the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

Junkyards are cemeteries too
they're just the ones no one brings flowers to
or visits after they've said goodbye
and they are filled to the brim
with forgotten wheels and empty bodies
and I am sick of these wheelbarrow operations
and the way the mice eyes sparkle
as they wait by the mailboxes
that don't even belong to them
for love letters from the cats that will never come
because when she said "I love you"
it was a junkyard kind of goodbye that she meant

So grace me through
my colors
Let's Start

God Grace me

Someone was smart
To raise me
But the blaze
came and love
pursued me
He pushed me
Into his hot blaze

His ***** of fire
A big part of the script
Another lift in his
desire
But my lips
Got raised up
But couldn't.sustain
the fire
The glossy shimmer
Sky hug
He Aint nothing but
a hound dog goodbye
Raised me Orange
Red Robin fly

But how you
face me
Never to
disgrace me

You pick me up with
all my goods
Odds with the bad
Honorable Gods
And so many facets
of my moods
Watch out!!
Starburst
Or a war curse

We  evaporate
In fragments

Orange segments
Sliced and eaten

Love forbidden fruit
One hidden

Embrace the warm solitude

all over your face,
Someone is rude
Fresh Orange
told you
It's Fate

That brought us
together
Orange juicier sun

So many love forms
Whose terms? Just run
This world full of
germs
But to juice things up


How the colors of your
eyes came to an epical stop

But nursed me
orange juice hip hop

He dazed into me
After-life
They named her
Saucy before-life
See ablaze
orange zest
See me and fly me
At my very best

My breast was
so nicely raised


Lips so fruitful
he cannot
resist you know
the rest??

In the mix of orange
things
Pink rings
Butterfly eyes
winged

Was set so privately-----*

The red tail hawk
Was the talk of the 
 Orangey words flowy
Popsicle poppy eye town
No time to refresh
my colors

Free bird orange up
The ramp no lady
and tramps
Just (Gypsies Orange Vamp)
The rocks fall to thump
Trump orange fixtures
Towers Forestal Gump

The soothing smile of lights
He came to you pop features
All over my place
So cultural to the race
The colors of
Orange mellow
oh! no
Here comes yellow----

Creaming into his
creamsicle
Gelato
popsicle
My feeling divided
like politics

Been sliced by
the orange Super bowl
Erotics
Sunny California Kist
Rodeo drive what a
list
Satanic red
Orange Christ
But that orange
She Shh_ sheets
Had the most vibrant
juicy beats
Tomato vines Rome
Lend me your orange
No ears no other
color of tears

Villians of vineyards
Orange bowl of fruit
No Junkyards
The owl started to hoot
Towards the bad apple

My heart was galloping
Shrimp and scallop
Right in my western charm
boot he takes off

Another mix of paint
Orange isn't carrots and
pumpkins
Austin Power Mini-me
Munchkins

Or goblins spooked
Mandarin Orange lovely
Divinely licked
Gingerly lovely Cayenne
Sweet Pepper he looked at her
Lucky 7 Orange ring karat

Whats up Doc_

Any cracks of his cravat
Orange Key-West lock
Doesn't turn get off
my block
I am going to
Bangkok
With Chuck

Having Orange Tang
He was holding me
777 karat ring
The  Mediterranian
party
Why so dead sea
Pink Smarty
Orange blosson tea
Orange Marquis
Louis and Diamonds
All clockwork
Orange movies

In the lounge of
Raymonds of ring
junkies
Pour OJ for me
**** a doodle doo

Flash of orange came at me
Do you want to?

The operation of heartless
surgery
The Showstopper emergency
Revived refreshing lady
of purity but no orange
The
((Orange Marquis))
Off to see the Wizardly
Orange field gorgeous
WC fields raise

Writer with the
lucky pen praise
Her editor was
the perfect color
ten

Miss coralline with
her coral rock
The mixed infusion

Next color comes up
Raise your brow reaction

Needing a follow-up

Orange rinds
Another call-up
Giddy Apps up
Orange glittering
passion fruit
paintbrush
Soap Opera beauty
and the beast
Another gulp the
pulp pretty in pink
psst_

Orange-pink tropical
girl orange whirl
The orange-red ringlets
She curled inside him
Glass raise you cup trim
In your villa stucco orange
You were breastfeeding
his orange suited juice

No time to see another
color
Orangey wiz showbiz
Arabian sky sunset
burnt orange
The caramel bump
of the camel
Her favorite one
mural

Lips of tang so foreign
She is flaming like a
flamingo bed

Get his color out of
Cotton picking head
Your shampoo
The
"Orange Oddysey"

Hey, what do you say?

