Too Many Horses (Why I Don't Drive)

Automobiles owned,

driven and reacted to,

starting with the one

that ran over my dog,

but not limited to,

includes this mortal list

of mechanical turmoil:

One 1965 Ford Mustang,

which my dad owned

as a shiny Great Society driver.

We put ice in the air conditioner

and it melted into cold air

from Texas to Arizona.

One green Oldsmobile stationwagon,

my mom's, which we drove from Dallas

to the far west corner of Wyoming

right at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

into the denouement of a late 70s green bomb,

a handover in high school. Mark Hirte,

my so-called neighborhood friend,

put dog shit on my windshield once,

but I forgave him after he died

in a restaurant robbery.

I pass by all apparently random,

thoughtless acts. Not my job

to write people up for transitional,

indiscretions.

One highly efficient blue Toyota Corolla,

four-door, another hand me down,

which I drove to college in Arizona,

then to a grisly death toward a U2 show,

where the real streets have no name,

then got married, went off the edge

of the financial world. Oblivion bound,

oh, the vast emptiness I have found.

One hitchhike out of that desert,

home in somebody else's white truck,

the wind in our hair, grit in our teeth.

In other people's cars I get careless and free.

Though, at times, my century makes me

go for the brake on the passenger's side.

Hard to trust when your are co-commuting

on the drag strip of fools.

One series of turnover cars, gas guzzlers,

four-door, family friendly, snow weary,

lacerated dents over one wheel well,

chains coming apart in a storm,

the motor a drum of pain on the paint.

One red Nissan truck, a mighty steel stead,

drove me from shifty Phoenix to New England,

out of danger I, the rising Phoenix, out of danger,

into trouble, into a world of need.

One silver Datsun, sporty, or so I believed,

kept me well until the ghost in the machine,

the Kachina spirit of my dead mother,

blew a motor for lack of oil. Death to husk,

no oil to very little soil. Sold it for one-hundred

single dollar bills.

All the high-end hijinks

of Porches and Jags,

all rented to deceive me, so I bought

a Volkswagon Rabbit, with plates

that rang, "Live free or die!" May oui!

Part of my mapped-out plan for eternity.

Bought it for two hundred dollars

as an act of rebellion against

the smog-belching stink.

One Taurus, circa '94,

forty miles one way to work,

a lifetime to get back,

the stereo blasting a skin

to shield me from the world,

until the day that I,

a red bull in a colonial china shop,

got too many horses spinning

in my head.

Oh, the little hobbit hole

expectations of me.

One two-thousand dollar Honda Civic,

belching smoke because, truthfully,

I know nothing about engines,

only the high-beam up ahead.

Now I have to fix it. That's my responsibility.

The heart burns fuel, and it's expensive,

the engine wears down with each little decision,

each bump, each turn, cracking the crankcase,

chipping the paint around the chrome,

the crunch of each microbe

cracking the windshield

in a terrifying roar

only mites can hear,

the mirror getting dull,

dislodged, dangerously so.

Then the door handle breaks.

I mean, it's cheap stuff, this flesh,

The tires will eventually go flat, or worse,

and before you are there, here, or anywhere,

this thing, this life is just a shell of scars,

reminders of cautionary tales to tell.

