Herefords lying down,
***** to the wind - this bodes of rain.
Cloud gray and anvil,
clobber shot and some ways off,
a cliff falls precipitous.
There's manure in the air
because it's November
and the harvest is in.
There's manure in the air
for the fields need a feed
before snow tangles the greeds
of Autumn, and the Aberdeens
crush stubble leeward,
beyond the spruce breaks.
And there, atop a shaved hill,
a misthrown cone of gold,
shoveled by the shade hands
of gamblers in the **** winds
jangle in a pickup.

A proper stirfry
needs ten thousand bowls
of precise cuts

God willing, I'll find my own way
down to the rust caverns, down to the dust
and seared calcite, stressed and cleaved,
God willing.

And God willing I will make a trance
of us, a Pan of us, all musics, impromptus
and guile. God willing.

And God willing we will take the rain
in our teeth, shatter on the brink of us,
barrel into the wall of us and bleed laughing.
God willing.

And God willing we will cast the first fist
at the faceless faiths, bent as clay,
that engender the hates of hedons
and lusts that only skins abide.
God willing.

For there is no god, God willing,
that will seek to stem the strides of us,
loose in the hills and running,
loose in the hills and ripping
our flesh in the brambles,
cloven and jagged.

I tell myself one life
must yield to another:
fly to spider,
spider to bird,
bird to birdshot.

I tell myself one life
must, in the full course
of a day relinquish itself
to another savage dawn,
fall as each unbidden

yesterday fell, bleak
and ungrieved, twisted
on a rack of tomorrows
no more certain than a silk
spooled about a winch.

I ain't seen no crow do no killin',
never in a day.
****, they ain't even a squabble.
I seen a lot a' crows
on a lot a' roads,
courteous as squaredance,
bobbin' over ****, skunk,
whatever red,
always cool to clear the way
and wait fer a passin'.

I ain't seen no dead crow neither,
not a one.
I seen 'em harried though,
hammered like B-17's
swattin' one o nines.
But that ain't no nevermind.

Pigeons, yep. Lotsa pigeons.
Slapped a few sparra's on the grill.
Never took a pheasant
but I seen 'em,
all broke feather
and bonnet in the ditch.

Baldies?
Now that's a bird that's got one
helluva marketin' department.
Proud one that.
Eats the eyes and *** first.
Runs off the competition.
**** things don't know
bumpers from blimps.
But wha' d'ya do?

A con-vo-cation, yep,
that's what they call 'em -
hell, we almost snuffed 'em
clean out and now we call 'em
a convocation?
Seems a bit stilted to me.
But there you have it -
a convocation a'eagles
a ****** a' crows.
Just goes to show ya',
them namers don't know.

At the still axis of revolution,
about which our tortures churn,
the pure and toddler self remains,
present and young,
uncoiled, unlearned.

Such that a top, spinning,
poised gyroscopic on a point,
traces a path on a floor,
spiraled to the delight
of a child's fresh gums attentive,
must wobble in the end,
must with those most
stupendous frictions fall.

Neither the lean nor
the circumference, dead on the floor,
succumbed to turmoil,
defines the top, no - it is the axis -
that about which all things turn -
stiff spindled, silent, and spun
by the pink and toddler hand,
in the wonder that is yours,
in the wonder that is ours.

I lost something that night,
after the play where the gun
ground across the stage toward us
and stopped.
The final movement
in the final act
before the dim
and applause.

It never grew old,
a ****** comedy,
with ****** songs
of prisons, ***** and ****.
It was our fourth time
at the Annoyance Theater,
where we could smoke,
laugh, bring our own beer,
trip on acid, sit on pillows,
and laugh.

Trip walking home, a yellow cab backfired,
you ducked behind the mailbox,
Clark and Belmont,
"That ain't no backfire, *******.
Get down."

But I froze.
A boy screaming "Pendejo!"
through a hole in his thigh,
thrashed on the pavement,
tires screeched, pigeons jumped
to distant perches, and everyone
was running, running,
running away.