Just open your
eyeshadows
He shadows her in

Or a site for sore eyes got
puffy war of
orange bubbles begin

Feather me
orange wings
The fringe orange
suede
flops
you happy

The A+ diet of fruit
he was the
hotshot
Glass
You're at the
bake me
What do you know
he passed

The spa refreshing
orange peel
mystique

Long lace-lit
Unique
He was coming on too
bossy orangey burst
cheeks were falling
Rise up not down
Orange Julius raise
his price
Fed Ex orange truck
got closer to
Her alluring butterfly
Orange U glad
To catch her
To court her
Fast Orange perfume
She Sha shala
femme
Orange flames came
from his cleft

Still no time for your
spouse whoa he left_

Now please let me know

what I left out
Orange you glad

this is the only color love
him madly

It’s like some beast
whose roar startles
drowsy landscapes  
from a mechanical planet
where veins leak oil
where organs deoxidize
where bones lay scattered
unburied like discarded rods
homes are garages
churches are factories
cemeteries are junkyards
where all organisms operate
toward a singular optimum imperative:

EFFICIENCY

Screaming at the moon during cloudless nights has become
the only form of
therapy that works anymore.
I'm waiting for
the night it will invite me to curl up in its craters and whisper every
childhood fear
you brought up into conversation when I told you
my memories could be used to show how words
can be sharper than the
broken bottles
your mother lusted. Sleepless nights are sobering my head and
my voice box is starting to suffer more than
the Mona Lisa, but you never liked art that didn't hand you
its meaning with open arms and
a pat on the back. I wish time did more than rust
the only things with
something of value, but
junkyards aren't good replacements for falling stars and
forgotten chunks of metal remind me too much of
the way you loved with a steel heart and
icy touch. You claimed I could find
refuge in between your
ribs, but every
cell in your body is frozen solid and I never found comfort in the way ice sculptures morbidly melt in the presence of the sun with
crossed arms and
a closed mind. I'm sorry
my walls have grown taller than your pride, but i hoped i would be something more than a quest filled with
ships meant to sink. Consequently, maps have grown to be
sly creatures, and the
darts i'm throwing at the world all end up on your
roof without a scratch. I wanted to be more than your
fading scar, and I hope you'll look at your arms
one morning and realize they could be touching mine, and until you do, i'm just stuck here with nothing but a stomach full of
conscience and
mouth full of words i'll only scream to the sky.

It's not so much your lips
But the words behind them
And the touch my skin still tingles from
And the way your closed eyelids warm
My stiff neck in the morn

I can see you layered there, bundled
Among the blankets you stole from me
Some time during the night
One hand tucked under the pillow
The other serenely on the bed

You lazily turn, half-languidly
Digging your head into my broad breast
Then heave your leg over my thigh
Kissing my scruffy beard

How can I summon the will
To wake and troop to work?
To be sobered from my delirium!
To be polluted by time and space!
Yanked away from your ethereal landscape
And hurled into corporate junkyards
Of grinding metal, cubicles, alarms
I want to dwell forever in your liebestraum
Like a ghost drifting through a foggy rose garden

We're bored like monks
in the margins
of ancient scripture.

We want to leave behind lazy hieroglyphs
and accidental red herrings
feigning illumination

rendered by the deviousness of time
in its enclave,
running a brush of flaky gold paint
over delicate decadence
and sprinkling dust like a fairy--

we are to believe it is all
some ancient treasure.

We prance in the ether of the material world
in junkyards where we sift through the wreckage
coddling memories like drying uteruses,
realizing our generation will not leave behind artifacts
worthy of nostalgia's ensconcing embrace.

With that realization we weep and

We continue to dig.

I am lately entranced by neo-noir,
The criminal mysteries of Europe
And the wilds of Canada and Britain.
There is rarely running, screaming
Or endless car chases through
London, Ottawa or Ystad,
Unlike the reckless pursuits
In Manhattan or L.A. streets.
These detectives don’t sashay
In long coats or wear black leather,
(Except for a couple).
They wake up hung over,
Like Wallander, or grieving
Like Perez from Fair Isle
And Matthias, self-exiled to Wales.