An Official Statement from Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

We most humbly apologize

for the series of unfortunate events

leading to the catastrophic batch

of pancake mix products

used to sanctify your

national rituals

Although, for reasons

beyond our control,

as well as those we can,

we cannot fully divulge, recite,

enunciate or simply explain

those circumstances leading

to the incidents in question,

our hearts got out to the families

of those who experienced

death or discomfort or both

from the clearly overzealous

applications of our potions, mixes

and accessories

We also thank your priesthood

and supporting public officials

for their patience and continued

business

Those relationships mean everything

to us because Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

is, if nothing else, a people place

We are proud the many denominations

of your faith have chosen our pancake mix

and asundry gifts and necessary toggles,

brushes and rubs are so much a part

of your holy houses

Your worship means the world to us

As you can imagine

those behind the so-called

“pancake plot” have been

severely punished

You can trust us on that score

While, certainly, the regrettable fallout

over the unfortunate event has been

trying for both of our nations,

our methods against the miscreants

were for more painful, and, long-lasting

than those horrors felt, in the last hours

by their victims

We at Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

remain supremely satisfied

with the high quality of our

pancake mixtures, creams

and agents for fast relief

Working closely now

with your priests and personages

of high renown who have paid us,

handsomely,

for your patronage,

we have made great improvements

to our mixtures, creams, fixtures,

accessories and agents for fast belief,

as well as our security measures to ensure

the purity of our products and applications:

The Make-a-Mix Spirit Cleanse causes

no more moaning excess, rapid heart rates,

vomiting, heaves, sores

and so any further anxiety

is no longer necessary

Which means our products

can be used in your rituals

without any more tumult

or torture than is

absolutely necessary

No more stigma

No more stain

Blood is no longer

needed as a substitute

for milk, whiskey, or water

(depending on the denomination):

A graft of skin will do

And when it’s time

to put your ass in the air

to receive our golden spike,

there will be plenty of time

(and advanced notice)

for you to become mortal,

wounded, of plaster and still

Flat Earth Theory (A Round Table Discussion)

The fact is, the Earth is still. Stunned, in fact,

there is no wind, another than the big fan,

since your argument indicates nothing less

than the coming of another dark age

What can we ascertain of love?

A survival drive, a spark of a star

seeking a guarantee the light

will never die

What we don't know

is everything surrounding

the fractal of what we do

I cannot upload

fifty thousand years

of learning fire burns

and water cools

in a moment of you

closing your eyes

only to deny

the sun of Osiris

in the magical gauze

of the orb beyond the lid

You are quite insistent

but persistence is not proof,

only the tyranny of celestial skys

where the glint of light off a leaf,

relatively speaking

is more profound than Saturn

Hardly fits the pattern

of even the sly screen

we peer into

as our minds go

softer, glowing less,

in the shrunken universe

of the disembodied

voices of doubt

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

Ruthless (for Babe Ruth)

Charismatic Babe Ruth runs hard and burns,

going good on subatomic energy, good as gasoline,

the homer baby of Babylon, playing Baal

in front of the unholy fences, no longer

a young being bowing to the crowd at Fenway,

during the later years as the unberman hero

at Yankee Stadium, which he built swinging

his bat like a hammer, a mirror to his time

when photos featured haggard stares

a prima donna, manpower in his belly

raging in the rag time, taking in a plug,

feeling his impatient behemoth beneficent guilt,

his soul a razor, at war with gravity,

thinking about walking unlimited miles

to whiskey in the bars near Central Park,

searching for the living among the dead:

History comes in threes, a Roman Catholic thing,

as there are as many anti-christs

as the uncountable stars in the sky ...

O great genie, over the fence man,

a poor boy but genes set right,

his fine-tuned antenna to the natural world,

his roaring twenty appetites scorching

Victorian-styled city streets,

humming New Orleans Dixieland rags ...

all on fire, unsatisfied, kicking the clay

out of his cleats,digging his pigeon toes

into the box, pointing toward

centerfield bleacher dandies

Go ahead and ask me if it matters:

I provide power: Power! Built this damn house

and they gave me everything but wanted I wanted,

to run the team, to be free to walk alone

in the back alleys at night to speakeasies,

to get a big drink so I can forget

that blond broad's name, to remember

who really loves me, though they all say

they do, but some future historian

may suppress my true memory

in order to maintain my superman myth ...

Good thing the common folk understand everything,

that it's no great feat: I just do what feels easy

Duly warned, returning to the box, straining

to keep from scratchin', spittin', and hell,

even sweatin', and thy mind off drinkin'

Next pitch, I hit it foul, but you won't

read about it here, kindly change all

strike counts to zero ...