Rocking on the third rail spark
and grinding on the steel wheel
taking a well arced curve on the El
winding its transit plan to the loop
passing second story flat dreams
and the messing about before
the office coffees are brewed
and the day begins as an abstract
smelting of glass concrete steel
and the eyes drift from a hand-holding
two, to the crochet hook fingers of the
night shift lady, to the suit and tie
guy with trading in his eyes,
to the bronze trumpet girl
sure footed, on point
below a new sky.

But the train bends down
for the subway
a spine bends for a dropped book
the train bends down
and yellowed signs cracked
at the corners flicker on
and ceiling lights flicker on
a fist tightens on a pole
and we look to our shoes
our papers, the news.
Eyes avoid eyes
and the sick blending
of massed perfume
perspires a choking distance.
A spent soda can rolls
the one last connection
from foot to foot
and each taps it away.

Come all ye winter brigands,
Strip these tainted fairland woods
Of their baubles and wares.
Take what plump fruits remain
In glistened fists and bind,
Bind the spruce tightly -
Such prideful beasts these trees.

Come mock these captive summers,
Taunt them white in the forest,
White in the glade and fled,
To the shrill and fluted wind,
To crackling beats on wire and limb.
Such a wagged and giddy pilfer,
Leave them lap on brittle leaves.

Come ye winter brigands,
Strip the burdened hoards,
The cone and gray gem juniper,
The blackened berry, the wild blue phlox,
The painted trillium stem.
Vanity in such soft profligate pendants -
What need have we of these?

Pick one.
Step out of the book clean,
any book, whether bible, cookbook
or blue novel append the phrase
“In the beginning” to the mouth of it:
Harissa & Preserved Lemon.
In the beginning step off from there.
In the beginning there was
Harissa & Preserved Lemon.
Go forth into the worlds
reasonable and unforeseen
& flush with the knowledge
of nothing that precedes thee,
flush as nothing precedes thee
& graced that every fowl or beast
or behemoth fish or mite is
beholden to the tongue
that would taste its name
& every breath spools out
a world anew spewed from
the mewling attentions
of short—tenured gods.
We,
short—tenured gods know
nothing of what we make
until the meat is tendered
& the stew of our lives
cools in that blue porcelain
bowl we save for Sundays,
velvet to the throats of those
that would devour us.

There's a brown leather sofa on the curb marked "free"
There's an '87 Jimmy with a flat tire and rusty fenders
down on Dows marked "runs $200 or best offer"

There's a new stop sign at the bottom of Center
that nobody's shot up yet. Sure as **** county
gonna be lurking around behind the daycare around five

That wanna be a cowboy that runs the Jesse
installed some slots a few years back, now he's selling *****
where the DVD's used to be.

I don't know his name, never did anyway,
but I bought a couple ugly Bics from him today
because nobody steals ugly lighters.

Seems like things are looking up at Splitrock
a lot of boats in the driveways. I always wanted
a boat. But I got a lay-off instead in '09.

Got a hunk of plaster, though.
Just clinging to the lathe above the coffee machine.
Gonna crack my head wide open one day.

Gonna crack my head open when I pour
when I pour that first cup on a grit-eye morning
on a grit-eye morning still dreaming of boats.

she was blackstrap and off the shoulder
flint eye beguiling she was
***** straight and easy in her clan
sacred in a way
head tossed and smirked knowing
the three quick seconds of our love
that lifetime in the glance
would haunt me old as I am
and not without some clear
and certain lust

What I have sown and hence reaped,
whether piles of stone or heaped loose
chaff threshed out and stacked,
beans sold as commodities
on the open markets
of acquaintance,
leaves the fields barren, ready
for an autumn cleanse,
fresh spreads of manure
to percolate down
with the cold rains
and held waters of winter.

It is not inconceivable
some smeared and blind thing,
like hail or perhaps some top spun
cue ball, maybe some blunt
beaked bird wary of our passage,
or a bullying stone,
unchaperoned in a spiraling sandbox,
or a slap to the back of the head
by the swift palm of a correcting mother
for some thoughtless remark -
a child's tongue unrestrained...

