There's a brisk autumn wind sweeping the ochre
and rust farm fields and that late summer hazy
that had hung above the valley for weeks, warm
and comforting, leaves with the scudding clouds.
The fragrance of burning fields, pungent but
yet somehow sweet-smelling and mildly
memory-provoking, charges the senses as it weaves
among the parched, plucked corn stalks, while from a
distant corner of the field an animated scarecrow,
clad in shredded polyester, has reign over the field
but instead flags a ride with the north wind.
It too seems to sense time calls for it to move along.

--

It's the tear of a brother
who is slipping into, out of
confusion, oblivion,
dementia.
A tear of recognition,
of reassurance.
How to weigh
this tear?
How do I
preserve it?
What value
this tear?
Priceless.

*Written prior to my
brother's death

Gliding just above the aspen thickets,
nearly scraping their golden canopies,
I cling to this exquisite dream hawk
for all it's worth. Dipping and hovering
as the hawk is prone to do, I am soaring
with the updraft to where the air grows
thin, I'm becoming faint, and the world below
is somehow irrelevant. I can even see my
disheveled bed below where I lie dreaming.
Gliding, soaring, hovering, in my dreams
of flying I soar tree-level and prefer gliding.
I fear falling at the upper heights, but
this time, in this dream, I am become brave,
choosing instead to challenge the cumulus
and with no fear loosen "the surly bonds".
--

A drink isn't hard to swallow,
but a divorce, a lost child, death, they are.
The wind comes up, blows away dreams,
ends marriages, sifts through plans,
hopes, throws out what it wants.

A drink isn't hard to swallow,
but growing old, pain, dying dogs, they are.
The wind comes up, tears our garments,
exposes our frailties, our nakedness,
thoughtlessly shreds our defenses.
At times like these
A drink isn't hard to swallow.
---

I wonder if her death has been duly noted,
whether the trees in the forests became hushed,
the wind paused for a few respectful minutes,
and the rivers that run wild, grew briefly tamed.
Did anyone notice light was somehow less bright,
and that a far-away star flashed and disappeared?
In her honor, did the fragrance of wild flowers flood
the woods and did even the tiniest of creatures pause
in their meanderings, not comprehending the why,
only aware that something good that was there, is gone?

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)

autumn wind –
it's the ground's turn
to display leaves

--

he'd forgotten
how many years it'd been . . .
falling leaves

--

falling leaves –
many sad memories
gathering today


.

There is no night like a bayou night,
the air pregnant with expectancy and
mystery, mingling scents of wisteria,
trumpet honeysuckle and gumbo mud -
a Dark Ages alchemist seeking an elusive
golden fragrance. It's a night dark despite
the nearly full moon, a night in which
fireflies pulsate as so many flickering
neon bulbs and the cacophony of insects
reaches toward an unattainable crescendo.

Mammoth cypress trees line the bayous,
letting fall Spanish moss as strands of ghostly
gray-green hair, and the oppression of dark
is waiting just beyond the searching lantern.
At times the wind moans like a sated lover,
at other times it howls wildly, but it's always
present and always vocal to those who
would listen. There could be fear in such nights,
or there can be a love of the mysteries inherent
with the bayous - I choose the love of the bayous.

I lived in Louisiana about nine years,
and there are many things about that
state I still love - bayous being one of them.


--

Early dusk and it's as if
all the birds have memorized
lullabies; they've quieted
to delicate refrains
as the summer sun descends
flame orange and spent
to its western berth. Birds huddle
deep within the cradling
catalpa trees and murmur
in their soft way to one other,
barely audible to those who
would listen, perhaps
reassuring each other that
the night will not be long.

--

It's a difficult thing, admitting I've
grown old, no longer denying the truth
and feeling mortality's cold breath which
until now I've not wanted to accept.
In those flourishing days of my youth
I often felt as if I could outgrow my skin,
heaving and throbbing with life's lust,
but now I feel I am shrinking back,
too far back into this aging shell,
finally seeing how I'm at the autumn
of my life while it gathers about me
as brittle leaves swirl about a lamppost.

--

Several miles beyond, the dark mountain
looms threateningly - mirroring my mood
as we both brood coldly. Snow clouds hold
grip of its peaks and melt in an icy drizzle to the
umber, wind-swept valley below.

