Departures (Don't Wake the Landlord)

The first time the mining boss

had so choked us off, after the ranchers shot our dog,

that we loaded up the truck and headed down the hill,

racing into hell for safety

See no evil in listening to my desert noir

Since I'm asking the Lord for safety

in the mercy of the miracle film score

Another time she said

I was possessed by the devil

and we escaped the seaport town

racing to hell for safety, again,

since your mind was gone

and I had to lose everything

to fill our days with broken glass

and the beads of trust

scattered in the sand by the sea

Then there was that time

you pissed off the landlord

Said you were leaving since

he couldn't keep the trains passing by

from shaking off the paints chips

and plaster from the ceilings and dingy walls

The sheriffs came from miles around

trying to figure out that money you'd found

We tried to get out of town without a sound

but the cat scittered up into the attic

in that long forgotten plains Iowa town

So we had to return the very next day

but where the cat had gone no one could say

Churned by the Mill the Hunter Takes His Aim

Pulling back on the bow

hidden from the self-imposed

exile from the world,

ground to a halt

the pillar and his salt,

feet burning

from the endless day

at the wheel

Now comes a song

etched in the dirty air,

the invisible wall

The typo for the point

about many brushes with death,

the mistakes to attest,

a thousand victories

over the orb,

a thousand losses,

and so he's even:

One kiss to come

to forget about her flesh,

or I can lose myself

in the hourly astronomies,

I guess

That an arrow finds its aim

once or two or three times

in a man's life,

is the star we do annoint

in the refracted light

of second sight

Tornado Food Towns (The Prophecy)

We navigated the great wide American plains

avoiding the chimerical swirl of the turbulence

by taking the back roads and byways

of the sky, running from the grief, you and I

With just enough gas to make it to

some cantaloupe country town

to sleep in a dirty motel room

as the sirens twisted on by

No we were not making good time,

instead killing the moments

and by the time we got to Sioux City,

you tried to kick your way

through the U-Haul door

in the madness of the memories

you never could embrace

The sky was red and green as my genetic memory

fed the agonized stress of the magical marble:

So hell, I was swirling, too

thinking of Dorothy knocked silly

by the door and the way

my grandfather's family

was annihilated in West Texas

This fear of storms is just a test, I guess

We ducked for the basement

and hoped for the best

The Dog Park (And Other Rules of Cyberspace)

You hurl out the door

sniffing for rabbits,

for the Alice in Wonderland hole,

dark in scent, stopping

to make your mark

in all of the usual places,

the parking lot covered

in candy wrappers,

the broken foolery of people

who never knew any better,

who when the black age broke

they hid from the spotlights

of the tigers hunting

for human flesh

of code that is their law

We'd get to the green embankment

and there would be a pause

and all I could think of was

getting to the ritual gate,

the tricky passage way,

the metal see-through bolt

we negotiated,

each man and animal

with their own interpretations

with their own explications

of the same light of the day

and then I would set you loose

and you would set me free

and you would run away

in that see-saw way of yours

while I sat on a bench,

had a smoke and then a prayer

Then would day the wagging whisperer

told me the multiplication tables were coming:

The organizers, the lawyers, the invisible watchers

The orange cones appeared first,

then yellow tape, spikes in the ground

mindless indicators, stunning our speech

into the silence, little hand held devices

saying you can walk here

but you can't walk there

but the shepherd

doesn't know how to read

and angels will do what angels will do

and this seemed funny to me

and my sense of anarchy,

as I shook my head,

laughing, mocking them,

living in the dream

and the nagging feeling

my brothers and sisters

would never get me,

delineated me, the vessel of

dualistic half empty

as you crossed the lines,

since dogs will do

what dogs will do

There was some beef

about grass,

the fenced-in yard

of social control,

and one day thinking

outside of the box,

looking in,

across the field the sprinklers

set the place on fire,

and all the beasts began to run and roar

and the guys with bald heads

leaned into one another,

pushing for a fight,

since the swirl of fangs

turned the blocked out space

into the wrestling cage:

Too many canine cannibals

scratching in their corners,

unyielding into the waste

of the iron-cut lawns,

the broken sprinkler heads,

the bashed in mesh of bent fences,

the spiritual need

to break through the bough

Nobody told the creek in the cave

it couldn't keep on running

or the wind to stream

through the mesh
or that amazing
radar nose of yours
giving it the sniff test