A child's tongue unrestrained,
naive, precessed, tethered
and dragged, star-eyed and still
reeling because I said "hell"
in Hecht's men's department
on a Thursday, because I didn't
want peas, because I wanted
pudding and said "hell"
and she smacked me,
just stiff enough to tilt the axis,
just enough to shake loose the leaves,
freeze those vanilla puddings.
Yes, that must be the reason for winter,
the start and wobble of all things northern,
cold-shocked by the sun's glancing blows.

Pound
Eliot
Yeats — fascists all.
Would you
?
disposed to such selfsame superiority
make of art
such grandiose assessments
of what is right and pure?
Would you,

in your unpeopled landscape,
gold with harvest,  place
the blemished hound,
the doting mistress, the penniless waif,
and the long bent road
that they invisibly stride?

If by justice you mean vengeance, I,
your honor, am not to be counted.

In all this well-pressed protocol,
In this stark polished hall of justice,

There is nothing to judge, no verdict
or debate beyond a reasonable doubt

That the condemned is condemned by agreement.
Are we to haggle over the price?

You **** through we thirty coughing "peers",
this pool of citizens chosen by lot to consider one thing,

One sentence, which any reasonable soul
would hope never to be compelled to entertain,

And in so doing, twelve of us will become complicit,
will mark the furtherance of abhorrent justice

with simple "ayes", for "nays" are not permitted, no lock
allowed for the twelve that truly become his peers.

She was a slim volume really,
a short read, an afternoon
in shades of cypress, conceived
on her own costly parchments.

She prefaced a day a warning,
that if any eye should scan her
lines to her own bleak skin,
to her own terse margins,

to the limbs akimbo nonsense
implied by her scrawling,
there would be a price to pay,
found blank beyond the epilogue.

But she was a slim volume really,
a short read in shades of cypress,
grass and thick with bugs.
And there, pocked by her words,

torn by such strongfrail inks,
torn like a hyphen dangled
at the bottom of a page,
ripped from her tongue

I hung on the breath of an epilogue,
A few faint phrases:
"All that you have read here is true.
All that is consumed here is you."

Was thinking of you as I ******
the chardonnay out, black exile
to sewage. Was thinking of you
and those trusts - thrice drawn
out of me - breath ******
in perverse resuscitation -
collapsed a lung
and shudders my gut
in the steam of it. And then,

Soft-bodied and filament,
a spider reared up,
pin-legged,
from behind the tank,
and topped the unset clock,
flashing twelve and twelve
and twelve again.

And with my one hand free
I plucked it up, loose-pinched
between my thumb and index,
held it up before the mirror,
before the medicine cabinet mirror
and the lights, buzzing rifts,
bad as daybreak and drought.

And thus, this spider and you,
dropped upon the waters,
yellowed and foamed, spun
quickly down the trap,
a larger purge to a purging.

everything paused when you waved goodbye
just going to work

every possible tragedy occurred
on the empty sofa cushion
on the arm of the chair
where one of your hairs
waved and cast the slimmest grim shadow

bella on her bed
pudding-eyed and half asleep
chewed a clump of dirt
from her forepaw
and flit tongued
it to the floor

the coffee un-poured itself from the cup
and I was ****** eastward
in your absence
yanked down the foothills of appalachia
slurred across the bay bridge
smeared like butter on the pancake peninsula
past the flash and clunking plinko machines
past the skeeball thunder and flickering schemes
and a summer week's worth
of crab thrashers and spent grease
stuck in my sinuses
past all the great juggling spectacles
of joy to find myself
ankle deep in some other ocean
breakers hammering to buckle me knees
as you turned right at the top of the street
for another sweaty shift
in the back kitchen
of someone else's dream.

The roads here,
*** tongued, black toothed
and pitted, lead somewhere.

I am sure that over the peak of it,
splayed out like toes in dry sand,
tractioned for tide, a florescence,
maybe, maybe down in the abalone towns,
the oyster shot towns - in The Mother of Pearl,
where I met a guy,
a guy named Reason,
slim fingered and wrung
out at last call.

But there it was, he said "if" first:
"nothing really closes,
I just exchange doors for
carpets, throwbacks and
occasional tables - leaf down
and close to the wall."