Did he command the universal flux

cavorting with whores along Congo Square?

Did he find his Elvis there?

Black holes subtract starlight,

animal magnetism flirting, flicking,

kissing bits with flash powder,

avoiding the good Cardinals' cathedral,

igniting the musty atmosphere,

slouching toward home plate to be born,

uttering God's inviolate immaculate

sense of a woman's softest parts,

penetrating the thin veil masking

man made laws we believe, tentatively,

to exist: He had the heart of an anarchist

Taking Stock of Bonds

Ten warm-up pitches

ascend ten Dante-esque

levels up the screen

behind home plate

and Barry Bonds

took a look

and his mega-salary

was mistaken for humble

and human; his life as pure ego

was at stake, make no mistake

He waved to manager Don Baylor

in the opposition dugout

in the sunny half-joke

in spring training in the desert:

hard to reason with the risk

of certain beaning

as limousine Barry

goes up to the plate, the pitch,

and Bonds does straight-into-the-air time

and lands back down to do the earth dance,

an element of fear enhanced, gets up

and his earring shines from some light

beamed from far up in the sky

since, with nobody on, there are only

so many points a ball can be thrown

through the atmosphere as the next pitch

was down the middle of the strike zone

After Bonds had swung it landed near

a western wear store west of Apache Junction:

So much for the element of surprise

Later that day at the ballpark, frankly,

Barry Bonds almost trampled my son

trying to get his autograph

and my kid said, What a jerk!

It made me so proud

Practice

How many brain-dead

baseball diamond drills

do we need to run, rookie?

Do we need to purchase

for you an insurance policy

to protect you against

the sorcery of blurring

curves, the chin music

of mommy balls

coming in fast?

Spring training

is the hope-forming time

to scrunch scar tissue,

to test aches subtracted

from the totem death-dance

of old brown city street snow,

of writer's block shaped

into three white bases,

to take into our nostrils

the sweet fragrance of March

And after the vets have tapped

the buzzing fridge of free cokes,

turning terminal pains

into mere dietary disease,

we must line up trainer's tape

to meet and meet together

at the left-field foul pole

to intensify the muscle memories,

the heated up PFP, PFP, PFP ...

the endless ritual

of pitcher-to-first,

pitcher taking the lob,

spiking the bag

This is how we practice

each thin temporal moment,

experience to ascribe antidotes

for thoughtlessness into decisions

because only repetition can influence

our grace before ownership's

remote octopus lens

so if we can make it to October,

if we get lucky,

maybe you'll thank me

So don't be a loud-mouthed rook

wasted for higher purposes

beyond the reasoning of mere mortals

Don't talk back to me!

Don't think to much!

It's bad for everyone concerned

Don't carouse with wild women

sent to stand on your bases

and don't talk money with me

We pay you plenty

and candy comes after

Because I knew John McGraw

Who fussed himself silly

Made teammates enemies

But they played great

Despite his tyrannical self:

Gawd how I loved his glare,

like Joe Torrie's blank stare;

a poker face almost saying, man,

I loathe baseball, I wanna go home

I heard stories about such skips:

See, this pitcher, this catcher,

they hate each other, so they throw

harder and harder to each other

and surely at some point

there's got to be a limit,

a point where their palms

turn red, maybe even bleed

until all innings end, unforgiven

By the time they get back

to the bench they are screaming

at each other so ol' skipper

comes over, spits, and says,

"Okay boys, you go back

into your pretty clubhouse

and have at it. May the worst

man win. I'll warm up Johnson

and Mack, get the equipment on."

