gimme shelter

A Bellwether

the arctic ice shelf
disappearing
into an indifferent ocean

a sign
some say
of a coming cataclysm

but the end of this world
is as far north of my thoughts
as the calving glaciers in prudhoe bay

even more earthshaking,
eventual
inevitable
concussive

the reality of my mother and father
picking out cemetery plots
on an unusually cool day in august

my world,
a sea rising
a desert expanding
a coastline receding

Arc de Triomphe

Wrecking Ball

a cold bottle of beer,
the sun in a satisfied sky
going down along with it

green grass rolling out
in front of me, forever

god only knows
what all that was
behind me now

but even the wrecking ball
swings forward,
from time to time

small breeze in my face

small pull to my lips

malt, hops, barley rise

sun sinks

the moment meeting the moment
somewhere along the arc's
ascending angles

August and Everything After

Light In August

tired eyes
filter
soft images
familiar
but somehow
foreign
bodies without
focus

their colors awash
in a sepia sunlight
of an August
no longer so august

image: william faulkner's underwood universal portable

the alluvial plain truth

The Fossil Record

i excavate my own personal history
with spade, shovel, and pick
only to uncover
an incomplete ichnolite
amidst the archaeology
of my life

my children
wandering this stratified world
without me

an epoch of
days
turned to
months
turned to
years,
all told,
an eon

which i try to reconstruct
by digging through buried
and ablated memories
of their puerile but now hebetic faces

the erosion of emotions marking time
in the detritus that lies between us
where i sift sediments
in search of sentiments

but find only
the fossil record
of a broken heart

rest, in peace

Sleep Comes Down

will death come like sleep?

the eyes, drugged
the breath, shallow
the limbs, heavy

the body susceptible to the slightest chill
from a breeze through an open window
where a soul rushes out from
to meet its maker?
to mix with all matter?
to discount religions?

the mind suspending electrical impulses
like lights going off in a skyline building
but not before

last thoughts rushing then slowing
into the coming black

their embers
burning fragmented moments
into dreams
become real

and if sleep comes down
and never awakes,
who will remember
everything?

if nothing else,
in death,

in that final
soporific quiescence

the world,
quiet at last

SnoCal

California Snow Story

winter peeling in waves
of gunmetal curl and crash

grey palms ashore,
anchored yet waving
slowly,

back

and

forth

side

to

side

a pliant semaphore
an unlit flare

a langorous s.o.s.

a monition for an inland empire
of a stranger-in-a-strange-land's
advent

the first flakes,
carried by the spray and break

of a not so pacific ocean,
mooring to sand

Take Me To The River

A Brief Intermission

...but there will be hells to pay

your whispered moan
nowhere to be found
among scatter-dishes in a stainless sink

your fragile desires
waiting to be found
in shatter-pieces on a shower floor

for thirty-five years,
you
without
me

and
a sense of something missing,
of missing something

spoken, unspoken

fragments blown about, blown abroad
by the wind between two latitudes

like,
"... pray for the dead in purgatory..."

heaven
in the consumation, conjugation
of wounded bird words
fly, flew, have flown
to the confluence
of Wing-Leaf Rivers

knee-deep
in swollen currents,
you
performing ablutions,
you
flushing the fire
for now
from my skin

...though there will be hells to pay

end of summer

August Aborning Autumn

delivering the end of summer,
Labor Day, without effort,

births a beginning
as it cuts a cord

pushing through at long last,

the sweltered trimester of
June
July
August

in anticipation of fall's first tentative steps

endless summer

Vetiver

running circles 'round the sun
until dizzy
falling down upon
vetiver

sublime

supine
in the crayola green of grass
with you

lawn ornaments whisper
a concern i carry
but throw like caution to the wind

"don't ever disappear."

Road Film

Opening Titles

the flicker
of flakes
beginning to squall

mother waiting
in a running car

water, broken and puddling
in her shoes

eighty-five
desolate dakota miles
on eighty-three
skating sideways south

fade in,
whiteout across a windshield

in utero,
white blood cells failing an unborn boy

in time,
transfusions through the soft white of his feet

the eventual scars,
a narration of

my father outside a hospital window,
his gloved finger
writing my name in the snow

orni-theology

Whirl

the whirl of birds
in formation,
a stop-motion
camera captured cloud,
an arrhythmia of wings
in a dusky sky

palpable providence
of a sort

like gleening a glimpse
of God
as night comes into focus

more affirmation than answer

that speaks,
'a part of everything, apart from nothing'