He said his name was Witness,
but I knew better, I knew better.
This cat was leather on tweed,
a pick-up line on a business card,
call me anytime. He had shacks
for eyes and his temples pulsed
like Patsy Cline.

He said he had a flounder's way of lying,
flat at the bottom of things - loose silted.
If I needed, he said, the skipjacks
split at dawn, but that's rarely the way
for land legs. And he grinned,
wide like a seiner.

They're always there - these ones -
slumped for a schmuck
dipped out for a just a thud away
from home, down the *** tongued
road to Blacktooth,
where the Water and Sand
shutters before The Mother of Pearl,
where the windows flicker like barbacks,
and a girl named Treason ticks...

Mrs. Parr made us write letters
to the hammering man that lived
in the radiators of those cold
Beechfield elementary rooms.

He got a lot of mail that winter - '70 to '71,
and we scratched our gratitudes
on the four line papers, certain
to keep our ascenders and descenders
in time and in tune with the peals
of iron and steam.

It wasn't until '77 that I got a grip
on thermodynamics and realized
there was no man in the heat
of those cold Beechfield rooms,

No giving hand with a maul
to pound away the nails of frost
and loose the stiff knuckles
of a chattering hand.

But back in '71, when mercury
pressed against iron, too young
to formulate disbelief,
we gave our penciled thanks
to the hammering man
that once had wrought relief.

I lay a palm on a wall of quartzite,
red, unhewn and beckoning my lips
to count the strata, number each
compression from heel to nail,
down below the rooted fissure
up above the quiet smirk of a creek -
one hundred.

And as I drag my eyes upward,
to where the scrub oak and juniper
mangle an ash blue sky I am taken.

I am taken there beneath my palm,
pressed metamorphic on rock,
to become a thin bent line,
hardly a hair's breadth,
nary a bone remains,
beneath the heat and pressures
of grass, trees and all things -
all things crushed after me -
all things reordered and tendered.

Gimme swill,
not one for smooth liquors,
I cannot fathom velvet.

Jigger me a burlap,
stir me a drink
in low thread counts,
course cottons and twill.

My throat itches for wool
and stiff denims. My throat
itches for loose weaves,
warped lazy on a loom,
distilled with a towel,
stiff on a rail in some
damp and arid bathroom.

I pray for winter. Summer is fat
and beyond repair. It hardly rains —
children on bikes, on swings
bite the wind. Children eat sky
from trampolines, take
clumps of it in their fists

And fall back on their fevers
laughing, yet to learn
the heft of sag. O! Manic youth —
you’ll throw your greasy chain.
Will it be cottonwood or cloud
that litters the yard come Autumn?
Who’s to know.

When I see children, I see cruelty,
decay and brown ache tumbling
from its stem: the rake,
the shovel, the whine and drag,
some lean deer breaking corn
by the grain bins, the short hex
of old cloud on my tongue.

Soon they’ll be shuttered
in winter’s dry heats these children:
cold-sore, chapped, their bikes hung
carcass from hooks in the ceiling —
like those old men that trim hedges, ****,
sip ambers and broth, wait for snow
like those old women that pry
ticks off their backs.

I saw a picture of you today,
that crow's foot smile, your eyes
blue behind wisps of bang,
arm around his shoulder,
same old still,
and I felt nothing.

But then again,
I was small fish to fry,
and you laughed and said no,
you are a whale and went away
that Tiananmen spring.

And there was fear in your voice,
strung out, evacuated, long on the line
and coming home, unnerved.

I missed you at the terminal,
you didn't wait.
But that was no nevermind.
You met me at the station,
red on your breath,
giddy with a gift.

You pressed that sterling
Shandong bell in my palm,
that small Shandong bell.
The bell I keep in the never box,
behind the broken watches
and shells.

You called me a whale once,
but when you returned from away,
you pressed a small Shandong bell
in my palm and held it there,
impressed it there with a finger,
that bell with the small fishes,
chasing each other's tails.

This morning,
the owls spoke Vietnamese.

I am not speaking metaphorically,
I'm telling you categorically,

The owls spoke - Vietnamese.

