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.

If I take to my drill and tin snips,
cut slits for my eyes in a bucket
of galvanized steel;

If I fashion from spent, inked
aluminum plates the newspaper
doesn't need anymore
a flimsy laminar armour;

If I stride donned in these and
perhaps with a blade of splintering
moulding left after the renovation
into the yard to hack at the vile
violet hyacinth blooms
laying siege to the aging tulip,
presuming to take the edge
gardens by attrition,

would you see as once you saw,
my sweet Dulcinea, the quixotic buffoon
so deep in delusion,
so madly in love with you.

Down by the mud banks of Skunk Creek,
checking out the meniscus up the water strider's legs,
waiting for the bullheads to spit stones into a Roman mosaic,
hoping the undulating green algae would flow auburn
like the hair of Venus blown by the wild gawking turkeys
in the tall grass. But that's another museum.
That's a different day in the gallery
below the bur oak bowers
where the cottonwood seed floats on a breath
as if examining the probability of falling too soon
upon the water.

Rejoice!
This sweltering band of pariahs raised
through one hand, one voice,
dragging chain like kitetails,
stable on cloud, though untethered.

The unfed gape,
pitcher plants in empty nests.
Even flies evade this truth.

Rejoice!
Mingle the sweats of our bare naked bones,
lost nosegays, groping green garlics thrown,
half-gnawed red raw chicken ******* blown
out and festering in pits,
garbage cans,
coffees slow whisked to instant
black ground,
whether silken and dazzling,
whether burlap and scratching,
linens that never hold a press,
admit the one stench
that no weave contains.

Rejoice!
All ye cast off jesters and janglers,
jasmine untanglers,
rejoice and submit
to this one sweet stench
that is we.

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.

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, a faceless one in violet turned and walked away.

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, down-***** to nowhere, a faceless one in violet turned. Turned and walked away.

The day you called me ****** lover
was the afternoon of my dissent
from the back alley boys club
and rolled dungaree territories
marked off down where the long
lines of chain link bend right
where the churchyard intervenes
between us and the snowball stand.

You might think you whipped me tight
but my decision to include a new friend
that dipped jars in the crick for tadpoles
behind the brick young family roads
was mine to make and that black eye
and ****** nose to this very day
this very night remains.

Don't be knocking on techno's door
for a shot of stale whiskey and fond golden
shots of what we were when we weren't
and will never be. Yea, you posted
that pic of the back alley boys
shirtless, hairless, rolled dungarees
all smiling like jack rabbits on the run,

But it was Michael, Michael that showed
me how a tadpole becomes a frog.
It was Michael that rode the Comet
at Hershey with me, alone, because
we couldn't or wouldn't run
with the back alley boys who still
don't know what they've done.

Sharp edge of a coldfront
stands west of Dells,
a rigid lead line on a ridge
where the leanin' broke-roof barn
stands ready to take in buckets.

Ain't been scavenged
for old wood yet,
for picture frames,
sold,
where the upwardly mobile,
shop for the quaint, rustic things,
reshaped for authenticity,
and a clipped last year
wall calendar
image of a red barn
in a yellow field,
below a blue
cloudless sky,
following
the perfect rule
of thirds.

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.

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

Come, O Love for down the vale,
Where moonlight frocks the lovers’ tale,
Where moonlight mulls the staves of trees
And shreds the fuschia from the leaves.

Come, O Love for down the vale,
Where cleave and stumble long prevail,
And woolen grass reveals the press
Of all that slept there shorn of dress.

Come down the vale for it is known
The miller’s grain was never grown
Here below long-shadowed stone.
Come, O Love, and come alone.

Put down your labor’s winnowed sheaf.
Lay down in heaven’s gentle brief.

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

I used to live downwind of the slaughterhouse,
the one below the high bluff where the state pen towers,
commanding the best view of the marsh lands
and the stink ponds making lime outta ****
for the crops not meant for human consumption;
by the dry grass parks with the broken backboards
and the netless hoops that never slow a ball down.

I used to live downwind of the rendering plant
where the bubbling lard becomes aerosol
and the air reeks of freezerburn bacon and feces,
below the high bluff where the trustees cut grass
in the clean air not meant for the locals
mixing with the immigrants and loser folk
who have knots in their shoelaces that
press against bone when chasing a loose ball.