and so,
with the avian dance
now done with the darkness,
an ornament of birds safely roosts
until twilight dawning
stirs a song,
a whistle on the wind,
a melody to move
through days,
night after night

until morning comes again,
like resurrection

ghost in the machine

An Antikythera Mechanism

weeks and weeks
have waxed and waned
since i last
slept beside you

the moon,

a sliver of silver
when i first awoke
to find only a ghostly cotton impression
of your celestial body left behind,

now hangs
high, full, bright
lighting a bedroom
which i walk awake
to the window where
i count stars,
study constellations,
plot the heavens
in hopes that i can navigate
the ocean of miles, months
between us

plumbing the depths of my soul
in search of an Antikythera Mechanism
to chart this venerable course of the heart

'Shakespeare never did this.' Bukowski

Build Your Own Stage

to
be or
not to be
to smile without knowing
to sing for one's supper
to go kicking against the pricks
to act up and out and otherwise
to laugh in the face of it all
to scream into the waves breaking on the beach
to sit in the slow of summer turning to autumn
to count the leaves as they glide to winter's cold ground
to hear the quiet flight of each snowflake falling from the sky
to light a fire beneath a canopy of frozen blue stars
to wait for the krokus to push through spring's thaw
to fly with the cardinal from where you stand
to breathe deep the lily of the valley
to climb a mountain because it's there
to start down a slippery slope
to suckle august's humid dew
to swim the sea
to walk alone
to be
yes

that is the answer

field of dreams

Poems My Father Gave Me

dirt farmer hands
punching bag heart
sea sponge brain

at home cigarette smoke choking
in school corporal punishment scarring
around town drunk's son snickering

midwest-depressed-impoverished landscape
surrounding
dead-end-of-the-street-man-made geology

railroads
silos
derricks

an oil field of dreams
a wheat field of dreams
the wrong-side-of-the-tracks reality

these are the poems my father gave me

la musique du souvenir

All, In A Song

a lipstick sun
kissing a treeline
across the water
whispers a distant memory:

the pattern of your dress
the motion of your hair
the taste of your breath

the sound of your voice
translating Adieu Petite Rose

the melody bleeding out across
the slow waves of Chautauqua
and coming to rest
(hear?)

The Jonbar Hinge

A Counterfactual History

abandoned by my brothers
separated from my sisters
i walk alone
a wild raging heart
swinging an axe
across a burned out stand of family trees
leaning like charcoal skeletons
in a wilderness of 'what if'

out of the blue and into the black

Color My World

the sun still setting in the gold aureole of sky before twilight
my father dying
the yellow tooth extracted
my father dying
the silver and thinning hair matted
my father dying
the red crust of a scab across a forehead
my father dying
the white noise dreams beneath an oxygen mask
my father dying
the purple blood below the bruised arms' skin
my father dying
the green of 'all the money in the world'
my father dying
the brown of a urine stain on suede
my father dying
the grey matter of fact not fiction
my father dying
the black hole of swallowed memories
my father dying
the sun still setting in the blue aura of sky beyond twilight
my father dying

On The Pennsylvania Road

Names on the Land

up on Tunnel Hill
just beyond a mausoleum
a dying sun drops
down through a nameless sky

where,

the gypsy cannot see
the smell of rain upon this ribbon of road
and her premonition of death
(premature)
finds no lamb lying down
upon the heat of tar wheeled pavement

where,

the psychic cannot see
the song of a bird never heard before
and her visions of spirit painting
(predetermined)
hide no siskins behind needles
of Penn's sylvan stand of pine

where,

westing these woods, these roads, these little towns
secreted between rolling hills still rising as they wash away,
sequestered near small streams still cutting broad valleys,

i am Isis
i am Brando
i am Dylan
i am Pocahontas
i am Lloyd Wright
i am Ferme
i am Red Cloud
i am Skinner
i am Lewis
i am Clark
i am St. Francis

where,

once done,
i wash my hands
of this venison blood
in the white water rapids
of Yough River,
a baptism along the banks
of an Ohiopyle pilgrimage
south to Fallingwater's cantilevered cathedral

where,

along No. 11 Road
just beyond a cemetery gate,
a water gap sits still,
church silent amidst the Appalachian, the Allegheny
and all the other Names on the Land
paved along these roads
planted upon these fields
buried beneath these headstones

Nanty Glo
Gallitzin
Creekside
Cherry Tree
Rural Valley
Hooverhurst
Home
Purchase Line
Panic
Desire
Gipsy