The air was a'crisp,
crickets and toads hushed
for this foreign refrain - repeated
coded over the course of a ****,
over the breathy hum
of fans drying grain.

As far as what was divulged,
well, that is mine alone.
I just thought you should know,
I'm a long way from grown.

Whiteout on 250,
shallow shouldered,
deep ditched,
though straight as dope
and piped icing.
The wind knows the way
but canters,
canters and drags
this crate south,
south into the beams
of some some other
sad **** bent to the clock
and near death for a dime,
for a mortgage,
and some other
******* adherence.

Mrs. Ringenroth taught
us a sorta furrowed brow
squinty eye kinda readin'

Makes ya look intelligent
scannin' the horizon of a line
for them steepled ascenders
and dots like dead crows
stuck on a cloud.

The educated boy
don't move his lips.
The educated boy
gets hung up in the crease
closest to the spine
until the book slams shut.

It's that mouth-breathin'
lip-readin' boy
that looks to the sky
before turning the page.

Passive frictions generate little heat.
Strike the flint hard into steel,
and let the kindling flare
to dispel the spell of darkness
of hate and the grim fuels
that burn without fire,
without compassion,
without warmth,
without the near spent coals,
still glowing,
that nourish the soul
with clear broth
in tough bowls.

If not for the hair
caught in the corner
where the broom
cannot reach,
I would never know
that you were here.

And if not for the corner
where the broom
cannot reach -
if not for the moulding
that pinned it -
if not for the wall
and the ceiling’s crease -
if not for the rafters
and shingles,
there we would be no hair.

And if not for the hair,
there would be no fingers,
no soft care to tie a single knot,
then carry it to the window
and release you there.

And if not for the window,
if not for the wind,
if not for the wake -

A nest and blue eggs come April.

wake
that one
eye may find
in your creped hip
in your rippled spine
in your slumber damp palm
in your night braided tresses
in your too hot for sleep dresses
on the floor with caresses and socks
reason to stand against time's august clocks

Smelted down,
A pool of rendered gristle,
Slick on the floor,
That’s what a day leaves us,

After the tethered heaves
Of this most sought production,
Blendered the dawn news,
The hooved mews, cool dews,
And all that smelled like gravy.

A slump line to the drink
Of old business not attended,
Piles as laundry, clean and otherwise,
Crowding the table, the floor,
And all the chipped dishes between
The sink and my mother.

But now, after all is taken away,
The fingers curl
Between the heel and the ****,
And crisp leeks yield to the edge,
Celery snaps and rains -
Carrot - thin as harvest moon
And a fume of crushed garlic.

What next? You may ask.
The permutations of evening
And stew are yours to taste,
To take and wander -
To simmer and wonder -
To plunder what soothes
On the tongue
And melts the fat of wages.

Oh ye slaveholders,
hesitant emancipators
and empire builders run manifest -
time will have its way.

Grain by grain,
nose by nose,
eye by eye,
you will return to stone - inpressed.

A monumental hypocrisy
blown into a mountain
will no longer preside
over ponderosa pine
and in that place, once corrupted,
the granites will prove this vanity.

In another age, perhaps
some distant race, chiselled, inflected
but unknowing shall squint upon these
weathered myths and wonder,

as we look upon the Sphinx
and so wonder -
why these haunches,
why this withered broken face,
staring blankly into sand.

Oh these blind trajectories,
these pure set conditions,
initial, merry, just so wandered -
a shell thus thrown, a plunged
albatross beak, a sheared
stab of ice, a moon’s pull
and a breath elastic -

All these and a calculus,
as crest to valley lumbers
in its way - sine to sine -
chopped though ever free
and unlapped after.

Yes, that is how to build a rogue,
how to find our love - our love
stacked crest to crest -
to lurch up, snag a gilded gannet,
round about a hunk of sun
and fist on some stiff unwary hull -
cast our cargos upon the sea.

He seemed modest
until he ran a zip line
between the cell tower
and the high tension
wire.

Cowled and eyeless,
the slouched friar on a slow mule
Dispenses Gospel to the road.
In the shallow fords and mountain clings
He loafs, the hooves of the mule
Sure, certain as bread and crisp water.

