2am & i want to call you
its raining
you're probaby asleep

Land Road - Sea Lane - Vapor Trail

Cracked and dry September roads before
The rains come back. Emptied barns
Scratching the sides of the roads.
Rust of augers pointing into the sky.
Here the machines have lost their meanings.
They are steely Stonehenges following
Lost constellations. The galaxies
Have crept away from here.
We navigate by the stars of overpasses
And exit ramps.
Creeping into another daylight like
The one we have left.

In another time I will move through the
Ditches, as before.
The wide and slow ditches of another
Place. Making a small fire under a
Copse. The mornings will be without
Ownership.

In a true way, I will be where
You were. Seeking the other thing
We have came for.

***

The chop is light, our prow drives
Into the waves the winds cut. If
We were still, we could hear the lapping
On the hull. The lines are out:
We are trolling for a something.
The lines are baited.

I wish a nothing eternally. No strikes, only to
Cut the green water, to
Watch the horizon of white from the flying bridge.
Never to fight the fish,
And bring the gaff, and
Hoist the twitching sore beast from the water.
String up the unliving thing on the dock.

There is no way to touch this moment.
Before the strike and the screaming
Real, before the joy and the beers.
This is the here I have searched for,
The time before the inevitable cracks
To life, when chance has not doubled
Its efforts to bring us what we
Wished for in the quiet hours.
When chance has its own motives
Beyond certain.

***

And like that,
We have leaped up from the earth.
The fields sprawl out, the mountains assume
Their shapes as we know them from maps.
Until the valleys resemble peaks.
This is speed and truth.
Nothing is hidden at this height.
If you loved me, I can see it here.
I can see it here.

We move faster than the speed
of crows, but towards a what?
When did it matter, but before
I had crossed into a time
We shared, then lost like
Life passing out of a wing?

Untitled

How?
Across the bed the shape of
The shoulders are never yours.
Never your little body,
But only a her or another her.
There is nothing worth dreaming here.
The bed is a burning ghetto. Phosphorus.

All day?
All day I make your body rise to me.
You take your place in imaginary chairs.
I hear nothing but your voice in the radio sounds.
Every drink is your slow tears.
I think only of my fingers on your skin.

The humor?
The humor is you never wanted me.
I never you. The unknown alls.
Now I hear you think.
Your thoughts cloud me.
I at my work while you in yours.

If you left?
If you left the moments collapse.
The matters unmatter.
There is no shelter for what I think.
If you leave, and leave,
Then you were never here.
I would take the life I’ve lived
And bury it within
The wildflowers of the planes.

Secret Topeka

The good many hours I've put in with
My married woman (unmarried to me)
Spent not talking about her husband in Topeka -
Is that a Kansas?
It was because we could openly lie.
I to her, her to me


Making great plans and thrashing in a
Small bed
But only when she could.
Between meals. Between airlines.


I once drove two hours to meet her
For forty-five minutes then
Came home to dinner. HA!


I pretended to love her name.
She pretended to love my talking.
Our feet touched in restaurants.
I told her I could play piano (I can't).
She told me about architecture
And I still don't care.
She would only peal a hotel orange
With a spoon.


In May her husband will name my daughter -
Who she will say comes two weeks early.


I am imagining a way of flying to a secret Topeka.
The rest of my life spent learning about the schools,
The neighborhoods, the events. A lifetime
Learning about things, and seeing things that
I can never have.

Untitled

“Well, goodnight anyway,”

As he struck those words

The sway of the chisel in his hand

As he struck those words

Beneath the hammer and into

The stone of his mind.

(Forever those last three words

Without lust the last things

He said to her)

Then the telephone in its silence.

And before this they had been

To every place.

In staircases.

In narrow hallways.

In green streets hairy with trees.

In shores of saltwater lakes.

In a desert place where nothing grew against

The rust of the colors.

But now arrived here, this emptier

Place at the end of a silent conversation.

Drop the phone. Take a drink.

Well here we are.

With all the time in the world

To make good on things

That were better not.

The Dancer Eye

And then with his little ‘time heals all’ dance,

Stuck his feet onto the stage

Facing the fear of the audience.

They all watched him crouch from the curtain,

And gasped with the way he took his jump.