Tunnel Hill

where,

just beyond these graves,
my love and i
nevermore alive

Dog Days, Dog Years

Sulum Canis Has Suus Dies *

fleet of foot,
i ran from her

across paths
crossed by black cats

into forests full
of paper lions

felines, all
in estrus

lying, in wait

but i,
(of canis yet packless),
slipped away
into the night

running the rut plow of fields
fording the false bottom of rivers
scaling the switchback of mountains

coming to rest
in the sleepwalk of a waking dream
coming to rise
in the wide awake of a sun giant

out of the shadows
the hunted, now the hunter
your protector

fleet of foot,
i run to Her

* http://www.yawiktionary.com/e/1148371892492.wav

for Lyall Watson 1939-2008

Makemake

out on the edge
of what we knew, what we have known,
Makemake

and there,
who knows?

an explanation of The Romeo Error
the exact weight of the soul
proof of the Hundredth Monkey Effect

or even

a better understanding of Lewy body dementia

or oddly enough

transcripts from conversations with God yet to come

more than a feeling, a notion
that if we can remember the past
then maybe we can remember the future

Makemake,
there before
an astronomer stumbled
upon it

remember?

She Blinded Me With Science

Newton's Law of Attraction

einstein's theory of relativity,
chaos theory,
string theory,
wave particle duality,
quantum probability,
heisenberg's uncertainty principle,
unified field theory,
occam's razor,
heuristic maxims,
even biology class with mr. buckvitz

none of it
can explain why
in seventh grade
donna reilly went out with
dwayne brotzman instead of me

Cat's Cradle Revisited

A Theory Of Everything

a bruise blue thunderhead
slow but sure
across a submissive sky

a rumble,

deep

low

rolls and rolls and rolls
on and on
upon a gusting wind

the grass lies down (a little lamb)
the willow shivers and shakes (a cowardly lion)
the lake slithers away from itself (a water moccasin)

inside, sheltered from the storm,
a theory of everything becoming clear,
despite the chaos strung along the horizon

the cat cradled at my feet, asleep:
omniscient

Fish Creek, Denali National Park, July 2006

A Sketch

a sketch
a dream

hands feeling the drag pure draft
feet turning in tandem

three hundred and sixty degrees
upon tundra, taiga, tussock

surveying the echo, the eco
of the last great frontier

the big empty of Alaska
filling, fulfilling the soul

Denali in the distance,
a Michelangelo (stone sculpted)
a Caravaggio (light dappled)
a Leonardo (perception altered)

a still evolving,
incomplete artist's rendering
of a lost religion

an Athabaskan altar
Hudson Stuck's steeple
a Sourdough cemetery

a vision
a fever
a dream
a sketch


image by Linda Frances

Gone, With The Wind

Whisper Not

whispers,
secrets
at what cost

whisper not
forget me not

as i wander our big bed
a king looking for his queen
finding years beyond us
stuffed inside a closet with
the seasons we have seen
lost to the silence between us

unwarranted
as the summer fog
obscuring your face

unrelenting
as the winter rain
flooding my soul

unexpected
as the indian summer
we first slept together

uninvited
as the dogwood winter
we last lay entwined

whispers,
secrets' wind
bellowing through forgotten springs' lust
blustering above forgotten autumns' desire

forget me not

whisper not

secrets
billowing between sheets, beyond seasons

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

(I Am)
An Astronaut

i move through morning darkness,
an astronaut
defying the gravity
of the situation:

3:23 a.m. and already awake
forgotten coffee on a counter
hot humid hurried car ride
the sterile/unsterile air of cigarette smoke and freon
static AM radio waves of buzz-click-slip
the Doppler shift of orange construction cones
the crude GPS of a 'Fines Doubled' sign just before my exit
a Pavlovian bell sounding in my head
along with my own dull voice,

turn left into same parking lot
turn right into same parking space

landed but lost in space
floating in space
between the living
and the dead-end job of
timelines, deadlines, and time clocks
ticking in unison
with machines in sync reciprocating
while men in grey flannel suits finish resuscitating
my lifeless body
in a 100% pure oxidizing environment
coaxing one more orbit
from the rusted Sputnik of my soul

"Houston, we have a problem."