And after a bend, a scent - a smoke -
Affording comfort, at least for a moment -
A shack to weather the evernight.
And there, before fire, with crackling eyes
The deaf one blazed in a spectrum,
Unseen.

And what was a matter of course,
Became the matter of hands,
Testing the blisters of a moment,
The friar engulfed in the palms
Of the deaf one’s guidance.

And there in the flurry of fingers,
“Here is the tongue, here is the ear,
And here is the way forbidden to the blind.
Give me your hand that I may place the hammer.
Give me your hand that I may place the stone.
Give me the Word as exchange for the World,
And each we’ll find our own way home.”

Longer rivers run to the sound
where the commerce plays out
its jangling game.

When once we were mountains,
no more than bare bluffs now,
each jutting a finger of mudflats
untrod and untouching for the tide
has turned once more, lifting the drift
and carrying our past verdant
intrepid days into the sea,
upon the waves, to be spat
onto another shore strange
with blunt shell, burnt pebbles,
and the neverminds of the locals.

But perhaps it is in our nature to weather,
to erode, to spill our alluvial fans
to any passing angler who'll listen,
perhaps the boulders we tumbled
to our own demise are no more,
no more than jagged or smooth grains,
packed, pounded, arranged
for the foot of a marveling toddler
on her first time at the shore.

Hopeless is the hope
for a clean spring rain
the blush cheek of winter
the fall of the sane

The summer of once
is the trickle of soils
down the cliff of a ditch
down into our toils

Come all with a dream
down into the pits
where a ragged and spent
god wistfully sits

Confess to the deaf one
put coins in a palm
trench diggers care little
for us or our psalms

On some nights I crave
bland starches and grave-rich
dishes of smooth buttered plunder.

Atahualpa, Oh Atahualpa,
what remains of your people?
What remains of your tribute?
What remains of your bent knee
and strangled betrayal -
having given all
and taking only a book,
a word, a promise?

Bags of Incan bone go cheap these days.
Bags of Incan bone fight for breath
among the well-heeled fad-diet set
and soft sweet rotting onions.

Boiled, roasted or shunned -
massacre lives on the skin,
brown and dusty.
Plunder grows from the eyes.
And the flesh weeps the milked tear
of the Andes.

It is 4 a.m.,
and a black dog breaks
crust on old snow - stumbles.
And a full moon looms
to reveal just east
a crackling of limbs felled
by gathered frosts and west
a barn owl arcs silent - a slurry
of cream, hunger and brown
winter **** hovered and plunged
by moon and yellow porchlight.
A black dog stiffens and sniffs -
limbs give no more crack.

I know only this:
It is 4 a.m. - something bled
and something fed
in the moon and yellow porchlight.

Sun-dogs lope over the bloat of a rise,
and the nocturnal kills freeze in the ditches
waiting Spring’s decay, crows or an inmate’s *****.

What is strewn there: husk in the fields,
cans in the fields, bags in the fields,
stiffen as strata before next-Autumn yields.

Smoke plumes flat from the chimneys
of those at rest for a season at best,
and all the green tools are put away.

Long-fingered frost blooms on the limbs,
threatens the wire, renders each
these gaunt and barren things
a hard-crust and promise of fire.

The harrier glides down close to the ground,
Long-swept with hunger to catch there a sound.

I welcome your minute manipulations
how your simple glance causes me to rise
from my oak chair and ruminations
to fill your cup that has no more than a drop
of cold black coffee.

Grateful for your routine manipulations
of a mind muddied by past resentments,
the always blue dreams that defy explanation,
forcing my hand to stroke your lounging legs
on the way to the kitchen.

Blessed by these familiar manipulations
for it is not you that provokes a willing servitude
it is that space where our nearing breaths conspire
to spin motes of dust and sloughed off skin
displaced by a kiss and a hot cup of coffee.

The so and many ways to sing the breeze,
whether it is breath or breathed,
or hummed in trees unleaved,
bison-heard on plains or high crested seas,
it is wind that rattles here - here upon the eaves.