So the two embattlers

go behind closed doors

and end up killing each other

The general manager calls

new recruits up from Triple-A

to replace them both:

Everybody wins

My Cup of Coffee in the Majors

A shadow passes on opening day

as the umpire screens the views

of new scores coming in,

old scores settled long ago,

as the heartbeat of the homeland

counts the day's receipts

checking for signs of mischief,

as angry Aztec gods

make a point, hiring lawyers

for copyright violation,

as spring birds bunt,

turning snow into drops

of sugary sweet wine,

as the ball comes down

the third base line

with just enough gust

to push the ball foul

as ice cold beer sales

flow into the face

of forever: O sure,

I had a cup in Euphoria

but didn't stick for the Stixx

and the banks were all closed

at sunset and I couldn't

get a grip and the previous

night's bright lights

could have been a trick

Sandman

Sing a dainty dirg

for the New York Yankees,

but note the fact

the sun arose the next day

are all the victories

stand, sure as yellow sunflowers

in the fall, falling away ...

Now that the best team

money can buy needs

first aid from the tip jar

for the daily

emergency management

donut fund, the Bombers

and the Joker

are on the run,

and the gangster managers

of U.S. Banks are running

from pranks organized

by mischievous teenagers

running out of bullets

playing digital games,

the bragging rights

now a toss up into the air,

a toxic point-and-shoot affair

of agents so say it ain't so

the best team in baseball

needs to reload, since the Sandman

can no longer come in the Ninth

to ice over the Show

and those who gave a flying f ...

about football can stand

and listen to make sharp yelps

about how I'm paying my own price

with wobbly knees, posts as painful

as typhoons out of season

as we ask a Navajo woman

draped in a royal blue

Dallas Cowboys' number nine jersey

in a defense against the sound and fury

of the noise of the laundry room,

focused on her cell phone like a weapon,

a fence against the outside world,

which sends in scores and more

as the rocking horse hick drones

on about how much his Saturday morning

hangover hurts over the radio,

and neither of us can see the country

crooner because today, sponsored

Ford trucks, is the anniversary

of the day I confessed to crimes

I never committed, places I never

will see, to things I can't remember,

forces I have no knowledge of, waves

I can sense but not see, feel or hear

churning up the winds, the rains, the snows,

falling from above, pushing up from below,

in patterns beyond my science,

no longer local, just passing through,

not on the ball, like Lucy removing

the football to make me look like the fool

after your ice-cold Bud is just another

beer can on a giant empty parking lot

where gas-guzzling lads, ladies in cheerleader

uniforms are stripped, cloned and sent

on their way for a full day

of prayer and fasting, knowing:

The sports godz have had their say

Flame Delhi

You made sweat dry in the strike zone

at great, zipping distances

And the copper company in Harqua Hala

Gave you a lifetime guarantee

If you loved baseball like life

Back then

The desperate diamond of cliche and stone

Wasn't so hard on your clay feet

If you wore black-laced boots at the top

of the mound

The heat would leak out in the sunshine and fame

Screamin' your name, ol' Flame

You came to Arizona long before Prince Hal

And his black-soaked bum friends

came to play ringers,

Cheatin' ore boys outta their nickel wages

They were cruel men, never shaved

They were thirsty renegades, restless;

With neither the guts nor style

For California

But you were good, solid folk

And when seven hits in three innings pitched

Was all you could squeeze outta

the shoulder at Comiskey

You returned, the nine-point-zero hero

of Harqua Hala

Cashing in your guarantee

The company re-armed you

with an engineering degree

and you built boats boats in San Francisco Bay

To keep the boys dry during the Great War

Ballpark Receipts

Read my memorandum

regarding the way echoes

in spinning wheels across

the desert of empty words

between the lines

of the "National Anthem"

populate the aisles

at the ballpark

filled with people

lucky enough

to afford to see you

I was wondering

if I can get my quarter back

or at least a phone call

in the bullpen

to get back into the game

See the falling stars

the dead lights of stars

falling off the diamond

the millionaire stars

with big broad foreheads

stunned into silent speech

taking the fifth,

announcing asterisks

for records erased

for their little lies

the Jose Consecos twittering

their tweets in the long hall

near the dugout, ducking

the limelight to get legal advice

where Will Clark once asked:

"Can you imagine hearing that song 

one-hundred-and sixty-two times

a year?"