Go Tell It On The Mountain

Here, Heaven

(maybe)
this is Heaven

the pyramid's ascent
climbs only toward
the matter/anti-matter of space
but what matters most is
both Giza and Golgotha have suffered the same winds,
been kissed by the same Judas sands betraying time,
covering the pilgrimage of footprints
wandering deserts of their own devices,
stopping only to dig for gold/diamond/oil
(two grains slip back into the hole for every one removed)
in a relentless pursuit of riches already surrounding us
here in Eden

Alexander
Genghis Khan
Ramses
Caesar
Napoleon
Tojo
all tried to build an empire for the ages
(Novus Ordo Seclorum)
but fashioned only
castles made of sand
set upon foundations of
power profit pleasure
as uncertain as the base
of Maslow's pyramid
of self-actualization

so,
climb

out of the depths
hand to rung
to rusted iron ladder
tenuous across a precipice
reach, stretch, lunge
but climb, climb
inside yourself, within yourself
toward knowledge, truth, spirit, calm
and know the God you are
from, with, of

until you summit the flat-top rock
above the vastness of the sea,
and see that Heaven is not o'er your head
but 'neath your feet

Alexander is dust
Genghis, dust
Ramses, dust
and on and on and on

GodMan, GodMen,
KingMan and All the King's Men
riding horses of the Apocalypse

gone

same as the squatter
same as the serf
same as the drunkard
same as the druid

but you
here,
now
upon a cloud
above this Garden
can sit in the stillness of
now,
here in the presence of the Lord

and there is no need to stick your fingers
into the scabbard scarred side
to know that

(maybe)
here, now
is Heaven

and there is no need to look to the sky
hands folded, searching for a sign
a single shooting star
across a black, vast scientific epoch

look instead
into the moving mirror puddled, pooled
at your feet
to see the face of God
and realize

(maybe)
probable Jesus works at a Mobil Mart
possible Mohammad squeegees a car window
potential Buddha shoplifts a microwavable burrito

and that
(maybe)
this is Heaven:

the bobcat crossing an open field
the dead fox in the clutch of hawk talons
the starfish setting upon coral
the tigerlillies wild along the roadside
the smell of mint amidst the grass
the rainwater off a roofline
the swallow's twist and turn above a lake
the beech leaves lantern rattle in the wind

the music of laughter
the poetry of a smile
the sculpture of a mountain still standing

here, Heaven

just maybe

'We have invented nothing new.' Picasso

Pablo's Lament

this is not Lascaux
no shaman ritual revealed
no Painted Gallery
no narrow passage leading
to The Great Hall of the Bulls

here
now
there is no myth as yet

just our initials carved into a towering oak

an artifact:
love

nothing new

Picasso was right


"We have invented nothing new."
Picasso's quote after seeing the 17,000 year old cave paintings of Lascaux.

the art of love

Vostro Voce Bella (Your Beautiful Voice)

the sun sets a Cezanne just beyond the window
the rain beats a Beethoven just above the ceiling
the wind whispers a Whitman just over the lawn

vostro voce bella:
a painting
a symphony
a poem

the high 'coo' of its timbre
the timbre of its haiku

be with me always
through all of my setting suns
rain, rain go away

lie with me always
upon autumn's leaves of grass
rain, rain go away

watch with me always
the rainbow beyond the clouds
rain, rain go away

vostro voce bella:
Cezanne's brush across canvas
Beethoven's fingers across ivories
Whitman's pen across paper

voce della mia moglie bella

maps & legends

The Cartographer's Heart

mile after mile
year after year
with no one riding shotgun
with no one riding passenger side
not fear and loathing, but fear and living
while driving a lifetime across state lines
alone

hot vinyl jumpseats in the back of a
Country Squire station wagon,
Sandusky, Ohio

a Star Wars paperback bought at an
Esso full-service gas station
Minnetonka, Minnesota

blowing the carbon out of a '65 Impala
pushing 100 between wheat fields
Mandan, North Dakota

gone-west-young-man amidst
physical graffiti marking canyon walls
Malibu, California

stanching the cocaine binge bloody nose
while nodding off behind the wheel
Breezewood, Pennsylvania

stuck in humid 4am traffic, after,
out all night at a 'gentlemen's' club
Buckhead, Georgia

dropping off a dancer on The Strip
heading on west toward Death Valley,
Las Vegas, Nevada

dead marriage in a rearview mirror
along with I-95's funereal procession of cars
Boston, Massachusetts

grey april rains' pain(t) across a windshield
wiper rhythm, a pacemaker keeping me alive
Cuba, New York

your soft, cold hand warming my heart
driving over the Peace Bridge
Niagara Falls, Canada

how was i to know
all roads led to you?


