Overview

These are poems from the last millennium. Some date back nearly 20 years, some from late 1999. An overview, you might say.

 58^th Street

There is a place I can go

Where the world seems like distant dreams

There we start the day with a prayer

Coffee and a smile

There we end the day with a prayer

Discuss and then disconnect

Things we can do nothing about

White walls and shadows

Gold flecks in sky blue eyes

A dancer’s grace

A mystic’s understanding

Shared grace from above

Those eyes took me to snowy fields,

Sunlight then mist through the pines,

Where a tall slender figure

Walks beside a field of monuments, carrying red roses in her arms.

Stop- and watch

Pause and learn.

Winter winds and warm summer clouds-

All alike when she sets the roses down,

Takes me in her arms

And breathes softly.

This is the place I will spend the rest of my days.

Sage

I like the little rewards

I don’t push the envelope

Partial to the manual means

Blurring and pushing

Incandescent

Gravely, it may be

Changing habits,

Like channels,

The gist of it all

Is just once and for all,

Pushed to the side

Once again.

In a million unspoken ways

You’ve asked me to stay out of your territory.

I must decline.

Thanks for your invitation to under achieve.

It is something I do well.

Not this time.

The Timberman’s Yard

That was the summer

That I let my acreage grow.

Violent and untended,

To unite with the Timberman’s

Late at night, watching the trucks roll out of his yard

I would try to drink myself to death

For reason’s I’ve forgotten.

Way late the green fireflies come out,

Only it seems after the billboard yellow ones

Have closed their mating show.

Close to the ground they stay.

I would coax the clouds to rain,

Listen to the bullbat nighthawks

Start their slide down,

Arcing to that low roar.

Down by the old chicken shed

Using all the force of my squishy will,

I’d try to push my neighbors to the south

Farther away,

Wonder how people knew to stay away.

I timed the moon’s passage,

Woke up in my lawn chair

Amidst my litter

And hid all the day away.

Next year I’ll cut and picket fence

Take a job on the Timberman’s lorry.

Next year

It was always next year then.

Sleep

It is necessary

to keep the mind beneath the low clouds,

close to earth.

Not to let it go soaring

off into the stratosphere

of lost chances,

conjecture and fleeting glances.

Hopeless to recapture,

too painful to consider without forgiveness.

sleep comes from low fogbanks,

not lofty flights.

I am wide-awake at 3 in the morning

after attending my own funeral in a dream.

Watching from above

it is St. Phil’s on a rainy morning.

The strangers, why don’t I know these people?

Walk under umbrellas through Mormon park

where hobos sleep in the gazebo.

Lilacs are blooming- early May then.

Inside the church incense hangs;

and- finally a familiar face, the one who hung on the wall and the cross

In my fathers frame

Panis Angelicus and Wayfaring Stranger

Haloed and waiting.

Amen.

Moses

Moses he was building him

A miracle machine

Gonna haul it on the ark

Gonna lay it on a beam

Take it to the temple

(Electrical crude - oil in the pan)

Must have seemed wild

In the Holy Land then.

BC-Anno Domini

Between the new and old

Testaments all binding

That’s what I was told

This ark they cannot find her

Ask the Ethiopians

Tell you down in Africa

They always understand.

Shaman

In this little house

where I should be

the times will change.

I can’t live here always.

It’s a shame.

So go on.

I can’t freeze time like I want to.

There was a Shaman that I met. 2 years ago. He did not think of occurrences and things that would make what is good now, change. He danced and hopped, skipped and jumped around a living room. But he was not a self sufficient Shaman. He knew all these tremendous theories that you will think about when you look up at the stars and you are a long way from the city-

but he has always had women to look after him.

He takes cabs home from the taverns.

Footnotes are obliged to trace

occurrences to their higher planes,

hopefully.

(The afternoon was unraveling. The A.M. optimist was admitting defeat.)

Exposure

I feel like we should dive

As into a pool

Slow motion

Splashes that last for hours

Driblets on private exposures

Spleens objecting

Tongues protruding

Written after witnessing the eradication of Beldar

Old Ernie

Monday at the plant

Sees me watching him watching early A.M. sun slant

Sez, “What light through yonder window shines.”

I say “Breaks. It’s breaks I believe.

If I recall my Shakespeare.”