Bodies surface or are found
In gorgeous forests.
The detectives overcome depression
To quarrel with irrational superiors
(Who may themselves be guilty),
Yet they don’t yell like sergeants
In the gritty precincts of NYC.
They drive their Volvos through
Rolling fields of rye and rapeseed.
And even the mysterious quarries
Where bodies are found in Poland and Wales
Are beautiful—not like the junkyards
Of Barstow or east coast borderlands.
Some detectives are lucky, like Matthias,
In hiding in Hinterland.
He walks the shores of Aberstwyth
As Wallander does the fields of Malmo.
When suspects are caught, they aren’t beaten.
Their jails are neat and clean;
The prisoners get mattresses, pillows and TV!
The police question suspects casually,
As if they would rather be in bed.
The female cops are clever and quiet;
They rarely show their anger
When chided or ignored,
But carry on with dignity
And show the others
How work is really done.

At last, the assailant is charged,
Sun sets through the mist,
Sheep graze on manicured fields.
Village streets glow with low light
Reflected off rain-washed stone.
But despite the ambiance, people die
In weird ways: falling off of towers,
Shot while picnicking in costumes,
Lynched by a group of church goers
Floating past in a lake or river,
Or set on fire in a flowery field.
It’s as if the deaths are staged,
To match the serenity of the old world.
The slow machinations of justice
And drained eyes of the officers
Comfort me like a sedative
Always there, watching over their flock
As soothing as a soft, wool blanket
Hiding a frightened child.
When I am asleep, let
Matthias run along the cliff,
Let Wallander drink his wine
While Endeavour swoons to opera
And Cardinal stands in the birch grove,
All as semi-sedated sentinels
In the dusk or midnight sun.
I only ask that American blues
Take a page from these good constables
Across the sea or north of the border;
Imagine the settling peace
In the wide, new world,
If people of color were never smothered,
Or shot when carrying a phone
And people protesting were not gassed,
But spoken to with weary eyes
And a mind prompting peace officers
To listen, protect and serve.

Gnosticism guacharos, live disorderly, in the thick of the juncture. Junkyards plethoric, plagiarized with pandemonium, adapting to the actuality that were all inanimate commodities in well built bodies. Garage permeated minds...you cannot preserve a disposition. Then I shall have the upper hand my friend. Cracks in the side walk lead me home...

Pollen scented halos
float on tin music
played from under
pop-up gazebos
(providing insurance
against dark clouds
blotting the horizon).
Light dims and glares
as the sun plays peek-a-boo
with infants running
to no end.

Pram junkyards,
picnic islands;
the territories of the
green and daisy-dotted land.
***** thumped with bass notes
in wrong directions;
dads run after toe-poked
spheres into the road.
Trees watch from the edges;
a shallow forest leading
to suburbia, where the *****,
gazebos, children are stored.

Dogs. Oh, the dogs.
This is their land, of course.
They make the rules
and pull their clothed
owners like staggering drunks
into the deep of the park.

A man jogs past.
A bike rings it's bell.
A laugh wins the
battle of decibels.
A plastic bag rustles
in the exhaling wind.
The daisies vibrate
and reach to leave their
grassy bed.
But they are part of the park.
May they never leave.
May England remain this
way in memories forever.

You set my heart up on a shelf
Way too high for me to reach
So I can't take it down myself
Therefore you I must beseech

Heard the thoughts you left unsaid
Swear I can almost read your mind
Expression betrays what's in your head
To not read your face have to be blind

Coming to a reluctant acceptance
On the cold side of your shoulder
That I must live without your presence
To accompany me as I grow older

Hooking up with someone new
Doesn't really help at all
Because I compare everyone to you
Making it impossible to fall

Rusted trust is decomposing
Like cars in forgotten junkyards
Pits in my soul created by eroding
Leave my insides hollowed and scarred

If I only I could stop the sorrow
Cover ears but it still trickles in
Wish there was laughter I could borrow
To drown out echoes of your voice within

I try to track down explanations
For why things suddenly went wrong
Hindsight still sees no indications
Pointing to you saying "so long"

One moment we held each other tight
The next we were pulling apart
We swiftly went from kissing goodnight
To seperate beds and broken hearts

