Me 'r aw gawn a' fer dawn
'cept t'grizzle that passed them bowts on
'n Tangier boys t' young to take t' wooder

Tangier boys and twist knuckle fellers
Gather up t' cafe a'four
fer a soda widda woodermen's beans
'n downa docks a'foive a'clock
for castin' awff lines 'n dreams.
Fer pops gawn out t' bay n' t'oyster beds
over thin lip 'rizon no more t'seen.

Nuttin' but bikes, *****, slap jellies,
'n them ain't hard favored come-ere's
nigh as peas wandrin' the uppards
'til black chug zaust sounds riturn
from Chrisfiel', 'nuther day
jingin' in t'pockets, 'nuther shuck
pall ready fer spoiders  n' hoi wooder.

I stared the crowd down squinty,
always squinty,
a jaw tooth grinding, neck vein
throbbing squinty.

I ****** the mike like a baseball
and spit the windscreen drenched
with naive codified lyric.

They took it all in.

The blender chewed them
to a fine puree of sweat,
bodies and stomped glasses.

And I eyed them squinty,
angry less at Reagan,
angry less at their sheepish
individuality, less
at proliferation or the grim
disparities of class or color -

more so at the soap
in my hair that gave me spine
and drooled stinging into my eyes.

When the eyes are denied a surety,
trepidation beats between cicada wings
and the snore song of leopard frogs,
loud though the singers are small.

For what or whom does the gray owl call,
perhaps, perhaps the end of us all.

We've built upon fire
mechanics of light unrelenting.
But night does fall - never rises -
and with it roars the unrepenting -
a shadow on the wall.

A floorboard creak,
a screendoor unhinged,
even a clock ticks louder
to the brave cowering ear,
counting indifferent
to the sum of our fears.

Back on the long stone jetty
a time when the smacks came in
splitting the tide with a daily haul -
marlin flags, yellow-fin flags,
shark flags and all on the riggers.

In come the seiners, longliners,
and skipjacks. The crabbers,
the Merry May, Mama's Revenge,
Rock Bottom Sally, all going
bayside with their wares and
worn bows.

Each in it's cutting and bobbing
joy, blows a horn for the jumping
jut-finger kids  - the day done
on the shore when the waves came a' roiling.

The jiggers in for the market docks
and a couple a bucks for the gap-toothed
waterman gathering legs on the rocks.

Two for a steak a' tuna
Five for a pound a' nurse
Blue Marlin not for sale, my boy,
it's for the record books.

Nothing more than wiper slap -
smear light on a ***** windshield,
starbusting streetlamps through
pitted glass sliding
greasy on the bridge:

Every billboard passed,
every sign every whine,
every slumped leaning
off ramp neighborhood,
a blurred jagged vision
of what it is, what it was,
what it might be,
gone.

Though some hazy refracted,
gray on gray beam,
from out there, back there,
through the pupil to the retina,
focused occipital,
turned again into a shape
that wasn't hers to begin with.

But there she is,
behind a salt-crust window,
half-eaten by the blinding slats,
a perfect, distorted slouch
in a booth of vinyl bygones
off exit eighty nine,
with a bucket of fries
on her hands,
while I spit by
on a wet highway
to who the hell knows where.

A proper stirfry
needs ten thousand bowls
of precise cuts

Some days smell like years
like the dinge of sprung sheetrock
when the rain came in
the cricket loose against the chimney
and the attic floorboards
expand with the frosts
of every winter spent in this house
insulated with cardboard and crates
ransacked from the floorplan
and catalogued renderings

And some days smell like years
like the blistex on your lips
when the rain came in
and we kissed this tired old place ours
and the attic floorboards
velvet pine underfoot
whispered tall rooms in this house
and the stuccoed walls spoke
of a lost craft revived
in your freshly washed hair

I can smell in your eyes
the brine of a ceiling
when once we dreamed
beyond the rafters
and collar ties
beyond the shingles
and the familiar maintenance
of our lives