Tis dawn and Juliet is the Sun.

Ernie replies, “When I lived in Fort Dodge Iowa, this man hadn’t seen his X in 14 years. Threw a brick through her window. Then he drove his car up on her porch.”

Some segue. Does this pertain to Shakespeare

Or the window?

Morning or Juliet or Fort Dodge?

The Maple Kid

I was caught off guard

By the Maple Kid

Oh, the things that he did.

He was your idea, after all.

You left him here.

You never said anything about all this syrup

He’s got your pores, you know.

My old Sycamore Kid was so determined,

His bark and his bite

Just felt so right.

I just neverwood-

Plain and simple fact

Have trained such a Maple Kid

The fine art of attack.

So come take him back

And all of de fences

I won’t say a word

About any past tenses

The night the Bohemians stayed home

They did a pale Pilsner waltz on the sofa

He said “ Here you are with all that extra room in your stockings,

While old Celine is on his third circuit of the town

Wearing grooves in the pavement.”

She smiled and looked past the window.

She said, “ I warned you, baby.

I knew you were a loof,

Out on the lumpy suburbian range.

In a past life you were a person who poured food on your head

Danced with dead chicken skins.

You missed appointments.”

Endover

A friend said, “You should call your work,

Incoherent ramblings.”

He was bothered by not knowing

How many writers’s there were on his block.

He says,” You’ve always covered your tracks with a big smokescreen.

You’re a chameleon, Ezra. A friggin Pizmo clam.”

In the end it turned out

I didn’t like decadence well enough

To make a career out of it.

Couldn’t go the whole nine yards.

So, no mo decadence row

Just samples of you

And vacations too-

Many to mention

Monday

Is a day of surrender..

Sometimes you will backslide

Toward it

And some times hide it all away.

A Monday recluse, with hair shirt and remote.

Left to decide,

 Between faith and speculation.

I would say, ”I’ll start tomorrow.”

Watch a million tomorrow’s

Turn into a million yesterday’s.

I stopped letting Mondays

Push me around.

It’s no scarier now than those other days

I’m tougher on Mondays.

I’m lead lined

Brass plated.

God’s word bound.

I seldom stray from my purpose.

But, it’s not just my purpose now.

Sharing is what opens you up

To walk in the light,

You cannot walk alone.

Circles

On the outside of the circle,

Rush back toward

The truths of youth.

Finish this stay here,

With the facts of existence.

On the inside of the circle,

 Heal and offer up the hurts

Caused and born

Closing all with passage.

No mourning or second thoughts,

No doubt or spurious guilt.

No sense of a lifespan wasted

Going through the motions.

Bottling up the fear

Of things kept from experience.

All it was was a life

All I took with me were my own days

That is a thing we could not share

Your epithet

For you only

Feral

She asked,” Do you feel like a new soul,

or an old one?

Do you recall any past lives?”

“No.” I replied.

Not human, anyway.

I do remember the pack at my heels

running Reindeer down the slopes of an ancient glacier.

I was canine-

dark and full of fangs

There was moonlight on my Sumatran stripes,

paused motionless before the spring.

A young buck sensing my feral momentum.

I was feline-

shady and whiskered.

Wherever the moon was

you could take it as the last pass;

it’s all just murk and dreams

conjectures no more real than smoke

or mirrors.

             Mr. Elemeno

He’s borrowed my temper

Stage presence and grit

I’ll hope more ambition

And common sense: to whit-

The alphabet boy

Is in overdrive now

God give him the wisdom

That words will allow.

Nashville

I’ve wondered why I wound up there

In Nashville,

A city boy from up north,

Coming in on the north bound dog

From Atlanta and points south-

Shuffling out of the rain

From the Bell hotel

Into Tootsie’s.

“Is that Willie’s stool?”

The Ryman was full of shadows then

Ernest Tubb’s was still all vinyl.

At Gruhn’s the Dobro in the window reflected the street lights.

But, I was here to see Hank’s Cadillac.

The old man liked the prisoner’s song;

But when mom was mad at him, he would put on

Seven years with the wrong woman

And sometimes things would fly through the air at him

As he winked at me and slipped out the door.

Grandma gave me

A Luke the Drifter Jr. album.

It had her favorite song

The old rugged cross.