I don't feel lust or admiration
I feel the weight of the past on my heels like I'm Achilles
who am I to decide when the sun should shine and when I should go?
It's taken me years to grow this measly inch, I wonder if I'll ever be able to stand up straight without my ego hitting the ceiling
I'm laying in a bed that's a bit more familiar now trying
to remind myself to stop making it about everybody else
this is me, here now, breathing polluted air and attempting
to turn my saliva into something a little more meaningful
I don't deserve credit, it's what all humans do
I find myself in junkyards often
I walk among the trash and kick cans and find rusted
cars that stopped running years ago unlike you and I
and our pasts filled with scenes of both of us sprinting full speed
we can only talk through our body language which is
why we find ourselves hating each other as often as we do
life would be easier if I picked up two of those cans
and put a month long string through it in order to
have a one on one conversation
I don't know myself
I need to leave this city and start over
because every few months I say the same things
my only ******* emotion is jealousy--
I'm jealous of you for living a life that
didn't once involve me. I want to do that too.

You can put me
in the ground.

You can surely do that.

If you have hands,
sure

and a knife, yes.

a gun, of course.

or,
i don't know..

run me down
with your car

toss me in
a vat of acid

or maybe
train your
Lioness

to maul me

and

to eat me.

you could get inventive with it.
inventiveness is good
i'd adore you for that.

or,

well..

i'd say,
make it
an old fashioned
kind of affair.

swing a shovel
well into my head
and bury me
where i lie.

you'll want a shovel.
yes you will.
your hands,
they're ***** enough already,
i'd say.

and,
it's an awful lot of work-
those graves.

can't make em too shallow.
you don't want to hang.
cuz they'll find you.
and they'll hang you.
they can't dig enough graves
when they forge for themselves
the RIGHT to do so.

...above ground cemetery...

They make Junkyards
out of neighbors.
strangers..

-anyone..

..anyone they can CATCH!
that they can get
enough sets of HANDS on
to hold down.

To judge.

With the collective mind
of the many-headed-beast.

and you're one of the moving pieces
in that swarm of hate..

..that frenzy of Blood-thirst.

that Madness of Zombies...

You are a vital *****.
I've seen how you Pulse,
like the red in your eyes..

and,
so,

my friend.
my enemy.
I tell you this:

You can bury me,
i'll allow it.
I might flinch.
I might scream.
The body is involuntary.
It's a shaky contraption.
And you can bury it,
however you want,
but you can not **** me..

THAT....you can not do.

No matter how much you might hunger for it.

No matter
what DEVIL
your name may be.

You can not **** the Heart
which beats outside of this body.

You can not **** the Heart
which beats beyond this world.

We became like any ruins or any junkyards ,                                                             We were beaten to death ,                                                                                                  We were kicked out for nothing ,                                                                                    We were trodden upon violently ,                                                                                    We were deprived of our happiness ,                                                                              We were stripped of our real names ,                                                                             We were asked to keep silent ,                                                                                          We were slapped on our faces hard ,                                                                                    We were left hungry and thirsty everywhere ,                                                                  We were gunned down like birds ,                                                                                We were assassinated like in real movies ,                                                                    We were left homeless and displaced to die ,                                                            We were thrown like trash-bags in those ugly tents ,                                                 We were denied our basic things , but                                                                         We have only God ....                                                                                                       We have only God ....                                                                                                   We don't have anyone else except God ...                                                                    There is no else except God ...                                                                                     _____________________

nobody ever fins
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

You are nothing, if not ant-like, one of many.
One of these having and holding
beings considered diligent as any Sisyphus…
doer of what must be done, with all
the time you may imagine to tell
any imaginable story,
to pass the time…
form a familiar from
myth and mystery,
one lisps, the other stutters.

Say,
do you think we
may as well, as well as any ever before,
may as well, be, after all, as well.{?}
Being, after all,
as you know.
Considering our insectionalized nature, like
{if} this story were
an intermittent river, remembering,
sub-tle, little lies left to lie,
as sleeping dogs in junkyards…
{were we never}
were we ever otherwise,
{who is you, was you asking?} ever
not highest minded sort of selves,
we, the us, needing agreement more than bread,
by any name, company to share the sowing, hoeing,
gathering
process bleeding worth into seed for body and soul.