In the press box the muffled

crowd sounds are a continent

in sway, swinging left or right

and a hard-boiled cynic sports writer

comments, "Just like the Branch Davidians

when you just felt as if something screwed

up is going to happen, you just know it."

Barry Bonds' last home run ball

is running, still flying around,

on sale at America, up for auction

as a foul ball strikes the plexiglass

and more dead light falls off the diamond

the entropy sponsored by Bud light

Security has been tight

at the Ballpark in Arlington

since nine-one-one, as the FBI

shanks off a few foul tips,

and home base is buried in red dirt

as the manager goes to speak

to the pitcher, who has big ears

about everything from Hollywood

to Homeland Security

as the scoreboard's eternal

motor churns and churns and churns:

"Braves two, Reds two, in the Fifth

and the apocalyptic ghost of Ty Cobb

goes on an invisible walk

to get his free suit

at five-hundred feet

and it's beginning

to look like rain

Regarding this invoice

about the day I got lost

in the dugout right

before the endgame began,

or do I have to wait

for the eternal

seventh-inning hook?

If Christy Mathiewson

refused to pitch on Sunday

why should I?

Rio Grande Wind and Three More (from Ipswich at War)

Rio Grande Wind

In the Dallas airport,

I’m on the way

to greet my mother’s death.

Three accused priests

by the pay telephone:

One of them says

the sky is falling,

The other two say,

“No, we are rushing

To meet the wind,

moon, sun and stars

With a gravity

We’ve come to call

Forgiveness.”

It was a horrible, horrible ride,

God throwin’ stones

in the sky. Every passenger

had a tale to tell about the way

the wings rang cell phones

and the fuselage buckled

in the Rio Grande wind.

Stuck at the terminal

I had an “estresso”

and thanked the Lord;

the small things being

just small enough.

DFDubya was a zoo

with American animals,

Cold and huddled,

dumped off like refugees

in the Rio Grande rain;

a hub of darkness,

as total darkness glows,

when it covers flesh

close to the ground.

So I floated around,

the lost and lonely

disembodied ranger,

Wild and terrified

at the fragile fullness

of being me, exposed;

pulling my coat over

my left shoulder,

imagining how I must

seem to the gray-bearded

masters of Judaic lore.

The Rio Grande wind

had never rolled a leaf

quite this far before.

That’s the thing

about airports:

All of that anxiety

and bad energy.

Sometimes,

we have a life.

Sometimes,

you don’t want

to leave or wave goodbye.

But death is a meal

on the jittery flight,

the Rio Grande wind

Blowin’ ya, outta sight.

Do You Know Me?

Night basement

alley sweats

meet on

the fashionably iced

mountain resort street.

Our time together

is the fate we keep

Strolling circles

bone to bone,

the Maker is making

our Time together;

Time that bends

with the wind.

We got silly with sin.

You played a game,

puckered and stroked

and waved me home

You know where I live,

and lived with you I did.

My penny price

was a plastic flower,

and poetry …

Enough!

Magic in a broken

bottle of vitamins.

Enough!

William Blake

kissed and ran,

ran and kissed.

Albion’s son took

safe harbor

in the box canyon's shadow

of mountain and mist;

Lingering there in early

afternoon cold shade;

and in the darkness,

howling at his phantom's

fire by electric streetlight.

His mind got quiet

out there, somewhere.

She saved a single

scrapple of soul,

petting his dry skull

as the river ran by.

He starved her,

got sorry later,

and fell in love.

Creek water ran

through their veins

and cleansed the salt

from his tear-duct dreams

They matched steps,

and in stepping claimed heights,

then showered to be sanctified,

then wined and dined, borrowing

on Telluride time ...

He wept and feared

and feared what she wept.