It took me a long time to know how good Hank was

You have to hurt to sing like that.

Rain Crow

When that first gray light of dawn

Flickers down the hill

I always leave you then

You say I always will

Time to make the change again

For that other world

There are truths

And there are deeper truths

It’s the guarded knowledge

The inner workings

Intangibles

You jump through the hoops

Get thrown for those loops

Swell up

Tick down

Bide the slings and arrows

I’ll stay some day

Until the morning has gone

August

(My birth month. End and beginning.)

Something about this time of year

An on the cusp Leo

Summer nearly at an end

Considering inertia,

Mine and theirs.

Can’t control, or be controlled.

The damndest things occur out of the clear blue sky.

Feel the new bite of the north wind.

See the sun slip back from its apogee.

Each night,

Think of old friends,

Out of touch.

Through poverty or wealth

Procrastination or neglect.

“Not if I see you first!”

Leads to hard traveling,

Overindulgence.

Always the old grasshopper

Fiddling.

At least I see the merits

In the ants of the world.

Still as far away from being one as ever.

Acts

Contrite and apostolic

Listening carelessly,

The sin of selfishness

Without impatience,

Promotes the sin of surprise.

So much stubbornness.

Living with someone

Not close to connecting-

Mistaking the yearning and desire at the beginning

For the tools to build a life

Enter a relationship with a promise to be partners

Then look back over the voids and vetoes,

And see the impossibility.

You won’t bring back the smiles,

The friendship that should have gone before.

Those walls are too high

To even gaze over.

Settle for loss

With some understanding.

Or live with sorrow and anger.

Frame

L’ Enfant photographer-

Driving down the road

Framing everything he sees

There’s not that much film.

I’d like a retroactive camera.

In my daydreams I’d go back and click

Click photos of people I’ve long since lost touch with

The events we were involved in.

Find a way to install a darkroom in my mind

There the pictures still rest

Fresh- hanging on the spongy walls,

Tied, like bananas

Delay

So distinguished looking-

I cannot imagine her spending time in a house

That is as much like a hermitage as mine

She is not going to fade from the scene

She read about seeking oblivion

Now, I’ve found it, but expect her to join?

Not gonna happen.

For my only redeeming quality, curiosity-

I may pay dearly.

So, if it get’s too close, deny it.

Talk her into casting a spell over me each night

Pray I can clear her head in the morning.

I can’t remember what you look like

If you’re not right before my eyes

I can’t predict how this will strike you

It may be nothing but lies.

So, you need work or you need imagination

Or you don’t really need at all

We should have examined our predatory natures

Before that first kiss.

So, call me your handy man,

In charge of conquests and shallow waters.

Slack time

“It wasn’t that great.”

Just threw him a bone

Earlier this morning.

Sun comes a little higher on its Helix

It is past the Solstice

Racing past the millennium.

Only a lineal thing, obsessed and excessive,

Caused by impatience.

For every thing there is,

Keeping the Faith

Relieves dereliction.

To keep that anonymity a part,

 to enjoy it enough to hesitate.

Forwards and back

Time stumbles.

To keep the independence-the distance

You’ll make better choices

After it’s too late.

Too late for midnight visitors’,

Too late for the spur of the moment.

If it’s premonition

Or premeditation-

Some gratification you want,

Look somewhere else.

Don’t send that aura.

Flat Earth

I plopped two nickels in a pay phone. Behind me there was a buzz and roll of voices beating the heat. In a tavern.

“I was going to suggest that though we were bound to miss the turtle races in Ericson, if we waited a week (at which time I will also be solvent, with concurrent vacations) we could go up to the Burwell Rodeo, and on up to Merrit’s reservoir.”

I guess you can rodeo and baseball yourself over the brink, fishin around there on the high prairie.

If it’s a flat earth I’d like to walk off the edge.

Have they proved it otherwise?

The world is flat.

There are a million edges; they are all over the place.

If you have not seen them, you have not been paying attention.

I sincerely wish that you would speak up in defense of offensive thinking.

I owed it to myself, so (big deal) I walked off the edge a few years ago.

It was a part of being the way you aren’t,

largesse and thank you’s and halt.

It’s not wrong and it’s cleansing and pleasing,

for ten minutes at a time I appreciate it

go to rest with a dim feeling

it will becalm me eventually.