Church bells are not pealed, but pushed
as chimes hung from the porches of time,
piped and true turbulent - these random tines
of a taking - chattered on a window,
scraped on a pane, loose-glazed and limed.

And whether we praise or for that matter pray,
wind don't speak my name, don't gust me down,
to each and all a song, pitched as a gale or a brief
unsettled sway, slack as linen and sung that way.

To measure the weight of the soul,
Remove the mind and heart from the body,
Place them into the bowl of sky
or the basin of sea,
and Set the scale
to zero.

When she entered a room,
conflict dissolved like sugarin'
lemonade.

She has a kindness rare
for possessing such a dressing
down mind.

She free-style fingerstyled
her Martin with a well-trained swing,
and her voice could melt concrete.

She could outrun a gazelle.

She saw the world from a catamaran,
taking each swell in her teeth.

She took the world by the pants
and threw it down.

She picked it up,
brushed it off,
and let it know
that everything
would be okay.

It has been awhile
since we strummed
together.

It has been awhile
since she played my tunes
much better
than my cramped hands.

It has been far too long
and I am mute and afraid.

For that raging joy,
has been forever,
caged.

We called him Mr.Chins cuz he had four of ‘em.
We called him The Chizzler and he hated it:
Always chugged a brew before playing the rube,
And taking the *** for himself.

He whiffed a’ porkrinds and blackjack,
And his lip ticked for the snow.
He ****** down the Jaeg like a hunter,
Too loose and obtuse with a bow:

Missed his mark -
Like he missed his mom -
And his dad was good for the whoopin’s.

He was straight-shot in the flatters,
But took a cab home alone.
He said he gambled for the ladies,
The ones he’s never known.

He had a keen eye for the rail run,
Cued low for the buck and the lie,
He was a stacked-quarter hustle,
A con that went glibly awry.

Endymion shrieks,
For what is beauty if hidden,
hoarded, if posed in youthful sleep?
None forever in plump symmetries
Held a stone and cast it thus
Upon the cool and clouded lakes
Below thunder, and sought
The bridled stain that looms
From under. But there, there
In fragile dispurpose cut
Below the eye - the frailty -
The red gleam indistinguishable
From the fly that laps upon it,
Indistinguishable from the crust
That makes a scar, ripped
From vain slumber to bend
Before the wind, to break
Before the white lightning hand
That takes each our pink clays
And molds a chasm
For the drain of days.

Stumbling into morning,
vague, unremarkable,
perhaps befitting a glance,
or a glancing blow to the jaw.

Stay cool in the thunder room,
soft pressures of mine
and mine alone,
impugned with the round
ticks
in a chipped cup
thick with lip
and quivers.

Vague, unremarkable,
perhaps befitting a glance
or a glancing blow to the jaw,
I must take that first uncertain
step into a quickening,
allow the hinge its creak,
allow the sun its stumbling gait,
that I, busted on the jagged even,
may return and find myself
vague, unremarkable -
alive.

O! Praise upon the cloven-hooved beast,
the fawn, the doe, the buck
that bound and warily snip the leaves.

O! Praise upon the moose
its dark muscular tranquility,
slipping out then into shadow.

O! Praise upon the bighorn sheep
who cling nimble to cliffs and know
to climb sideways, cracking
resolved conflicts down
the mountainside.

For blessed are the cloven-hooved,
named and unnamed,
surefooted, fleet, horned and innocent,
that grace the graven icons of demons.

I am prone to tracing crosses
in near empty ashtrays.
I don't really know why,
but this behavior, perhaps
a tick of the mind to the finger
tips me into some grievous
absolution while slowly,
knowingly, killing myself
smooth, drag after drag.

But that, in itself,
is mere supposition.

Perhaps I seek direction
in an ashen compass,
ringed with bent
singed needles
piled at the edges
because not a single one
found true north.

But that, again,
is mere supposition.

Down,
in The Valley of Fires,
where three rivers converge,
a cross on a rock emerges,
scratched stone upon stone
by a hand more ancient than known
to pass unto me a pattern, hard-wired,
affixed in all our yearning - to seek
that single point - home.

But that, too, is mere supposition.