He wrote up a list of his faults,

or fell dead asleep trying:

Pride, shame, manic moods,

moments of empty bliss.

She pegged

her donkey

to a target,

sealed it

with a kiss

He was stunned

by the beauty

and purity of this.

Ulysses in Post-Industrial Hell

And this day,

this week of

the hammer of the law ...

a traffic ticket

for a miniscule complaint,

in which he,

a magnificent lost king,

was in virtual compliance,

now requires two different

court appearances

to avoid paying the fine ...

A far-flung Capricorn goat

on a tethered telephone line

“Massachusetts is a liberal state,

so there are many, many rules ...”

sayeth Ulysses, observing

the fallen coastal city

from a submarine periscope

within the wine-dark sea.

But then Poseidon's

sea-lash brewed again,

agonizing Ulysses anew

in his port of complaint:

“Six dollars! For what?

Breathing the air in Concord

home of the First Shot

Heard Round the World.

Paradise Lost, indeed!”

With great care Ulysses

crawls the water-rim of earth,

because the state will not let him be ...

Judgment cometh upon us all,

and we must all face Zeus alone,

Prometheus bound to wave-wet rock

In shackles and taxes and pay

and an unfortunate lack of shame.

He cries out to the shore,

“Make your hand close,

and my hand will closer be.”

He wished to see thy face

by thy river, in hopes she

were still dwelling there,

so that late at night

he would fall upon thee

in care and kisses

as seeds planted for evermore.

But he could ask not what

sick psychophants

dwell there, nor will you

lately, find he, for you see,

wind in a bottle becomes

a stale thing to breathe.

He slumbered off-shore

Afraid but safe, humdrum and alone,

safe from the doldrums of summer

or the Salem hangman’s scythe.

“Make your hand close,

and my hand will closer be,”

he still cries there,

lashed by waves,

chain-ganged along a highway,

told to sit still in a chapel,

an impertinent gull

eating dry scallions

by a poisoned pretty sea.

A Paranoid Plan for the Day

Yes,

there is a Santa Claus.

When you see him,

run as fast as you can.

You must trust me ‘cause

one such clown

killed my dad.

We will take the train.

It's cheaper. You can carry more things.

We don't need cars. They are dangerous,

foul smoke chokers, Satan's practical jokers,

unbreathing earth-eating unbeings.

How can you be a free-blowing leaf

if you are munching the bark of the tree?

When our work is done here, we'll escape,

perhaps the first part of the year. Before the bomb.

But I won't rush, or plan, till then we'll make our stand.

I'll just let the wind spirit make it so. Let the leaf blow.

In death, as in life,

before winter, beneath a blanket,

we will pretend we are dead.

we must till the soil. Bury ourselves.

Let each morning's bright light

tell us what we need to know.

Let the darkness instruct us

like the devil to his foe.

You seem to be

knowing less all the time,

sleeping more.

I'll bet you are sleeping,

but then, it's 2:30 a.m.

The muse has come to visit.

Wake up! Rise and wake up.

Get out of that house

before you become

a complete cynic,

a non-romantic robotic being.

You are not saving your family

by being Narcissus' siren

mirror to them now.

You write beautifully,

but that is a mere shadow

in the distortion machine.

I know. I cannot tell a lie

when I get inside.

In the real world,

the truth is a snake

that must uncoil its tail.

I was at the fire mound

last night in Ipswich,

and a man told me

an interesting story there

while we both watched members

of the Cape Anne Task Force

prepare for another raid.

He said the first secret agent of fire

left a Tyranosaur's claw in the rock,

and this geological imprint is known

to the local churchgoers

as "The Devil's Footprint."

Apparently, say the legends,

a great hoofed Satan

blew out of the fiery earth here,

broke out through the ground,

burning down the church.

The fire liar landed on the stone

and his hot talons

melted a scrape

into the molten earth.

I told this crazy guy,

"Hey, give the serpent a break.