Pray faith brings the bottom line, eternally.

Ten minutes.

The Poem which became lost

This did not occur when I wrote longhand

Beryl Black Beauties

Number two’s

Papers

Lying in stacks on my desk for years

Sometimes succumbing to roving bands of confetti makers

Allowed to peruse

Failing to stay and help clean up

They were pals of the thing that wouldn’t leave

Couldn’t blame them

My work was unpoliced, unpolished, unprincipled.

But I never lost a poem without a scrap to show

Until I went to the computer, just a minute a go

Ate two of my poems

Without a backup

Just the titles remain in my head

Not even an opening line to start with.

I wish I had some computer confetti

I wish I had a hard drive with a heart

If this thing is so damn smart,

It’d choke it back up.

It’s unpunishable. I could sell it,

But I can’t shred of sharpen it

And it stills smiles at me when I fire it up.

Written in 1985 on my first primitive word processor. Garage sale gone.

Edmond

What sort of a man is Edmond Sperry?

Why does he allow his landlady, Mrs. Cummerbund

To dictate his policies.

To infiltrate his personal affairs?

Why is there an enormous umbilical cord

Between their houses?

Passing underneath the hedge

Like buried power lines?

Arrowheads

Micmacs flung far to the south

or a Seminole searching for frostbite;

(They came, unlike the others, from South America.

missing that Bering Strait by a couple of thousand miles)

stray gators across the state line, either way,

none lurking in the tidal flats, or cafes.

I came to Savannah (A renegade tourist) for the lowland boil,

to catch a glimpse of the Cosmos explorer.

To see a sister of Mercy, on her mission of mercy.

This arrowhead was planted by an indentured servant

with a smoothbore musket- under a palmetto at Wormsloe,

up through a tunnel of live oaks, a mile and a half past the gate,

buried at the waterline, beside the tabby ruins.

Making a clearing took the longest.

They began mixing the tabby, with lime in short supply;

David Leeds snake bit and four hours to the garrison.

Days when they’d see the canoes

they’d rush inside the fortress and stare out the musket ports.

They came in the early dawn, beaching their canoes in the mist.

Silently approaching the camp, they watch unseen.

The animals stir first, smoke rising from the cook fire.

A servant appears, leaving the compound, cautiously crossing the clearing.

Like shadows they fade back towards the river.

The servant looks up as sunlight glints off a paddle;

Samoyos stands in the bow and sends a feathered shaft past the servant’s ear to settle,

quivering in the stockade door.

I picture it resting there these 400 years

now here in the north, as the renegades await winter;

think of how the Sea Islands must be-

warm breezes in December-

while on the high plains, I linger

with responsibility, desires, and a love for the cold thin air,

big skies and empty miles.

Yesterday

I have no appetite

For words or thoughts

Food or work.

I have little room,

And the time you used to fill, lingers.

I’m learning to be alone again.

I relied too much on you,

to let me forget my grief.

I must get down to the business of healing myself

Without thoughts of you

That let me hide my pain from myself.

So, until the pain is gone

And I’m free,

I’ll try to give you a smaller part of my world,

And hope this does not drive you out

Completely.

Escaped from the Dream book

In the dead of the night,

Trees still in late summer anticipation-

I’m in the half dream style

(which I am told can be entered at any time-

like a doorway)

light breeze from a window fan

caresses us as our Lord enters

Walks with us both

In separate dreamscapes.

He explains salvation

In a way I may forget in the morning,

The lessons, fortunately

Go on nightly

Through this joyous repetition

I am reborn.

Salud

“I am not a man, Emil!”

only a toddling figment

the floor abundant

the coup de grace

on the cul de sac.

The clever innuendo,

will get you in the end, though.

Soul blueprint

Time it was mapped out

Time you stepped inside

Walked around.

Cemetery cold

Silent light snow.

Wind free.

I saw your footprints there.

It was about learning the instruction manual

It was setting the permanent seal, on what came before.

The mindset you thought had value,

The energy expended.

All that time spent

Arriving at dead ends.

So- I can be in your mind

Your soul and your arms

At the same time?

Who’d of thunk it?

Ashes

Watched the centuries

from the dark edges

of the border camps.

Afraid of the fire.