Inside this dank motel room with its peeling
walls, my addiction is both hidden and enhanced.
The room's grimy window is closed to the world
by a threadbare curtain which hangs
askew, sealing me inside my drunken cocoon.
I can now lift bottles to my mouth with abandon,
gratefully lacking the contempt of others.

A tinny television mutters a string of profanities
from a corner, and a faucet drips incessantly into
the filthy sink. It all seems to echo into what I
have evolved. I have become as this dead fly,
scraping back and forth along the window sill,  
manipulated by currents of stale air.

_

The night holds no sway over me,
for I am darker by double
the darkest of night shadows.
This heart has come to no other
purpose than to prolong life,
having years before given over
any love, belief, good ambition.
Wail as you might, night winds,
rage against this hardened heart,
for it shall no longer be moved
to fear nor to cater to hope.

Apparently the encoaching winter
has put me in a darker mood.

Lacking self-respect, I again seek her out,
my wounded heart oozing intimate poetry,
sonnets and pleadings of love in my
addiction to her lustful wine red lips,
mesmerizing pale thighs and *******.
She smiles perfect teeth, indifferently
sipping on one of my love poems but then
spews minute flecks, revealing nothing,
perhaps feeling nothing; I'm certain her heart
remains either dormant or nonexistent.
I know her ****** routine so well as she
becomes that familiar raptor, and I allow
her to sink razor talons deeply in my nape.
Night animals stir with fear as she carries
me off toward the blistered moon, trailing
precious bits of my love, her sensuous
midnight blue silhouette seared into
this dulled brain as my dreams of reciprocal
love are left smoldering on the foul ground,
all for another night of disdainful love.

---

The old farmer hung back,
as rickety and battered as the
‘50s Allis-Chalmers tractor upon

which he leaned, hunched,
clung, as if the auctioneer's words
and the wind might carry him off

like the implements he'd treasured
much of his life, machines with
which he had toiled and sweated

and which had helped him chisel
out a meager existence in his
40 years on the farm. His wife was

dead now, his children scattered
like the clucking chickens and hissing
geese, all he had left were memories

and the old homestead, and it was
leaving him bit by bit on the backs
of creaking pickups and low boys

and stuffed into the cavities of shiny
new Cadillacs and Buicks. The cruel
wind had driven in from the southwest,

stealing a little more topsoil from the
threadbare farm, swirling and *******
at tattered curtains still hanging in

the mouths of grimy windows left ajar.
With each piece of his life leaving
down that gravel road, a draining

of his dreams and energies followed.
A few more raps of the gavel and he
too would be as dust in the wind.

--

Just before waking this morning
I dreamed I was still walking with
a cane - I found myself walking in a
very shallow stream, wading nicely
as it were with just the cane - lift one
foot and then the other, no longer tripping
and falling. No need for the walker,
no need for the wheelchair, just the cane.
I was free again. My mother, who
had died years before, was in my dream
and I was showing her and my wife how
I could suddenly wade in the stream
with just a cane. It felt so wonderful. Then
I awoke and after taking a few minutes
to clear my head, struggled to my feet and
with the aid of the walker, dragging the
bad leg along, I made my way into the
kitchen and brewed some really strong
coffee. If I was going to be awake
I may as well be ****** wide awake.

--

morning snow –
a canyon wren singing
just above silence

--

skimming
the belly of a storm front –
southbound geese

--

in the hollow
of an oak tree –
hollow of a nest

.

Tall prairie grass, wind-swept and
burnished gold, whispers with the
long-dead voices of all who passed
on this trail in their dream voyage
to Oregon, or California, or who
died, disease-ridden, exhausted, to be
buried just off the rutted trail
under a lonely stretch of sod
or cairned atop a barren lava bed.

A bone-white wagon tongue,
its carriage long ago disintegrated
and fallen into splintery planks,
laps thirstily at the dry sod along the
edge of the trail, finding only
parched earth and no water, burrs
and beetles instead of hydration.
More prairie than desert but still
more a place to leave behind, only
insects, lizards, hawks and the curious
chickadees seem to make it home,
this dusty stretch of history.