His body a fearless hello.

Fingers straight as orchids.

Wobbles where they belong.

The very night itself a shoulder.



- This is me of late. Stepped out into the oncoming

Traffic which is morning. Without grace -



My darling, you are not an eagle.

You are a photograph of a Vespa:

Although I own the image, I do not

Own the item. My darling, you are

Not a sheet. You are a jar filled

With clean water: a vessel for

The only thing that matters.

My darling, you are not waking eyes.

You are a harp in a battle: a ghost sound

That I hear for years.



Have I been foolish? Then I have

Walked around in a foolish way feeding pigeons.

Have I been foolish? Camping along a frozen shore

In August while friends swim the Bras D’Or.

Have I been foolish? Spending the summer

Curled around your little feet and listening for

The whisper of your voice.



And these the dancer sees moving through

The window’s world. Trips around the studio.

The radio cranked up and drunk.



It was not our time for these lives to join their

Pursuits and strings. Rather the wind pulled us only a little,

Then scuttled the cans, the leaves, the junk,

The humanity of the alley into the places

From far away to far away.

The Concessions

I stray into older and
Older time that comes by order
Through year and another year.
The grips (the teeth) of the gears
Strip. The zinging it sounds like.
*Yes your ears and ears go
*Until you can only hear the punctuation,
*The look on faces.

As the gears go - they let you know they are
Going and slip out of the door one
At a time
Into the nightwoods ducking
Through brush until they reach the
Stream where trout do not see them
In their sleep -

The rest of it.
The whole damn mechanism.
It slows into a slow machine.
It is a turn of the century photograph of
Complicated belts and valves in a
Steam driven window-maker's dangerous shop.

I look outside. I can smell the sweet coal-burning
Smell of the engine. I feel the cap on my head.
It's sunlight and I'm wearing longsleaves.

What they do not tell say is that
It is peaceful. You may sit
With a blanket on your lap.
Rest your arms on the armrests.
There is only now time to enjoy
That it is warmer than you like.
And to sit without being hungry
Or without need.

The rest of everything is small.
It rests on the deck of a ship.
It is small. It looks small
As it tacks out towards the sea.

And behind - the crackle of a burning sound
That approaches here.
This place I am.
Stretching hands out behind you
Feeling flecks
Of the heat

Of the heat
On its approach.

irony in pills

i've made a doctor's appointment
tomorrow, 9 am

my bloodpressure its high
i've been stressed lately

life, job, money,
bills, relationship

etc etc etc
same story blah blah

want to make sure that
everything is okay under the hood

i'm sure i'll have to cough
& endure the cold stethoscope

irony of ironies
i've kind of got a sorethroat

that started tonight
probably psychosymatic-hypochondriac

i can feel my heart bang-bang-banging away
when i sit like a small baby's fist thwacking me

so i'm a tad worried
36 yrsold

my father had his first major
cardiac event at 43

by my math i have seven years
that gives me time

lose twenty lbs
quit drinking

relax

write my book of poems
get a real job

maybe get married

i'm going to
the dr tmrrw

Three groundhogs pray in a field
bob and dip, bob dip
they must be hasidic jews

In Tom Wait's Voice

Mary was a welfare mother
Joseph was a kindhearted man
Jesus was born on a cold winter's day
in a cardboard shack
Under a sign
which read
"WILL WORK FOR FOOD"

In Service

We had been to the hospital that
Morning to give blood, then
Drove into the city.
There was a bottle and we
Drank it because it did not matter.
We came through the slow
Streets and stopped at crowds and
Tried to help. No one wanted
Help. We took some to
The hospital. A man sent his son with
Us while he looked for his wife.
We wrote for him where
We would take the boy.

In the afternoon they began
Shelling the city again.

The truck ran out of fuel. For a while
I was not sure where you were.
We helped put out fires.
There was never water.
We did not sleep that night, but stayed
In a shed behind some buildings.
It rained. There was no wind
Or lightning.