This town never grew up. Doesn't need to.
There's plenty of ground for the taking.
Plenty of farmers selling out to the downtown club
who cobble the streets in past time fashion,
netting big gains from the professional set
lining the smooth roads annexed to the east.

I used to live downwind of the closing in stink
of renewal, where the cheap rentals and struggle
stores with the marked-up Walmart brands
lining the shelves - expired but still edible -
bide their short time compressed and diced
up like leftovers for dogs.

But this is America. I don't live there anymore.
I got myself a cush gig with a padded ladder
to the top. Did everything I needed to do
for that sure climb out into a cleaner air,
only to find myself bruise-faced and reeling
when the profits didn't match the dream
and the ladders were sold for scrap.

I am the stickman you drew as a kid,
the one you flipbooked on the corners
of every Christmas catalogue that hogged
your time and pencil.

Oh how smooth you drew me - and thin.
And I remember when you gave me a bike,
rolled me right off the page, right there
at the hardwares - those Gifts For Dads.

I see you bought a sketchpad,
and some conte's and charcoal.
I suppose you draw much fuller men now.
No, I never spoke, just eyed you.

And you didn't see me that day at all,
that time I was jiggered on the steps
of Woolworth's, smoking a blunt
at the corner of Fifth and Deluded, watching you.

Why? Well, I didn't want you to see.
Or perhaps I wanted another go,
strobed and animate, not fat and gristle,
walking among the things you'll never buy.

She was crushed ice,
great for chewing,
bad for teeth.

She found me thirsty and pica,
down in the taps,
bounced and fanged.

And there she was, tall in the glass,
clear in her gaps but clouded
with lime in the hard stuff.

Yea, she yielded to my jaw,
ground her by the mouthful,
but my throat only dried,

dried that only a long pull
could quench it; dried such
that only a melting would do.

But when the water came down...
when the water came down,
she crumbled to a chunk.

And spinning in her way,
spinning in her way of refusing,
I set the glass down, parched.

But that's the way with ice and water -
that's the way,
somewhere north of thirty two,
but somehow south of liquors.

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.

Silent where they fell,
spent ash, dog hair, coffee grounds.
Silent as they were when useful -
for buzz, for warmth, for waking, now
bits of grit to grind down the slippers
and vanished for a pleasure.

Silent where they fell,
old debts dismembered,
chunks of glass that could perhaps
be re-assembled as candy dishes
or ashtrays - maybe porches
where the chew jaw geezers
took summer and low orange light
way back when.

And the sun fell where it falls,
like threadbare throw rugs
and beaters, old dogs
chained to trees,
and the red rust Fords
thumped by the woodpile
and scavenged for parts -
silent playthings for children
racing in the torn sprung seats.

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.

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?

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.

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 not the sapling or bit snow
that scrapes the window, coaxing,
Come out little boy, come out -
Come out where the sting wind blows
Come out where the wind plays a sapling
as a rube to scratch its bidding on a window.
That little life left tight against the foundation
missed in the pruning now the dim witted
accomplice to the sound of nails slow-scraped
on a chalkboard pane, Come out little boy.
And the spine shakes as the windchimes
rattle like keys, rattle like mother’s teeth
sharp above the crib, and taken to the breast
of winter, that cold milked ******,
that rippling drift. And that lullaby sings
another to sleep while the smallest of rodents
dig deep and wait, wait in some self made heat
that little boys and little girls somehow forgot
when the first snow fell upon their tongues
and they tasted death for the first time -
wet and quick gone with eyes slow closed.

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...

In the gathering steam and sizzle,
innocence borne on the cleft tongues
and snake oiling scales of just and rust,
turn green in the enzymes -
the endtimes just months away
from release and streaming.

My god has it been this long?
Broth turned to black reduction,
caramelized,
forgotten on a back burning coil,
while I sniffed the air for musk
and cardamom,
while I taste the dirt and slick
crushed biscuits in the mat,
and for what?

Steam carries dissolution,
no two ways about it,
flavor is the concentration
of dead upon dead,
scraped up fond of burning things.

This is madness,
conflagration,
cultivated extermination,
but I reel and I swoon
and roll back repulsion
with a carnivore's lust for melting fats,
with a vegan's lust for imitation,
with a child's zest to burn ants
with sunbeams, focused
to a pinprick.

On the face of it
is  a mountain.
Below that,
orange sinus.

And in the long drip of it,
down to the lip of it,
a snot thing crawls.