Hawks hover, then spiral effortless
high above, as they did so many years
ago, dark against a soft patchwork
of azure blue sky and creeping clouds.
The occasional click of grasshoppers
is barely audible in the billowing prairie
grass shaken by the incessant wind.
Dry bones of beasts and luckless humans
hug the edges of the trail, mute testimony
to the brutality of the westward rush
and the following of the Oregon Trail.

--

Going back out,
that's what he fears most.
To resume his last
miserable drunk,
homeless, loveless, broke.
Scratching up money for a fifth
of whatever he's drinking
- ***** when he's semi-flush,
cheap wine when he's not.

Lacking the guile to beg or steal,
he washes dishes in a dive
for a meal and a bottle,
sweeps out bars for drinks,
knowing he can't hold a job
much longer than a day.
Scavenging cigarette butts
from barroom trash cans.
No place to get out of the cold
except for the missions
and flop houses.

And he hates the flop houses
with their toothless managers
spreading their ****-eating grins.
He dreads the city winter
as the cold seeps in and wraps
its tendrils around him,
and he fears seeing one more
sooty gray dawn with grizzled men
like himself mindlessly shuffling,
searching for the next drink.

He fears the back alleys,
fears he's destined
to live in their filth, huddled
in whatever hole or box he can find.
No longer caring for himself,
just craving alcohol.
That insatiable craving.
And it's the grayness he fears,
the empty, pallid expanse
of his remaining years
and losing people who
used to love him.

He's frightened of going out
and not coming back.
And he fears thoughts of suicide.
He has no answers to why he drinks,
why he gives in to the bottle.
His mind cannot or will not grasp
that final thought.
---

twilight trees –
a flock of blackbirds
empties the shadows

--

morning mist
lifts from the forest
. . . a haiku rolls in


.

It's the smell. The smell of hundred-year-old
hardwood floors in this old school I recognize most,
floors grown thick and corpulent with untold layers
of pine-scented oil - floors darkened, smoothed
by the trample of children herded, then corralled
in dank stables down those long corridors. I also
remember the confinement I felt, pinned within
those stables, wanting nothing more than to run free,
with the wind of youth combing my untamed hair.

–

Sadly, she was consumed, fated
long before I ever met her, soaked
to her precious core with cigarettes,
cheap wine and strong tranquilizers,
fighting the demons that clawed at her soul
whenever she tried living and loving
free of the chemicals.
Her demons I would never want to share,
although I was all too eager
to share her bed, share her days
without contributing what she needed,
and so she continued to drink
and laugh with that sad spirit the
laugh of the condemned, until
she finally drifted from life into death
and I hope, no, I pray into the peace
she had desperately sought while
confronting her living wasteland.

--

on the grass where
the dappled fawn had lain –
dappled sunlight

--

humid night . . .
only the cat's tail
stirs the curtains

--

a leaf flutters
in an old spiderweb
. . . these gray clouds

--

swirling leaves –
the tattered scarecrow
flashes a motorist


.

Praying on still more
of the man-made nectar,
it's a hooded monk on the wing
and it kneels at the bright
blood-red throne
swaying just shy of heaven,
genuflects several times
while vocalizing its disdain,
sips hurriedly of my offering
and then scuds away without
so much as a blessing save
for the assurance of its
repeated appearances.

--

How is it that another's love
can be so easily abandoned,
so thoughtlessly divested, like an
indifferent breath exhaled into
the frigid morning, visible but
for an instance then vanishing,
and meaning nothing at all?

--

**** this bitter dusk!
Shadows of my death gather
about me, torment me.
Ah, these waning years -
the good years disappear
and what was once sweet,
turns bittersweet, then sour.
Only memories remain
of all those shameful years
and memories have become
a caustic and hated bile.
**** this bitter dusk!

--

We'd laugh at life
if it weren't so serious;
we'd laugh at death
if we weren't afraid;
we'd laugh at pain
if it didn't hurt so much;
we'd laugh at circumstances
but we'd get nowhere.
I suppose, truth be known,
we'd laugh if only we
hadn't forgotten how.

--

I would hope to die early
should I grow too old to dream,
to believe in something,
anything, or feel the red-hot surge
of ambition and love's pulsing.