Fear of the light

Left blindly groping

Along the bottom.

The Ark is sailing.

Christine

Is an Old Testament woman,

Walking the sands of the Holy land

Wearing a blue cloak,

Like the Theotokos

Gathering rocks for a shrine.

Late afternoon sun

Causes the heat waves to shimmer and die.

I know in this dream

How much I love her.

I feel how close she is to Earth and stone.

Proverbs, chapter 31

Hard working hands, calloused feet

Her woman\mother’s smile

And I her husband\son

To be taught and held,

Acquire balance.

The Sea of Galilee is near

And I (bearded and long haired)

Join her, and walk to the shore

Amidst the cries of gulls.

Sounds of fisherman putting in their boats

The wind blows in from the lake,

Scent of spices and oils,

Olives and sage.

We walk along the beach, arm in arm,

As the sun sets and the stars appear one by one.

Fires along the shore

Shapes dancing around them.

We dance together on the beach of an ancient sea.

Mary Magdalene

I’ve seen you in the inner city

I’ve seen you on the corner

You began to build

You rose from the dust

It is faith

That brought you where you are

That keeps you there

That keeps you where

His heart is.

If your life is a testament

If your life is a doorway

An offering this day

And a promise for tomorrow.

Shadow

Or, the Halloween visit of the tap-dancing anti mime.

I was the shadow of literature

A mere shadow of my former self,

Having no weight or breath.

It was not for lack of trying,

Only the shift in gravity.

It’s this preoccupation with the trivial

The dismissal of the spiritual

The saturation of the mundane.

Literature wears its heart on its sleeve.

Take the blinders off. Let the poetry go back to the streets.

A slam—what does that mean?

By all means take care of the poetic needs

Of affluent kids shelling out 10 G a year. But-

Don’t forget the poetry of the honky tonks,

Backsliders and blue-collar schmucks,

Drinking and roaring with wild angels-

Give them some damn poetry whether they like it or not,

Cast this shadow again-

It’s not just since renaissance,

Go back to King David.

Solace and inspiration.

Done

Perhaps it is only vanity

That tells me to leave the warts on my poems.

Perhaps I can’t let go,

Because I have learned to let go

Of so many other things.

In the end,

Since I have always had mixed feelings

About the sharing

(Of this work)

I can take what good there is,

If any,

Once finished, say done.

And goodbye.

Grace St.

I sit underneath that big Catalpa tree

On a sunny slope

The warehouse door

Only a few feet away- wide open

The din from the restless bears

Inside the dingy cave

Filters out and mixes

With the sounds from the derelict neighborhood

Acrid glue smoke pours out

Eye burning oils for the ghetto

A ship with no rudder

And no overhead

My first 10 years was worth

1800 dollars

If you smash your hand in the press

You get peanuts and a pink slip

Pride or a paycheck

Seasons

The ancients knew the seasons

Knew the tides

To grow and reap

Knew hide and feather and bone

Here in the new world

We watch the crash of the American dream

Credit card overextended

Children out of control

Two parents who could not

Would not

Agree

On anything

The bricks piled up

Lucky for them they’ve got cable

Lucky for me I don’t

Waiting for Mr. Postman

I didn’t go bad, there at the end.

He said you were a textbook case.

Maybe you went bad.

Maybe it just wasn’t your decade.

You can believe me. Here at the end

it’s so calm I can accept that.

It’s worth as much as all the attention

that’s paid out on the streets.

It filters through bottles in the cafes,

with palms and lip service.

Rises to the top of some damn heap.

Just don’t believe me.

All hard work and care mean is doing right without P.R.

If I could just put your mind in a vise,

jumble up some temporal lobes,

I might get your thinking machine

out of the black and white,

adjust your horizontal hold.

Just don’t believe me.

I didn’t go bad, there at the end.

Valhalla

Oil of Ole

gal I knew wore it everywhere.

Caulked her wrinkles with sprinkles.

Vayoz con doooox!

Hollering in print,

imprint

I can nudge you and budge you

ever so slight

once of twice, yes it’s nice;

just park out of sight

Sha-d livers and gizzards, and

cows- about them now

they ring through my shower

and echo down the hall.

Out to the pasteur looie

(20 blocks north of here)

they pop up in conversations with yours truly

look at my stove and squall and ball

yep. Hear em?

