He is on an all-night train
Reading from the book of his life
From time to time raising his head
To glimpse something of the landscape
Rushing past, beyond the darkened window,
Only to catch his pale reflection in the glass.

Whispering secrets under their breath,
The flutter of pages like birds,
Dark and motioning the moonless night.
                                   *
                           June 28 2023

I wished to be a priest smoking in a garden,
gazing at faded photographs of ancestors,
They’re breath like the dry sound of reeds
hollow in the wind.
Empty as raincoats hung up to dry
under a dark a private weather.
Roses leeched by rain
circling the lake like a reoccurring dream.
                                  £
              September 12 2024

I was a captive on a ghost ship,
Its sails ripping in a gale.
The sea and all its monsters could not contain me.
I wore glasses with a spider crack in the lens.
I told the librarian I was a medieval philosopher
Lost in a long and lonesome theory.
She asked for my library card
Then escorted me to the door.

I fled to the local theatre.
I remembered I had a small, none-speaking part in a ****** epic.
I was one of the bombed and fleeing minion.
In the distance, Our Great Leader
Crowed like a rooster from the balcony.
“That’s me!” I said to the balding man
To my left-
“Between the man with the blown-out eye
And the old woman with her mouth open like she’s showing us her tooth.”

Later, I saw the man to sitting to my left.
I asked him for the time.
He gave me a frightened look
And stepped out in to rain.

The room ticks like a cooling engine
In a blue motel on the edge of Apache.
A tranquil night of drunks and televisions.
Poly-neon signs and road closures.
Up the road apiece, just north of nowhere,
Past the graves of Grandma and Grandpop,
There’s a place that has no business being there,
A place of cisterns and honeycombs.
A wheel in the desert, the moon on some swings.
                               🌙
            September 02 2024

I heard the neighbor’s screen door
part with the faint blue of dawn.
The black cat strode in like a whisper.
His silken body curling her leg
as he took the first lick
with his rough, red tongue.
The cold milk glowing
in a golden saucer.
                               *
                January 05 2024

I once was young,
Now I’m an old man,
Whose time is memory,
Whose future is past.

I sit here with knuckles that ache from this pen.
There’s a light scrim of snow in December’s dusk.
A lone horse and a farmer’s spark light
Dominate my field of vision.
In between this motel and that warm farmhouse
Lay a half-mile of afternoon run away with light.
The barren howl of an idiot wind
Mumbles near words like a ghost.
The fence and slate of white sky given over to winter.
There seems no beginning or conclusion;
Just the warm, pallid air of the heating system.
A gun and a sheaf of poems probably no one will read-
Except maybe the police.
Outside, the horse’s mane is fluid to the wind,
The snow peeking through the window,
Hovers for a moment,
Then falls on past.
                               *
                    April 10 2024

Memo: 22:13 Hours. Roman Numeral 17
Wanted for questioning related to home invasion on Milwaukee Avenue.
Seen fleeing with female.
Last spotted in Busia’s Old Time Tavern on Kostner,
Losing pool game to undercover narcotics.
Said individual practiced in the art of
none-linear prose
Proceed with caution.
Rumored to have washed hands in Pilate’s bowl after passing judgment.
Report unconfirmed.
Memo to Bixby: Roman Coliseum desecrated.
Cut the ties binding.
Roman Numeral seen in vicinity.
Apocryphal papers flown to Helsinki.
Eradicate with Extreme Prejudice.
Yours: Turner.
                              €
      January 05 2024-September 14 2024