But I took it on the chin,
lurching up to the clime
where leaves resolve
to needles, and the white
cliffs fall like beetles
in a tinderbox.

And the tangled lines
hooked below to stumps
and trinkets trickle
in the slipstream,
warm as mucous,
slow as dream,
bound to rust,
released as steam,
and effluents.

We got 6 bars and 6 churches,
each with similar congregations.
You might say we got that perfect
balance between grace and humiliation.

It doesn't end there, though.
We're run by a council of six,
if you include the mayor, Orin,
who lost the state election
because he couldn't represent
a cow if he had
crayons and construction paper.
He's got some creds,
if you take into account
he built a tractor museum
in a train depot
moved a half mile down
a minimum maintenance,
travel at your own risk road,
frequented by the hormonal.

But I digress. Oh yes,
we have a council of six,
each from one of the six
similar congregations,
each from one of the six
houses of libations.

However, every first Saturday,
they meet, informally so to speak,
under the torn tarp at Ernie's,
next to the beach volleyball pit
nobody uses, between the dumpsters
and the railroad tracks,
to discuss matters too urgent
for the formal published minutes.

They crinkle their Grain Bin cans
like phrenologists picking
out small crimes that paint
this town true, rural,
downwardly mobile,
cordoned off at the rim.

Few years back, they annexed
Bob Olson's back forty
for one helluva football complex
for our losing team. GO DRAGONS!
But we gotta have it.
Pay itself off in five years they said.
Rentals, events and all that claptrap.
Gloria walks her dogs on the track
everyday. Return on investment.
R O I.
At least she picks up the ****.

Third and Main got ripped up
a year ago last April.
Ain't been paved yet.
I suppose we're waiting
for those more appropriate
appropriations to accrue.

But that's alright,
we saved a fortune firing
our Andy and Barney PD
while Andy was in Afghanistan.
Don't know how they got away with it.
We get two hours of laws a day,
Deputy Dawgs, and meanwhile,
somebody's siphoning gas.
Pretty much sure it's that Keiser kid,
can't hold a job anyway.

I thought better of mowing the lawn today.
I looked at it a bit. Betty, across the street,
is giving me the side-eye as she sweeps
harvest dust from her shingles.
Well Bets, you fussbudget,
I'm working two jobs,
six days a week,
to live in this runt of a town,
so back the hell down.
You may be eighty and spry,
but you got five, count 'em five
courters with John Deere riders tending.

You see, here in the heartland,
where politic is a game played
with cheap beer and hard glances,
where the clapboard houses lose their paint,
where the new, polished surrounds
of seamless siding dictate appearance,
priority and expenditure,
where the churches and bars conspire
to define reputation and aspiration,
the manure-booted men
are denied the dignity of manure
for a sham - for a show
that barely covers the crust and wrinkles
of a town dying slow.

Small,
Still small.
The storm knows
As Nietszche knew,
the botched and bungled
fall. When the one great love
stalled with damp points and punch tires
stuck on the shoulder blinking out
flashers to no one in sight , the rise
behind - just wet exits and no beams bright.

Saps run before the weathers -
hordes of sugar in the root -
what little stays - thin and capillary,
above ground, contests
the filigreed fingers of water
with denser sweets.

And thus, unleaved and ****,
what to the eye appears barren,
rude to the dog-eyed sun,
summer nests exposed as frail,
stricken to bone in winter,
stands as a man I once knew -
propped by his own root,
wide as shade and none other.

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.

I can smell my own pits,
my night sweats,
****** up in my week
unwashed robe.

I am disgusted.

And yet, there,
in the garment bags,
lingered in your suits,
your suits I brought home
from your funeral
in the sands so long far gone,
remains these same
and bitter musks.

And there, in the bags,
the pastes of rose wallpapers,
struggled up but aligned remain.

And there, in the bags,
a spruce topped Goya,
thick hipped as forests
and earth angels remains,
there before a sniff.

And though I sit here
in the acrid smoke and
coffee fumes, wondering
breakfast and baths,
you stand stiff as dry-clean,
tall on the hangers,
held and never squandered
for a tear, there,
thankfully there,
the scent of you remains.

Dogfish bait and a late teasing wind
slacks the line, the one binding
monofilament of time
and lost momentum
sagged from a raft adrift -
waiting -
and never enough
to sum the formulae,
the vagaries,
vicissitudes,
uncoiling from the reel
set with loose drag.