The moon says hello

Two halves or four fourths lonely

can’t seem to put you away

can’t say I think of you only

I mustn't, I couldn’t- I may.

I used to think of you

as the lady of the falling star

rising, then slowly stalling

far away

out where the street lights end.

I couldn’t put a finger on you’re beauty

you were vinegar to the ears

but candy too, your touch with tongues

too wild

too aimless

bound in the deep

well hidden pride

would not once

let you say

you loved me.

Basement

“Let me show you-“ she said.

“Seriously!”

Oh you ballerina you.

Plural, dos ballerinas.

You could be either of you today.

on the bath the sly the kitchen floor

with La Cucaracha's and the whiskbroom.

the garage band makes noise down here

SOMETIMES

Old typer and musical clutter

the old kerosene heater blew up one night and covered the keyboard players

Hammond B3 ivories with soot.

Our cat pissed on the bass mans amplifier covers.

that woman cast a spell on all my friends

and the basement lair.

I’m way past tense and submission;

dictate to me what the Hell you have to lose.

The lines were drawn because they were inescapable.

You are a different woman everyday,

and I can’t communicate with any of you!

Wives

I liked going to the closet and seeing the clean clothes

I liked seeing the laundry process

I preferred the pale one

to the dark

the open one to the closed

I was young with one

older and confused with the other

I liked the closing of doors

and those rare feelings we were the only ones

can you conjure that up?

or does it just blow in

sometimes like the mist

to be savored

There is not much one really controls?

is there.

Pardon me for being the arbitrator-

but I thought I could control the rhythms

and could instill the peacefulness

a young mans fantasy.

It’s been disproved.

One is right here in town

and I wish she was on Jupiter

the other is on a swampy seaboard

and I wish she was within arms length.

Columbia

He said, “Remember to put down the story of Hood River Blackie.”

The song in the background was Luke the Drifter Jr.

We pushed back our stools in a bar in Hood River.

I didn’t say much about myself.

I wanted to ask him how he’d come to the end of the world,

How I had gotten there.

Past the neon parking lot the mist shrouded the streets,

the river deep and silent,

the hills peering over my shoulder.

I could hear dogs barking up and down river.

I stepped through the door of my room,

caught the sound of a local band, tuning up

across the street, the parking lot filling.

This is home for one more night.

Tomorrow I catch the eastbound dog,

leave an old friend laid up, here in the mist.

Tonight I’m that old Rain Crow again,

lost on his fence post.

Cagey,

little bit so.

I don’t wonder

whether you’d want to know.

Not any more. Not for a while

Could you come up with a smile

on the spur of the moment?

I warrant you, there will be times you’ll need that baby.

You’ll concede your feelings

are not the drastic

all encompassing things,

they seem to be.

You are not for me. Funny, I always thought you were.

It will take some time to fit in with knowing

you are theirs, and his, and not mine.

Any time.

Somewhere down the line

you will say;

“Whoa! wait a minute- did I hear that right?”

And- no.

You didn’t. You were not listening or looking correctly.

You were not trying hard enough.

Taking turns

saying “what?”

Tornado

I’m sitting on a park bench

at the reservoir, a mile up from the dam.

Truckstop behind me, semi trailer park,

world’s biggest coffee pot.

Out on the lake, two bass fishermen

cast under the dead tree where the cormorants roost.

It’s nearly time for the football game on radio.

The wind is growing cold.

Above me, moving slowly to the south,

riding the high thermals,

(just dust motes at first)

I see a tornado of hawks.

Hundreds of them, in a tight spiral- way up, easing down the wind.

Migrating, I guess, without the desperation of waterfowl.

Leaving me to face another bitter Nebraska winter.

(Enquirer sez coldest in a hundred years)

Honestly, I used to love them,

but now out in the car on the frozen street, before daylight,

seat like an ice cube as your car struggles and goes into shock when it starts-

chills down the back of my shirt.

It’s age I guess.

One of these years, birds,

I might follow south, too.

Nighthawks

I watch the Nighthawks you know, when we are at the band concerts.

They keep in pairs; I would assume a monogamous relationship.

They scout out the buildings along the street,

dip into alleys, circle trees and flagpoles.

