
Dim, Oslo in the rain.
And the Nazis occupy
The last of the city.
It's here, and here, and here.
It's nowhere, nothing.
As ideas scatter like ghosts.
Dry places, bones of dust.
It's here, and here, and here.

This silent pen,
This flowing aromatic
This spare confessional,
This alchemy of light.

And you light a cigarette,
Prowl the room like a leopard.
And the trains run east to west,
And somehow this comforts you
On the way to your other gig.
And the sun roars against the window,
Your face,
Gliding up the road.
And you think of Yeats,
Shelly, the Shaw Of Iran,
Perestroika, Persian rugs,
Brahms And bikinis,
And you know your friends,
Watch your enemies,
Keep a checklist,
Forget the checklist
As the woman with the legs
Crosses against the light.

And the lights come up,
The movie's ended.
The streetlights shine in the mist.
You walk to your car,
And rain dots the windshield
As cars hiss up the street.

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

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

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.

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.)