A stag in the sea still drowns,
still thrashes until the rack
goes down
one
last
time
one
last
breath
before the flounder is spitting
hair and bone
and the titanic hulk
becomes the soft stuff
of mollusks.

The waning day conducts the night chorus
in the clicking of the chipping sparrow
in the electric pulse of cicadas
and rasping claws of gray squirrels
on flaking bark and cedar fences.

Robins tremolo puddles like dogs
and cut grass fumes with notes
of parsley and cracked pepper
as the starlings dig in for the night
shoulder to shoulder in the ash
raised like a baton for the next movement

When the lights dim and a nail
of the moon polished smooth
plucks a single string and strums
the minor chords of owls on frogs
and the nightswift's perfect fifth.

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.

If I gave thanks yesterday,
must I do so today?

If I gave thanks that the tires
held traction, there on the black ice,
unthrottled toward the jack-knifed
semi, folded in the median,
thumping through clods
of thrown and frozen earth,
would that be enough?

Would it be enough to be grateful
for the physics of glide,
steer with the slide, after all,
it was only mustard I needed,
coarse ground for the sauce,
for the sauce that will remain
untouched on the table,
peppered with panic and ****.

The ape of reason
wakes inside the primate house
throws **** at the glass
and the gawking apparitions
whose eyes align with his own reflection
but for a few seconds

waits for the one who knows
the one who carries the yellow bucket
stuffed with limp greens
sprung grain and stink meat
to spill the feast on the concrete slab
he calls a pedestal

scratches at lice
his only bedmates
small
irritating
but his own familiar feeders

calling dumb and barbarous
the macaque in the next cell over
calling loud the howlers
calling lewd the bonobos
calling brethren the chimpanzees
who wage war on the neighboring troop.

Dangling on the burn end of a breath,
is a word -
gaunt, untenable, reliable.

Dangling on the burn end of a breath,
is a syllable -
unto nothing, unspeakable -

until the rattle rains its verdict.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
a word -
gaunt, untenable, reliable
as the long tone of wind in tall grasses.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
a syllable -
unto nothing, unspeakable
as the split airs among the spruce
wind
breaks.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
the better half of Bartlett pear,
lightning struck,
bows and groans along the cedar
fence,
into the bass clef of everything
that clings.

Orange pulse light and embers
conspire to darken a moonless night
blacker than eyes, blacker
than the slurs of late tires
commuting,
communing
with cricket brushes,
the snare beat of toads.

Dangling on the burn end of breath,
music -
unconducted, underscored, decomposed
by the rattling rains of silence and smoke.

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.

The orange slim line of the chopper overhead
Means only one thing here - certainty.
Certainty that northeast of where I stand
Is a near departure,
Perhaps wedged behind a wheel.
I will count the minutes
As I count thunders and strikes.
I can do nothing else.

For in the next thick hour
In the next thick breath,
A mother may weep a son,
A father may curse the winter ice,
Perhaps wail a daughter’s name.

We must all then pause and wait,
Listen and turn away from this moment
Of our own sure circumstance
And bow our heads to the certainty
Of another, out there,
Uncertain in the crumpled snow.

What was it, that chocolate crust
scalded in the *** from yesternight,
leaning, off-burner, with the dangling
spoon, wooden and stained?

Best give it a soak, my love,
that tomorrow we may find
its nature framed tight in stainless,
framed tight in the soap bubbles
that have raced and cling
to the round squat walls.

Perhaps we may find, tomorrow,
among the gray pepper-flecked film,
risen to the surface, a few plump kernels
of our own yellow yesterday.

First the eagle glid low overhead.
Then the farm cat, lame and tabby,
limped from bumper to dumpster,
while we smoked
and whined about our day.

Her eyes fold gently
as she takes bits of honeycrisp
from my fingertips -
the first from the tree,
still hard, ****,
warm in the thick after rain,
hinting at cinnamon.

Her usual distractions,
squirrel on wire,
bobbing heads of neighbor girls
on trampolines,
lifting reigns of monarchs
and viceroys, mourning cloaks,
slamming doors,  
jumbled voices beyond the fence,
bright musks of night prowlers
in the grass,
all ceased to beguile.