   When I was a small boy, playing in the schoolyard, I would hear their booming,

caused by a rush of air when they make on of their

swooping descents.

   I always thought there were Bullfrogs up on top of the schoolhouse.

I imagined some sort of shallow, swampy lake up there with big frogs puffing

out their cheeks and making these booming noises.

   At some point in time I happened to look up and see one of those Hell dives;

hear that small sonic boom, and make the connection.

they have slacked off, here in town. Grown timid. Stay on the well-lit main drags.

Country Nighthawks still are noisy. You can count on them.

 I tried to point them out to my daughter.

 They wouldn’t cooperate.

Green Grocer

If we had one on our block

he’d be past the barbwire fence

where the unpainted birdhouses sit,

on the gateposts that are grown over with weeds.

That gate won’t swing.

I’ve not opened it these three years we’ve lived here.

Beyond that gate the green grocer

would plan what he’d put in;

not letting his garden run so wild.

That whole acreage,

dense and forbidding-

tended during storms by wild men, with soup bowl haircuts-

would turn heads, and profits.

Would not scare my children, my lawnmower, or me.

In the winter his plan makes sense.

In the depths of summer

he cannot stay ahead

of the jungle.

Enough

I’ve made enough rash statements

in my life.

So I take a moment and a deep breath,

to make sure I don’t let go another one.

I’ve acted without thinking,

enough times in my life.

So if I hesitate,

I’m thinking my action through.

I’ve drawn many conclusions

based on half truths-

So if I stop to withhold judgment,

it’s not mine to make.

I’ve entered many low conversations,

and stayed-

I’ll try to raise the bar

or leave

unspoken.

Prayer will suffice for times of doubt.

Guiseppe

The concierge lays planks

without a word of thanks.

Myopia,

is my opium;

fuzzy and glazed.

Guiseppe goes on a beer sabbatical,

a gibberish moratorium,

just for you.

He don’t know Chubby checker,

don’t know Fats Domino,

but we hang with Obese Parcheesi

And Tubby Canasta fo sho’

Guiseppe just wanted a little bite,

slight misunderstanding

por favor?

He did these things one time.

He won’t do them any more.

Pretend

They pretend not to know,

but they know.

They try not to recall,

but they’ve seen it all before.

They remember.

It’s hard to watch them perched on the precipice

preparing for the nosedive.

We don’t like the stories

about bitterness;

About preferring to be left alone.

It’s just healing,

it’s just being led home.

Mr. O. Blivious

there is a little door

deep down in the soul

underneath common awareness

he comes and goes;

you know who he is.

you might not want to admit it,

but you know who he is.

he’s always been there,

always will be.

so when I am Mr. O. Blivious

I get lost in the world

I don’t see him as any big threat,

there are sights and sounds

the rat race draws, that quiet inner self is really a lost cause, isn’t it?

too tough for me.

so he comes and stays in the little door,

and Mr. O. Blivious lets him abide.

run him out. keep him out. don’t let the world tell you he doesn’t exist.

he is far away from the caricatures of him.

he lives. in you.

But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.

Book of Common Prayer Pg. 450

Bad Medicine-

Where is the release from it? Like Abel from Cain,

Muerte-

It’s all still with us. It’s the old news again.

The Spaniards rode up through the Staked Plains, The Llano Estacado, heat shimmering off their armor. They entered the foothills of the Rockies where the Purgatory flows. Black Eagle was camped with his band of Comanche there. “Who are these turtles who ride on the backs of magic dogs? We will see what they are.” The Spaniards talked loudly. They gave mirrors and trinkets. They set up camp upstream and fouled the water. At first light Black Eagle killed them and took their horses.

Repeat first part

Down on 16^th street in the barrio, Mrs. Blackbird calls the Omaha tribal shaman to rid her house of evil spirits. She say’s, “You might want to watch this.” He arrives in a rusty Cadillac, wearing Conchos and a cowboy hat. He takes an eagle wing and dances around the foundation, brushing the stones. He lights sage and circles the house again purifying with smoke. As he finishes, the trees all around begin to fill with crows. We ask, “What’s with the crows?”

He replies, “That’s where I send them.”

On the far left, on the far right, the motives are the same.

 that far over the line, extremes only remain.

 The light of the world is hidden,

the ending now is plain.