--

It's deep night, damp and sticky with the
residue of southern heat which refuses to
totally dissipate this far into the night.

The night is thick with the voices of insects
and sleepers sweating atop their sheets,
committing sins in their vivid imaginings.

Dreaming, I'm standing by the wide river
wishing I could fly with the breeze through
the trees, the soft, warm, cradling breeze

that comes up from the Mississippi River.
It stirs the boughs of cypress and oak trees
and arouses a wind chime's music somewhere

down the dimly-lit street, while scattering
a newspaper like huge leaves; a wind that smells
of magnolia and dogwood blossoms and

river mud. A full moon casts long shadows
which melt into even darker, yet benign
shadows. The night has compiled its secrets,

mysteries, transgressions; surely that is the
charm of night - it frees the mind to settle not
on what seemed important during the day,

but on the longings kept locked away, hidden
from the disclosing light, struggling to break
free and take wing with this night wind.

--

Here is Cedar Draw, a stream which
spills free from the dam upstream
and then slowly licks its way westerly
among the billowing cottonwood
and volcanic boulders that still appear red-hot,
flattening out, pooling here and there
where fat trout and perch can feed
on luckless grasshoppers and mayflies
blown into the water by the wind.

Here is Cedar Draw, widening into
lush shallows with bulrush and cat-tails
clicking in the wind, showy red-winged
blackbirds clinging to stalks high above
the waterline, and where snowy egrets
ply the mossy banks for frogs. The
only sound heard is the chittering of
birds and that warm summer breeze
softly moaning and sighing for you alone.

Here is Cedar Draw, as fine a place
a poet could every hope to find to relax,
meditate, sip a little port wine, tease the
iridescent-blue damselflies that abound
here, cool one's feet at water's edge,
scribble in a notebook disjointed thoughts
that may or may not make it into a poem,
perhaps to doze a little and finally to
rouse up and thank your muse for such
a great day and such a splendid spot.

--

I feel that familiar guilt everytime
my shadow darkens her headstone.
Ever the errant son, my visits
to her grave come once a year -
Memorial Day, penitentially, flowers
in hand. However, the preacher
said her soul is no longer here
so I've adopted that rationale.
Mom, I know you're not supposed
to be there, but if you are,
forgive me, again. Your son.

--

The road to the South Hills always
has a message for me, always wants
to whisper something secret to me.
This special autumn day it's a
message that the hills have groomed
themselves and are ready for me
to be overwhelmed by their beauty.
The hills await me, the road whispers,
and the road reveals to me how
the hills have clothed themselves—
brightest autumn finery brought out
again this year from stuffy, hidden
trunks, with gold and yellow dresses
now covering the spindly legs
and knobby knees of quaking aspen,
while brilliant saffron sashes gird
the expanse beyond the trees,
with willows trimmed in scarlet
and ochre meadows completing
fall's wardrobe, but for the mist.
Above it all, a misty veil hovers softly
between trees and mountains on days
such as this. Of course I'm perfectly
willing to be lead by the road, for
I relish where it always seems to lead—
for this road never lies to me.

--

God, how I hate these reflections,
these abhorrent reflections,
not just the one in the mirror,

but the reflections of my life
clattering around in my brain.
I could shower, shave, slap a mask

over this aging face,
this wretched, etched face,
but what to do about regrets

for all those wasted years?
The *****, the drugs, the
remorse over lost relationships?

Time goes on, and didn't someone
once say that time heals?
Now there's a hell of a laugh!

It doesn't necessarily heal -
if you're not careful
it produces more to regret.

Regrets are compounded and
pain becomes razor-sharp, relentless
with the advance of time.

And I've got time on my hands -
its defilement won't wash off.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall" . . .

or should it be "memory, memory"?
Is it absolutely necessary I go through
this ever time I stand before you?

--

morning fog –
he sips a second coffee
to clear it

--

canyon trail –
my shadow falls
over the edge

--

winter moon
. . . the backlit shuffling
of thin clouds


.

The sleet
falls harsher,
colder than
I've experienced.
The morning's color is no longer
color, simply achromatic, and
my heart warms neither
to this canvas, nor the
brushes, nor to her
smile, not even
to the dog.