As if desirous of desire,
she stiffened at the first crack
of my teeth through the flesh
of this first apple,
then bounded across the lawn
and sat before me,
not as a beggar may,
but as an adherent
to the rites of giving.

Bit by bit,
taking each with neither lurching forth
nor brushing my fingers with her teeth,
her velvet black ears lain back,
her brown eyes reduced
to sweet slices of rapture,
she chews each in its time,
savoring each in its time,
not as a dog may,
but as a disciple
to Autumn's way
of giving.

She hates mushrooms
says they smell like dirt
and grow on **** and darkness

She hates green beans
because her thumbs still ache
from seven summers
snapping tips

She hates kale
because she don't wanna
chew for days
and her jaw clicks

She loves onions and garlic
the baseline
of everything going right

She loves the sweeter cabbages
melted down in bacon fat
topped with snap peas and walnuts

She'll cook for anybody
willing to listen
to her sizzling grease

She'll caramelize your mind
question every savory intention
every bitter herb in your teeth
salt every wound till it sweats
and goes limp in the pan

She travels with her tongue
her pantry her passport:
cumin, coriander, cinnamon,
cilantro and cardamom
in simmering stews of goat
and collard greens.

Her knife has a keen edge
and she cracks the joints of dead birds
like splitting cheap bamboo chopsticks.

Her eyes go wide and silent
at the range
and when the burners fire
the whole world gathers and waits.

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.

You left hair in the tub,
toothpaste splatter on the mirror,
a wadded towel on the rod,
wet footprints on the floorboards
marking a stumble to the kitchen
where you guzzled milk
from the carton, there with
the door open, cold spilling
out like flumes to your feet -
and I loved it.

A sudden spasm raked,
raked your shoulders,
your torso, all caught
ecstatic at the mingling
of milk and hot bath blood.

Wearing your robe
like a prizefighter,
pink to the ring
and gearing up for a bout
that never comes -
now that's the stuff
my sweet **** -
that's the stuff of the long fight,
the long familiar,
the mustache I lick from your upper lip.

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.

Bob Wilke
excelled at the close up
kind of magic -
that pick a card sort of thing -
great at parties,
when the chatter
is lacking
and the astonished
were a bit off-plumb
and didn't notice he ain't
practiced much.

Now Roy Dennison,
on the other hand,
would pull a maggot
from your nose
if he knew you were lying -
a fait accompli kind of thing.
He always said doves were too big,
too flighty, rabbits nibble his pockets,
and Roy, just too ******
lazy to feed 'em proper.

Emma McFadden,
oh - now
she
had
the apparatus -
that steampunk clinking thing
with exposed gears,
whirling barber poles,
horns that puked blue smoke
and methane, chain,
sawblades and springs,
flywheels and pulleys -
all the things necessary
to rip a body apart
and leave the choking crowd
gasping for more,
always wondering.

Some say they spotted her,
one or two times with a shovel
under that old scraggly sycamore
behind Dennison's place.
That may be the case or
just a bunch of flap, I don't know.
I ain't going back there, though
I do have some ideas
on the supply side
of Roy's maggots.

What a show.
Man oh man, those were the days.
What a show.

Winds don't speak my name,
just carry on,
foraging stone for beaches,
combing grass for a song
like a rasp on a bowsaw,
like a drop in a bucket,
galvanized and rusty.

Winds don't speak my name
and if I went to school tomorrow,
I'd be the the fool with the apple,
conjuring bribes of better grades
and gradients carved in sandstone
ledges.

Hedges don't smell the wind -
they turn noses -
let the stank come in.

Days of wine and roses
were nothing more than days of wine
and headaches, presupposing
that a functioning drunk
was less a drunk
and therefore unimposing.

So the winds don't speak my name,
but rather split and run,
as I stick my nose
in all that flows,
in all that liquid business.

Iridescence on the neck
of the boat-tailed grackle
is a trick of light.

Much the same
as the swirled acid
rainbow slitherings
of oils on water -
slick - metallic
the call.

Much the same
as the prismed arches,
aloof,
heavy airs slashed
by gut level
blades of low suns -
never there, but chaste
and chased by the eye.

The blue jay hoards
no pigment blue,
but gray conspires
the barbules,

interlocked
to lift the remains
of the speckled shell
under any light or lack,
slackened back,
flashed on limbs and wire:

back to the clutch,
back to the hatch,
back to the wide red cups,
back to the ratcheting call -
the screech of all things blue.