image: Jasper John's interpretive map of the United States, 1961

In Gratitude to A. E. Douglass

HH-39

across my own floating chronology
across the annual deposition of years
the varve of macadam:
the open road

drive skyline drive
to archive
varieties of pine, ash, oak
trees ring in anew
while i forget
the months, the miles
lost to a mist,
fogging memories
that tree rings remember
like felled history
buried beneath
wheels turning
seasons turning
leaves turning
gold blister yellow hot
red of iron ore
turning 'cricks' to rust
coming to rest
along a ridge
looking out over
the Smokies' blue ink upon papyrus
and overlooking
Apalachen mispronunciation
this Chinese watercolor in transition, in translation
by way of wandering Spanish explorers
lost along indigenous footpaths
worn by deer hoof, deer hunter, dearly departed
a burial ground for the ages, of the ages
before me
long after me
only a ring to wed me
to the trees i lie beneath

sdrawkcab slleb meht gnir

The Fog Across Ivories

ring them bells
make the sound of rain
falling

and failing
the promise of a
haiku in a cloud

the grass keeps growing just outside this window

and forgetting
the vows of a
sonnet on the wind

the grass still growing just outside this window

cold days from a birdhouse
summer didn't show today

'the nature of things...,' she said and more
but the statement stood alone

there beneath a sullen umbrella
the drops in mime, reminded

the shadow taste in my mouth
your salt/sweat/sugar gone

behind her eyes twilight sulked
waiting for autumn leave(s)

a man
hollowed, harrowed
climbing steps
of a widow's watch
through leaded glass
the blur of your face
a piano note
a rosary
a Saturn
ring
finger
tapping
Every Breath You Take
in the condensation
of a window
pain

oh
ring them bells backwards
(sdrawkcab slleb meht gnir)

and slow the fog across ivories
eclipsing your sun-sung smile

photo by d. frechard

let us now praise famous men

Final Fare

James Agee in a cab,
dying
between blocks,
by tenths of miles,
before pedestrian crosswalks,
beneath green-to-yellow-to-red

we all will suffer,
the death of a father
the murder of inspiration
the suicide of talent
hurtling to its end
through tunnels of exhaust
suffocated
in smolder of nicotine conflagrations
drowned
in Hudsons of distilled spirits
feet firm upon an Indian island
head bopping to the rhythm of the typer
tapping
like rain on an Appalachian tin roof
heart's beat receding
into the bleating of traffic's din
city sighs
a final breath
swallowing
the last swells of S. Barber's
Knoxville: Summer of 1915

a death in the family
and no one left to pay
the final fare
of this 'swing low, sweet chariot'

for Dr. Alan Spiegel

'When virtue has slept, it will arise all the more vigorous.' Friedrich Nietzsche

Hum Along

with love stuck up on a rooftop
selfish sits alone inside a car
and 3:15 comes oh so early
why's hope got to be so hard

cat's cradle lies in virtue's
lull in a winter year
sometimes i feel i'll only lose you
who'll hold your hand once i'm not here

now jealous rages, waits impatient
sleeps alone in broken beds
desire's hid between some pages
not written down but in my head

with the light in august waning
scattter-crow shots break the still
in truth mercy knows no manhood
until cunning makes a kill

when compassion leaves the station
taking all your love in vain
wrap yourself in wolf's quilt-blanket
against the wind of passing trains

heart of darkness stay in shadow
and cup some laughter in your hands
when advice can't find a welcome
that's when you need to understand

i will build a house of temperance
i will build a house of bright white snow
i will plant a garden ripe in moral
i will plant a garden so you know
that the fruits of all our labors
like the Fallingwaters' rains
ease the sting of separation
that endurance must sustain

4 March 1937 - 19 March 1973

Black Eyes

Uncle Kenny
never made it back
from Vietnam

murdered

stabbed to death

(a 36 year old civilian, living in Saigon, not even a soldier)

no one said much about it at the time
no one really mentions it anymore

to me he was only ever a Kodak memory
a fuzzy picture of a thin man,
a drink in hand

he looked happy
in a snapshot of time
as small as the particles of silver nitrate and halide salt
that had come together in a darkroom

fitting

beyond the flash white smile,
the darkness was there and not just on the edges or in the background
but permeating the entire good-times-abroad stage scene
with a not so subtle nod to Death Of A Salesman

all of it, less than a second of his 36 years

but i know this second, even if i know nothing else

was he married to a woman from England?
did he have two daughters?
was he divorced or separated?

i remember he visited us once
and i gave up my bedroom
and slept in a sleeping bag in the basement
(but my mother says that was somebody else,
not Kenny, just a business associate of my father's
having some marriage problems)

no.

