Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile**

July 4th and all is Hell.
Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble
with flame-loined kids in designer jeans
looking for people to **** or razor.
A madman covered with running sores
is on the street corner singing:
O beautiful for spacious skies…
This landscape is far too convenient
to be either real or metaphor.
In an alley behind a 7-11
a Black **** dressed in Harris tweed
preaches fidelity to two pimply ******
whose skin is white though they aren’t quite.
And crosstown in the sane precincts
of Brown University where I added rage
to Cliff Notes and got two degrees
bearded scientists are stringing words
outside the language inside the guts of atoms
and I don’t know why I’ve come back to visit.

O Uncle Adrian! I’m in the reservation of my mind.
Chicken bones in a cardboard casket
meditate upon the linoleum floor.
Outside my flophouse door stewed
and sinister winos snore in a tragic chorus.

The snowstorm t.v. in the lobby’s their mother.
Outside my window on the jumper’s ledge
ice wraiths shiver and coat my last cans of Bud
though this is summer I don’t know why or where
the souls of Indian sinners fly.
Uncle Adrian, you died last week—cirrhosis.
I still have the photo of you in your Lovelock
letterman’s jacket—two white girls on your arms—
first team All-State halfback in ’45, ’46.

But nothing is static. I am in the reservation of
my mind. Embarrassed moths unravel my shorts
thread by thread asserting insectival lust.
I’m a naked locoweed in a city scene.
What are my options? Why am I back in this city?
When I sing of the American night my lungs billow
Camels astride hacking appeals for cessation.
My mother’s zippo inscribed: “Stewart Indian School—1941”
explodes in my hand in elegy to Dresden Antietam
and Wounded Knee and finally I have come to see
this mad *** nation is dying.
Our ancestors’ murderer is finally dying and I guess
I should be happy and dance with the spirit or project
my regret to my long-lost high school honey
but history has carried me to a place
where she has a daughter older than we were
when we first shared flesh.

She is the one who could not marry me
because of the dark-skin ways in my blood.
Love like that needs no elegy but because
of the baked-***** possibility of the flame lakes of Hell
I will give one last supper and sacrament
to the dying beast of need disguised as love
on deathrow inside my ribcage.
I have not forgotten the years of midnight hunger
when I could see how the past had guided me
and I cried and held the pillow, muddled
in the melodrama of the quite immature
but anyway, Uncle Adrian…
Here I am in the reservation of my mind
and silence settles forever
the vacancy of this cheap city room.
In the wine darkness my cigarette coal
tints my face with Geronimo’s rage
and I’m in the dry hills with a Winchester
waiting to shoot the lean, learned fools
who taught me to live-think in English.

Uncle Adrian…
to make a long night story short,
you promised to give me your Oldsmobile in 1962.
How come you didn’t?
I could have had some really good times in high school.

Fanfares at the funfair for the children we took there and candy floss crème for the time in-between the dodgems and ducks.

Steinbeck played halfback on the quarterdeck of a cruiser,
not an enviable position, but they enhanced his pay and with two rations of *** every day he didn't really care.

Time jumps about when you're about to get down to the real business of living
I'm about to do that but I can't find the time.

Wild in our childhood we are savaged by our adulthood
what chance to have peace?
there is none.

It's a fashion to be
or it could be it was
I get lost in minutiae
and tend to shy away,
but only
because the side track is
my best side and my best side
is the side track
I'm on.

and anyone can learn how to drive.

Way up north where the sugar cane grows,
Is a scenic little town where the Herbert flows.
It is here that a legendary team was born,
Of proud local men with speed and brawn.


Donning the colours of red and white,
The team took the field to display their might.
Ducking and weaving through the Lifesaver’s pack,
The nippy little halfback led the attack.
He found open space and raced on by,
And in the blink of an eye he scored a try.
The wily winger lined up the shot,
And the ball sailed over the tiny black dot.
The Dolphin supporters rose and cheered,
And it was obvious why this team was feared.


After eighty minutes of punishing hell,
The players adjourned to the Station Hotel.
Over copious beers and recounts of the game,
Allegiance to their brothers they would proclaim.


As the players grow old with the passing of time,
They sometimes reflect what they did in their prime.
Backing their mates from the start to the finish,
Is a wonderful memory that will never diminish.