It could have just been

the spirit of fiery Orc,

of poetic imagination,

fighting its way

through the logical

cold sphere of Urizen."

I told him: " these very churches,

pointing to the other one across the street,

were elements of those same cold waters

that dim the human spirit

as a necessary and beneficial

element of earth-bound control.

Then, he told me something even stranger.

He said, as a janitor

for that high-steepled church across the street,

which we visited, well,

there are five telephone lines

in the telephone tower, and catacombs

of freemason-like layers

in the basement and downward,

to the center of the earth.

That once, MIBs, who came

in unmarked black vans,

came to the church

bearing metal suitcases.

That they refused

to acknowledge

his humanity.

I told him: "Hey, do not fear

just because you've seen

something you do not understand.

All sides, dark or light,

are a part of the same unknowable plan

to immenitsize the escaton,

which is, translated,

to make ready and speedier

the return of Christ.

That the church tower

is simply an undercover facility,

due to its great height,

for U.S. government surveillance.

That is, Echelon, for lack of a better term,

on Great Neck, overlooking the bay."

He said people have seen

a great satellite dish come out

from underneath the ground

on Great Neck,

Which shouldn't surprise anyone, anymore.

Except for you skeptics out there

who can only see the sun,

and not the sun behind the sun.

Now, you have all that you need.

On the grey rock overlooking Ipswich,

the Devil’s footstep reveals the science

of the October spirits,

born when the black moon,

vanished from the sky, holds her

wintry horn. Wake up, it's morn.

Jail Pace on a Sunday

Wet snow falls in clumps

on a barbed wire fence;

Eyes through mesh,

a dream of democracies

crushing grim,

grim in the throat,

choking up, flowing out

In discountenance.

Once a prisoner pushed

his Shakespearean heart

through an electric fence;

His face turned to muck

and blood, and crossed a sea

to meet his hard-headed woman

at the palatial prance pace

of love’s familial intolerance.

But the snow fell harder

and the twisty tin wire

became a shovel,

the shovel became a plow,

the plow became a motor,

and the motor drove

the car over the edge.

Just as Aaron Burr shot

Alexander Hamilton

right above the heart,

the pendulum of law

is a swinging limb

of steel and foul weather.

The snow sticks upon

needle threads of green grass.

Middleton prison is summery

warm in January, even as cattle cars

are loaded with witches from Salem,

and even as shooting range guns sound off

in the distance and we trade

German Shepherd shouts,

for brief bouts of Gaelic ire

to cause of lost love is punished.

Shout. Shout out for plainspoken truth!

The Constitution is a cold and wet tissue

in the lavatory bowl of the discontented and damned,

and that carcass out there, over the fence,

marring your view due to the barbed wire,

is a twinge of agony over the breeze,

while Lefty here, taught to swing right,

he paces out his misfortune across the floor.

Unfortunate in the choice his DNA made,

unfortunate in the dice that fell the day he was born.

He’s sneezing up dustbunnies, phlem and TB,

straining his eyes through his jail cell's glass

to catch a glimpse of primal football on TV.

The newly unbearded Aaron Burr is in caves

somewhere, in Pakistan, Maui or Peru,

flicking out a light, turning on a flashlight.

The preamble of love is a target on a sheet,

the sheet becomes a bullseye on a wall,

while the guard dog sniffs, his master pouts,

the FDA nurse shouts, “Meds only! Meds Only,

If that doesn’t mean you, lock yourself down!”

Lefty leaves the big metal door open, to resist

is to enhance sanity and salvation. The clamp

may disfigure his hands, yet he abstains, feigns sleep,

waiting for the breathy dream of the whore

to dream up sex, slithery and sleepy,

shaking off the conspiratorial frame,

from the other side of the door.

Quantum Quandary

Great poetry is a failure

Of perception

Great perception

Is a failure of poetry

Great failure is the poetry

Of perception

Failed greatness is

The perception of poetry