Eleven days later I got on a boat and
Returned to this country. To linen. To
Warm. To language. To nights.
Everyone drinks and speaks.
My time there I saw but
Was part of no real. Mornings only
Hunched in the windows of sky.
Day never seeming to come bright.
Time rose and fell as it prayed.
And what if the world does not end?

nonverb

days like this

grey

cloudy
cold

make it hard
to want

to do
to be

to experience
to partake

The Mare

Foundering. It was foundering they
kept saying. That Travis had
walked in and saw something had
happened, but he didn't know
what to do. He knew about
staying on your feet
and not lying down. He ran
to get Bill. They came in
out of breath with their hats
off. Then Bill told Travis to
get Emily and dad.

I thought about the oats. The peacefulness
of the oats and the sweet crispness
of the dry corn. The smell of oats;
the dust of oats around your nose.
All the joy in your life in the
sunshine drinking cool water and coming
inside and having a little more to
eat, then the quiet of the
barn. Long nights without wind.
Listening to the small
sounds. Drifting to sleep
without thoughts of morning.

By now they were yelling.
Emily and Travis were off to get
the doctor. Gene was pulling me
around the lot and
Bill pushed when I tried to stop.
All the lanterns were lit, like
they were looking for
something. The animals moved
and watched with their eyes.
Outside the barn lot the
world was silent and waiting.

My legs were in terror - foam
thick in my mouth. I felt the red
and pain in my eyes. My guts
screaming. I wanted water, and
did not want water.
Gene and Bill pushed and pulled and
strained. I laid down. I laid
down by the fence near the
small gate.

The men's voices changed. They spoke
a new language. I could not
hear Emily's soft high
voice, or Myra's laughing.
The languages changed and changed
until they became the same - a
sound like rustling or wind.
The sound of a hand as it
strokes your neck. Then
no sound at all, just a feeling
like you're running as fast as
you can through dark and the
feeling of air all around you.
The soft and the present.

We never really know what we are doing

We learn, we get better, we improve

But the goal line keeps moving

There is no finishing this process

We'll never know what we are doing

Not really

Restful

Breathing fresh air
Is like drinking water
Or closing your eyes.

word

the first time i said the word
my tongue felt heavy

like it had been shot
full of novacaine

& (in my
mind) my voice

sounded like a
slowed 33 lp--

a thick word
that tumbled

out

like a heavy boulder
it almost sounded

fake

its not
& it isn't

its real
& i mean it

every time
i say

it

This morning I hear alarms softly going off.
I see gauges politely approaching areas demarcated in red.
I wonder what to do. I wait until the alarms
Are louder, but wonder if they get louder
Or if this is it.

From the Gradual

The continent in its creep (its
low gradual gear)
comes over across the sea.
The long aged water.
From the peak of the roof
I watch the waves slip in
their troughs and tumble
eachother.
It all sounds like smoke - this
gimmick of earth.

Then the great Canadians crook
under the clouds
hemmed with their noise. This is
their season, and they know it.
They will tell you that
they come in on
the cold wind that comes in.

But the arrogance of their shadows
goes unnoticed on the deaf
gears that creep

this moment from hence to
forth, hence to forth.

Queen of S Words

Another Ondine talks to a fish
Beneath the Queen's chair
And whispers
Japanese Bath Houses

My Nature is Good

My name is Extra Gravy
And I'm an introvert.
This is my nature.
I am not broken.
I do not need to change.
I do not need to be more
like you.

The Animals The Animals

The hog-nose snake among the
Grape vines when
The dogs find him and
All his tricks

Puffed up like a cobra
In its hood
Then
Rolled over in mock eternity
While the claws and the
Nails of the she-dogs
Ripped the grass
Around him

Until their interest slipped
Back to the
Squirrels among the branches
The opossum among the garbage
The sleep behind their eyes

And he slipped away with
His scales between the arbors
Of this crop, next
Year's crop,

The places where futures come

first thing i do when
i get to work is make a
chapbook

three sheets of paper
folded in half & stapled
in the crease & i
try & write something--
i figure i have
12 pages

in between customers
i scribble something
kind of like
WCW but i
don't use prescription
pads

sometimes i'll grab
a book of poetry &
skim poems & hope
for inspiration

lately, its been
bukowskI--
that irascible
drunkard
poet from the
west coast--

i've had three
false starts
so far

so i read
Buk:
read about his
drinking
& womanizing & horsetrack
shenanigans

& look for inspiration
somewhere

its not easy
trust me