–

It's probably always been there, this
transcendent connection, a strand
to the ethereal, a most excellent
poetic cord smothered by youth
and denied each time it reared its
beautiful head, left to writhe, waiting
the day when age and character
finally fashion the person into a poet.

What use had youth for deeper emotion
other than lust? What use the forming
of feelings into higher expressions,
so often ridiculed by the young?
Comes the day, however, when beauty
and sensitivity prevail and poetry flips
on the switch to enlightenment.

--

Neutral seems
to be the sum of
all my colors - any color,
any combination - no matter
what I mix on this diminishing
palette called my remaining years,
all that emerges is futility
and grayness. Is
this what my life
has become?

–

I suppose the secret to happiness
as we grow older is living to enjoy
each day, not the sum of all our days.
If we tally the days, the years, it becomes
a cumbersome affair and we begin
to labor under its unyielding weight.

--

Oh spring,
if you were but mortal,
or better yet, that I

was the May breeze,
you and I could make
such passionate love,

for I have long been
enamored by you.
Like loving fingers

through cascading hair,
I would weave magic
in your meadow grasses

and flowering trees.
I would move over your
greening landscapes

with a most ardent touch
and spread the intoxicating
fragrance of your

blossoms as a priceless
perfume for the only
one I could ever truly love.

I would caress your
billowing clouds, ferrying
them gently about, and

we would lie naked upon
their undulating waves
and allow the sun to warm us.

God, what a dreamer! What
a spell spring has cast.
Oh, if I were but the breeze.

Another spring poem I thought
I would put before you -
perhaps bring some warmth into
the reading

---

Sometimes it is, poor Sylvia,
that we cannot find the answers. They're
not to be found clinking about in the stars,
blowing about in the August wind,
or blooming among the tea flowers, no matter
how scented. No charlatan soothsayer discerns.
No pull of the cards deciphers. If answers come
at all they'll be found deep within yourself, only.
Don't we all prove that countless, wretched
times? But know this, dear Sylvia, even though it's too
late for your sanity and your life, your daddy didn't
die because of you, for you, by you. Death simply
drew the line and pulled him across.

What were you to do when life puzzled you
to the limit, when all poems disappointed,
when the ink failed to flow smoothly,
the pen tore at the paper and the paper
turned to ash before a line could be written down?
What to do when your child's smile failed to ignite
motherhood, when Daddy's image floated in and out, when
emotional pain dragged you terrified under its
black cerement, that cold, wet, smothering grave cloth?

Fear, oh my God, fear, and the doubt that you had,
the whirling about of a shattered mind, bouncing
from this trap to the other - your muted, stifled inner
screams unheard, or worse, unexpressed. Yes,
you found a solution, poor Sylvia, but suicide
doesn't always equate with an answer. You found a
sad poem, a dirge to be exact, something that moves
us, but there is no rhyme to it and the ending is an
enigma, a great puzzle yet to be invoked, understood.

----

out of shadow —
an eagle's wing
touched by the sun

--

morning light
traces the frosted trees –
winter's brush

.

Tonight's full moon,
flush with its brilliance
for one night a month,
casts perfect shadows
from imperfect people.

--

playground –
a popsicle wrapper
skips in the wind


.

Your words, like razorblades,
lacerate and penetrate
this grasping heart.
I've cried out many times in pain,
pleading with you, asking why
you can't simply walk away
and leave with me a portion
of my heart to lose elsewhere.

--

The teenager sits curled around
herself in rehab, matted hair, skeletal arms
bruised by needles, scarred wrists,
metal gouged grotesquely into and around
every orifice, sunken eyes exuding
a generous measure of fear and defiance.
God, She could be my daughter,
had my daughter inherited
my weaknesses and propensities.
Her demeanor tells me more
than her lack of words -
She is filthy, scabby, loathsome.
She looks at me and I can tell she's
thinking the same of me.
Judgmental *****!

--

The old dog drags his tired, sore
body into his familiar curl beside
my chair, sighs heavily and enters
once again that dream where
he runs carefree and painlessly
through the sweet meadow grass,
a meadow known only to him
and the newly-young man following.