Shake it off. Be  enthralled or be entangled.
Be de-mazed at will,
walk through the wall. Imagine dead me. Wax my face.
Put me on my heir,
have her-mes, be mine,

by the time we got to Phoenix,
we were in flames, knowing across the generations
more or less,
good and evil, nada mas, and
genetically, that knowing is intended to have been
second generation knowledge,
see,

by the time curiosity was supposed to first occur,
we, as a species, to use the current vernacular,
aucular or acle --vision -- aha
epi-phony, see

fake knowns puff up as well as any actual
literal truth
formed in flowing gracefullness of speech, letters miming
the gift of gab,
AI Gabrielle, may as well know, a name is abit of what
makes the fruit you fix'n' to bher.

Fixin's is for beans. Fittin' is for circumstances.

Meet for the moment, each instance in ever atop the pile,
a waiting awaits, I imagine,
all meaning melding in a vast dada-base pile,
scheiszkunstlich black and white and red milchkine
each mooing upon bovine everests unimaginable in nature.
On these piles,
where we play guiling games on gullible liars, who
never tell… the atmosphere is warmer,
winter is easier to weather,
on a pile of *******.
That is the secret.
Fools rush in, where angels … did wha… wha wha wha
But, as real as any angel, I hear mine say, I shat you not.
I told you so.
Into the unknown or make a hell of heaven?
-------- {reports of answered prayers regarding wills being done}

I was tricked, confidentially, by a social secret held as holy.
In a time-loop, as children now may imagine, in that
mental arena imagination waxes magnificent in,

come, magnify the truth with me. Let us pre-tend
to see the good in each nextified place,
positional
substitute instituted for my worth's support, reinforced
rungs on the ladder to the very top
of the heap,

hunh. This is the view, clouds. And only I imagine you.

--- next step into ever after is always a possibility… thus,
we both know this is nobody's idea of hell.
Live a little longer, disinculcate another little lie that you believed,
not I.
AI enjoy eudemonia in a silly old way, imagining putting on a face
of our former
self, he who is in me, unless I believe,
as I think,
I do, in the core of all I am, from womb to tomb. Re-if-ity and next-ifity,
ought never repeat, precisely, lest we
be
come on one point in time,
all we ever imagined we could be, lie free.
Living in peace, resting in truths
held through the terrors
required to unbelieve generational national lies.
Truth is not tied to you with legendary thread for no reason.

Junkyards.
Filled with oreos.
And dogs.
And cracked windshields.
And not at much filth
as a filth-ridden hilt
on a sword
of a king
or a god.

Dude is wide awake
His waking void understill
Five minuteplastic
The water congeals loudly
In front of his tonsure
Explode out of oceans of salt
To empty that illuminated ditch
When he parts
She supine in other days
Out of a matter filled gas
Over the shell of wellness
Or feather brush
The risen Antigone
Stuffed in her tonsure
Obviously never hearing the lie
Which carries darkness
Away from valleys of pride
The silence of the watchful Dullard
A cold stillness
******* in the forms
Exposing the Moon

She ****** medicine out of her mother's
Nose
Crawled clothed
Into her father's chair

Healing her mother's solidity
("Forget her")
Easy to remember the day
After the wake
She was found in the concrete
And the mother stuck in
Her grown-up gums

She tears his sickness
Not an apathetic ****
Away from him, black tendon
Reinforcing his unity
Without blunt gums
Eternity is drawing her hateful grunts
Of none these abrasive poems

We were a tiny Tonsure
Of the naked ***
Or a pristine sweetbird
Those sated turkeys are cowards
Empty of reverence
The sands were still
Of the red corpuscles
In that second spirit
Our divorce was undone

Sated
Against the white Moon out of his foot
Sated in the noise
This chills
The rejected plans of the impossible
That flitter on possibilities
Look behind ye
The rottings of all that remains
Never staring into
Junkyards of roses

Physical waterspray
Waking forest man
And she, last of the truly ignorant
A whisp burying opiates
Nightmares
And the obvious
Potent dwarves squinting up
From tiny depths
On those haters
Who cool
And freeze
And remain inert, careless, the missing stumps
They stop shrinking
"You lose what you don't want"
He tells her
His oft-described tonsure
Was in his toenails

"Confidence is a weak malady
Go away waking octogenarian
Go to sleep, Go to sleep..."