the truth is, i only know this moment,
the underlying ennui running to the ends of the earth
to get away from an alcoholic father, a sickly childhood,
a Dakota horizon full of skeletons in coveralls

and this,

the aftermath,

i know

my father
sitting alone
for hours
in a chair
in our living room
with the green shag carpet
quietly crying

...

the next morning
when he came to the breakfast table
the bags under his eyes
were swollen beyond red and appeared black
like he had been on the losing end
of a heavyweight boxing match
but it was Kenny who'd lost his fight
with life

six months later
dad's father died of a heart attack

he didn't cry

for the birds

Cardinal Heart

i'd
laid down my arms
fought the good fight
lost so many of my lives
along the way

instinct whispered, 'fuck or flight.'
so took to wing
and circled over
the stink and still of carrion

above the denver road incline
an inclination
and so inclined
landed
along a rock cut
and pondered

all the burning wagons
sooting the snows
that wheels and wings
had left behind

a procession of black footprints:



discounted...................derided....................deluded
...................discarded...............debilitated...............depressed

but still i pressed
on a whim
of brazen will
never second guessing
second chances
on a wing and a prayer

to a red-breasted woman
crowned in a halo of hummingbirds
who
plucked the spiders from my eyes
shucked the flax seed from my teeth
sucked the rhesus from my bowel
fucked the birthmark from my skin

each an act of contrition
left me forgiven, not forsaken
a new vaccination
scarred into shoulder
to remind me

the dead owl crushed against a windshield
portends no fate
for a blood-born man
with a cardinal heart

a tuning fork in the road

Musik Meines Vaters

with a fork in the flat, asphalt road before him
he followed the sound of instinct, the music of chance
and the strain of violins that countered the violence
of a midwest, manifest destiny he chose to reject

just got out
just got away

and found that cello weeping low
between the static of shortwave
a signal stretched
from saskatchewan south to san angelo
deep in the heart
asleep in his heart
the longing he heard behind the largo desires
of Albinoni
the isolation he felt buried beneath icy stabs
of Sibelius
the sense of place he discovered between pastoral passages
of Copland
and so surrendered to the sounds of a road less traveled

and so, here I sit, in a car,
in the early morning glare
of eastern standard light,
years from that fork
fine tuning through the static of life
just a generation removed
from rural poverty,
inevitable alcoholism,
and a still turning cycle of violence
turning as surely as the skyline of windmills
strung across a dying prairie
like strings across a splintered stradivarius
dwarfing long abandoned radio towers
that once crackled with the music of my father

In Suspect Terrain

Cast

i threw a rock
into the air
(it passed across childhood, gaining height)
i watched with one eye fixed on clouds
while hands busied their mud idols

rain fell from an aging sky
dissolving boyhood dreams
washing low
effigies near my feet

i threw a stone
skipped endlessly
(beyond waters where i was baptized)
i watched with heart held breathless
while beating paths to the other shore's edge

hail fell from an unforgiving sky
pummeling teen angst desires
denting deep
wishes left in wells underfoot

i threw a boulder
catapulted desperation
(between the poles of wonder/wondering)
i watched for the crush and flight of birds
while running for cover in the soft of her flesh

gravel fell from a sky so scarred
purifying through bruise blue pain
marking moments
where footprints anchor an arm in motion

An Elegy

So Son,

so make myself drunk again
and think of him
in that chair
for hours
tv sedative sedating

drip drip drip

lulling the last vestiges of a life
to sleep, to sleep
sounding a lullaby that sings:

so son,
take this torch and set a fire
upon the moon
that hangs just so, son,
dull cold and dead
in a setting sky
behind a rising sun

so make the old man a drink of gin
and think of him
in that chair
for now
tv hearth heart's

beat beat beat

lulling the last vestiges of a life
to keep, to keep
sounding an elegy this son now sings

for D.E.G.

The Wind In My Heart

there is no Superman
to turn back time
to let you remember
i was just here before /
you asked me that a moment ago /
we haven't eaten
yet
you are here
in body frail
in memories of mine
no longer the Superman
i remember
even if you don't

Bio Pic

End Credits

red wine
unwind
the film no longer stuck between sprockets
flickers
drunk with light and shadows
the last picture show
playing
without sound
no longer rewinds
to scenes where i stumbled after your love
now starring
the epilogue i am living
now slurring
the dialogue i have forgiven
myself for method
acting up and acting out
awaiting a bottle of applause
I bow
then fade to blackout