--

The breeze carries magic
on this flourishing spring morn,
with the scent of lilacs inspiring
memories of golden days and
long lavender nights with you.
How long ago has it been
when in the depth of innocence,
of youthful lust that current
of something crystal clear
and sweet coursed through me
with each thought of you?
Closing my eyes, you are here
beside me, vibrant and utterly
charged with sensuality, and
just as easily, you are diminished,
like the promise of my life.

Obviously not spring now, but
a poem I started then and finished
today

--

I've been trying to poet off and on
now for awhile - but it's hard for a guy
like me, born and raised in small towns.

I've never really learned to swear,
not like a poet anyway. Not like Bukowski.
I mean, what kind of poet would

the world expect me to be? Except that
I'll admit I can drink with the best.
A Huffstickler I'm not, or a Bukowski,

or Etter, or Kerouac - guys who knew the
big towns, the *****, the dives, the rehabs,
the back alleys, park benches, soup kitchens,

flop houses, drug pushers — Humm, come to
think of it, we got all those here. But not
the all-important big town poet attitude.

I'm just this hick, delusional perhaps,
trying to fill a blossoming hole inside
of me that grumbles and claws for more,

and there's gotta be more to life than this crap.
In poeting I used to try and rhyme, like as
in "poor" and "*****", but there's

no rhyme to life, just grab it and clench.
Just life, death, burial and maybe a little
something for the dog afterwards.

The preacher says there's more,
the devil tells me to forget it,
(I'll listen to him occasionally).

So, for me, I'll probe a little deeper and
scrutinize a little harder, perhaps drink a
little heavier, and maybe find a plug

out there that'll fill the hole inside me.
Maybe even put it in words.
Become a poet.
--

My mother died alone in the nursing home.
That sweet mouth that once whispered
comfort to my child's ear when I cut a lip,
scraped a knee, or suffered my first heartbreak,
was now open to the world, awkwardly caught
in a gasp for one more precious breath of life.

She so richly deserved my presence that day,
and paid in advance with tears over the years,
as I wasn't always the son I should have been.
This was a visit which was not afforded
because something, something very asinine
on television kept me from her bedside
on that final morning of her precious life.

The news came in a sympathetic phone call.
"Sorry Mr. Gossett, but your mother has died."
I continued staring deeply, analytically at
something, something on the television
that morning, wondering if this was really how her life
should have ended, so alone, with dead eyes staring
to the side, still hoping to see the son who was
too engrossed to be there. I'm sorry, mother,
one last time I have to tell your how sorry I am.

--

even on gloomy
days, the sparrow's song –
warmth of her smile

--

cumulus –
a hawk spirals down
the updraft

--

ancient pine –
the sun climbing
limb by limb

.

The dream haunts me
often, far too often, building
in intensity but is initially
disguised in absurdity and the
nonsense of a young man's lusts
with an old man's deficits.
This woman-like entity,
ill-defined at first but forming
voluptuously, emerges from
swelling curtains. She moves, more
levitates, toward my bed, buoyed
by what I don't know, but angelic-like
it would seem. Or perhaps
an Aphrodite reincarnate?

Oh this goddess, what pale
skin, as Parian marble, full bosomed,
jutting *******, ***** that
beckon, nearly drool, and pursed
red lips beaded with sweet
juice stolen from the wild cherry
tree beneath my window.
Far too much clarity for a simple
dream. But such a dream! And what
seething testosterone I feel!
I am become a hedonist, raging,
pulsing spermatozoa, renewed
of time and youthful energies.

Nerve into nerve we join, ecstacy
compounding ecstacy, bodies wantonly
impaling the other on this love bed
to the result that each cell of our
individualities melds. We are indistinct,
yes - as one, and any ****** impulse
between us is shared to the point of
utter exhaustion, depletion. I am
nearly drained of life, it would seem.

Then, as it always must,
the scene changes, Act II.
Inexplicably, shedding a ******
serpentine-like skin, she slings it away
and drops limply upon me - entirely
skeletal, dry cartilage, sinew, lifeless,
sexless, motionless. The horror
of a diabolical hollowness
stares through me, and I am
suspended, fully terrorized, in
this paralysis. So, this is
succumbing to the Succubus?
God, my dear God, that I should
never dream again!

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