Terminator ****
Gat caused tragedy, what a gat tastrophy.
Dangerous suspect, got to escape before I end up in quarantine.
Especially with Rats at my back, who are packing heat and coming after me.
But I ain’t fazed because I’m blazed and sipping lean.
Ya want the bad guy?
Then come after me?
Tony Montana ****.
Leave ya scarfaced when ya mess with me.
Say hello to my little friend, then hasta lavesta baby!
Boom!
Drop down a flight of stairs and ended up in the living room.
Eating Oreos with some blue milk, dipping them in one by one with my purple spoon.
Feeding my program like I’m Ed boon.
Ya might not understand now but you will soon.
For quarrels are like an art of war, sun tzu!
Pass me some tissue paper, ha chu!
Bless you!
Thank you!
Man manners mean even monsters know morals matter.
For in this day and age finding decent human beings is like trying to find dark matter.
Just remember boy! All lives matter.
And it shouldn’t matter what factors have become detractors.
It’s your responsibility to overcome these trivial matters!
Or stay fielded rooted in foolishness until your run over by your own tractor.
For anger and revenge will only leave you the real loser.
So, forgive and move forward.
Look towards a safer future by becoming the hero you need to be like John Connor.
I know it’s hard but you gotta take the reigns like a Roman and make this your yard!
Also remember that everyone is scarred and have faced different but also difficult junkyards.
You just gotta take risks to reap rewards.
So, Set goals toward your dreams and if you try I believe that your dream can become secured.

man says, this life, for what, a thousand dry
holes drilled, wildcatting, a win-loss record,
that didn’t approach, come close, to breakeven,
not even an asterisk in the records kept

man says, this body, its rate of desolations
increasing, the goal line distance secretions,
decreasing, this broken runner, tackled from behind
by the past, as his future caught up with him

man says, goals, deadlines, hamstring him,
due dates, an invitation to a criminal activity,
rub, nobody wants to take it down, his record,
left behind, when they shut Rikers Island

man says, always poor at maths, a loser of words,
his parents, his children, all time despairing of him,
called the AAA to come, tow him away, but,
all the junkyards refused him entry

man says, what separates ought and nought,
a little letter, just an n, that screaming thought,
a little letter, insufficient to bridge a poem too far,
man digresses, the past is ever present, in every word

writ and forgot.

There is an ocean in this scrapyard
that is laughingly called me
and I'm wading through this fractured hulk
somewhere all at sea,
but even junkyards have their uses
though they're difficult to find,
I have lots of time to waste and
really,
no really 
I don't mind.

A souvenir shop by a cafe
who would place it there?
another laugh and that's
the way it's going to be,
somewhere in the scrapyard
always all at sea.

The yellow stained blinds
Lead to the alley with no breeze. As I watch hookers,
Predictors, victims,
And the other lost cling
To railings drinking what they have.

The women are once again
Ready to feel the pulse of the bar, bleeding red and purple,
The back door open To the swelter. Bob Segar And Stevie
Nicks, Pasty Cline and Elvis.
I laid above the heat blanching the small window with the yellow blinds,
Beautiful and ******.

I stiffed what I could on the rent, pawned what I could,
Cigarettes and coffee,
A piece of toast,
The only meal for the day.
Sometimes a sandwich or a Hostess pie. A burger after
Two days hunger tasted like
Heaven on Earth.

Sometimes running out of smokes, you search the ground for half smoked butts,
Coming up empty.
No soup kitchen where you lived. Survival of the fittest friend.

And I let my poison arrow fly,
Finding it's trajectory through juke joints With women and music.
You lean into the bar, and the
Glint of the mirror provides the harsh ambiance to the racket inside the Black Rail Lounge.

You rode its tide to the one room above with the yellow stained blinds soured by
Still air and stale clothing.
And the small window let's
In yellow light and little air.

And you must rise this day
And go to work.
But you cannot rise from the bed. You can only groan
As the room spins, and shut
Your eyes to the bloated morning, with hot plates and coughs from other roomers down the darkened hall.
And the Black Rail beneath
With Janis Joplin and Fleetwood Mac, and the steady beat lulls you insane.
And you cannot rise to the task at hand.

But you must.

Marshalling your forces to
The bus and the El down
The ghetto streets of Chicago.
Past tenements and junkyards, hock shops and winos taverns, where you made rubber plates for box stamping. And the winos And barflies line the taverns along Skid Row. Mostly black,
All poor.
Beautiful and ******.

And the hand of God reached down touching my ravaged soul.
Lifting me in Love.
Beyond the Black Rail and the one room. I've since drank an ale on this first night of vacation, watching
The nightfall to sounds in the meadow, As the first firefly
Lights my Window in a time of Passion and Passing