50

The Long Nights Moon 

Wakes before sunset 

And stays up through the dawn

The Cold Moon

Though many are colder

The distance of my eyes

To the eternal

Reflecting the light

Back home in the dark 

49

I'm returning to the words. 

The absence may be accounted for 

And counted out 

In a language older than this.

Numbers like feathers, like sand,

Light on the 3 column pages,

Sift through the double lines.

A desert in my heart

Turning a man's labor,

His hours away from home,

Into bread and shingles. 

The taxing business of living,

Of owning what cannot be taxed.  

48

48

The debris of life

Clings to me

And falls from my lips

47

47

I would be stoic bully breed

An invasive rhizome with seed

Hoard up everything we need

Count the day's hours from east to west 

Plow a row ahead when you lead

Be generous with all your greed

Bang your bars consider me freed

Count the day's hours from east to west 

I swore an oath and lied my creed

The hounds of your hell have me treed

No award for unpunished deed

Count the day's hours from east to west

46

46

weight

hold

slip out

cut it off

worn down to the toe

polished smooth and round in the cold  

45

45

glean the cream
from the fat cat's bowl
the hogs sleep
the cows starve
let the horses out to graze
and the chicks come home

44

44

The carthartic art

Of purging

Violence from my throat

Singing brimstone 

Out into the heat of the sun

Open all the closed rooms

In all the dark nights of my history 

And let the storm come through. 

43

43

The well is poisoned,

Venom from a vein of rock

Cold and void of life-giving. 

The rain is troubled,

Nails striking our uplifted hands

Hard and hollow bullets. 

Water for the birthing pool,

For the drowning pool,

For the stone ship. 

42

42

Nature gives us the choice to dance with words in time to our hearts. 

Imitate the iambic, the trochaic tragedy, the ethical epic. 

Metre, measure, multiplicity, merit. 

Ludicrous and transcendent we speak in scale to express and entertain. 

It exists inside everything that ever was or ever will be and continues on outside of us. 

If language were machinery instead of machinations of the mind, what towers would it build, what acrid smoking pile of rubble? 

Our tongues fill the holes of our souls up with these words, wrap them in our slippery guts, climb out of the world on their backs and fall forever from the cliff when we lose our tenuous grasp on their imagined meanings. 

41

41

Locked step

Shaken down 

Pinched fingertip

Between incisors 

Cuffed hard

Booked up

Inked lumbar dip

Above drawstring tie

Backside 

of a billy club 

Strip tease 

40

40

My hands and knees are soaked in lemon rind and salt 

To wash away the walnut husk stains from crawling where I once grew 

Frost laces the edges of rusty oak leaves and melts away quick under my hot foot falls and rising day light

The wilderness is breaking 

39

This red morning rolls in

Like a tide

Bringing an old rhyme

To the lips 

Warns of wrack and ruin

From the West

Slides over fish scale clouds

Snaps the mast

Whips the tails from the horses

Singing, rain. 

38

When summer is done with us. 

The fallen. 

39

37

Her tail uncurls like a flag unfurled. 

Gray velvet plush to warm the winter night feet.  

Her eyes will see me through the longer dark hours. 

Sweet suede nose finds the shadows to chase, sweep under the day. 

Play. 

38

37

36

36

I want to edit

I want to revise

I want to backspace

I want to close my eyes

And spin

And spin

And spin

The bottle

The hour glass

Back in time

To when I was fine

Click click

To when I was fine 

35

If all of our minutes are sand and exposed to heat would become glass, we could see through them then, a picture. Kinetically frozen, structurally disordered. Two polished pieces over lapping, bonded by friction. But the solid is breakable where the pieces were fluid and return to the sea.  

35

34

34

I could drop out, drop into focus, like a silhouette backlit by a fire. An idea of an image of a ideal. Side by side the buck passes. The wheel spins. And with all their answers and their fleet recoveries, maybe there is no justice except for the strongest shadows, shifting away from the light. 

33

32

31

30

29

My hair climbs the grape vine, hangs from the clothes line

Worn black shirt soft as moth belly 

Less black now in the sun

I cough the hours of dust up

Fingertips and washboard for the stains time leaves

The maple turns and goldenrod flirts with Queen Anne's lace

The tub full becomes a wall in the wind

28

27

28

To be burdened with eyes

And gagged by my heart

Soft and metallic behind my lips

A busy street with coming and going

No watching

A side alley shell game

Slight of con artist hands 

Shuffling and circling 

Moving the object of desire

Out of mind and out of sight

 Enough to hypnotize

Anesthetize

The average by-stopper 

27

Oh, October. 

My morning is on fire like the opal and the golden hour of afternoon is loaded, waiting with warm breath for the slightly chilled air. 

The burning eight. Prosperity and harvest. Building and destruction. Death and a new year. 

26

26

The outlaw astride a buckskin pony, wool blanket around his shoulders, cigarillo clenched by tight jaw, eyes of steel fixed in a horizon that we all need. He's a coiled dream of what we think we are. Visionary, just and virtuous, untamed. He's ours. But he didn't exist. 

25

24

24

What was your first clue

That there's no grand plan

No pie in the sky by and by

This book, 

a tiny ceramic village 

Decorated impeccably 

For a hollow day

Just a display

In the beginning

A metaphor for Om

Belief in a name sound 

A paradise awaits

Repentant murderers 

Zealot martyrs

Flames for unblessed victims

Self-fulfilling prophesy 

And false dichotomy 

Shape shifting 

Into every belief system

And none

23

The seamstress feels her own tapestry through calloused finger tips

The energy that makes life is a strand of spider silk in the night mist, torn as easily by wind as by struggle 

To feel waves of sound rolling back to us from the walls, from our own mouths, to see them bend the light

We made up that word because the emotion can't be found in the dictionary

And we danced in the first autumn rain like it was our last summer ever

Those years under glass 

23

22

22

WWII vintage green paint and rust roof in the long morning light. 

The white night blooming phonograph horn flowers of the jimson weed are just beginning to twist closed for the day. 

Neglected victory garden of hallucination.

Black rat snake slips in like a rationed silk stocking over the dried bean stalks and leather britches. 

Smelling the lost time with his tongue, tasting the ruin. 

21

20

When all you've done still isn't enough. 

20

19

19

Stoned on the resinous vapor of summer yew, immortal and twisted. Fat hollow of trunk fed ashes and bones of scholar, artist and judge in season. Nine undernoon, hail to thee, red cap and mete-wand. Apple blossom, lavender and white rose. The robin on Thor's day. The full moon. The elk hears the notched arrow before the fletchings fly. 

18

At home in a room of broken things 

Less clean things and scattered not put away things 

Organized chaos with more focus on the chaos

A scientific experiment to see how long the test group can function in crisis mode

Life or the universe or god is an unseen mafia boss and his henchmen are coming by weekly to take off my toes then a kneecap then thumbs

Not knowing to what debt I owe this pleasure nor how to settle it 

Call them off

18

17

17

Convince the eye that there are no shadows. 

Draw lines in darkness where they don't exist. 

Mirrors are sisters to lenses. 

Smoke is smoke. 

A distraction. 

We see what we expect to see. 

More and less. 

16

16

Patchouli and bergamot down the vertebrae 

Cinnamon and sandalwood across the innominate bones 

Rose and jasmine along the clavicle

Sweet mints at carpus and medial malleolus

What is the anatomy of a memory

A complete skeleton for every kiss

Stacked in the catacombs of each heart

Anointed 

Embalmed

Sacred

15

15

A storytelling of rooks. A siege of bitterns. A piteousness of doves. A lamentation of swans. 

Prehistory woven into limb and sky, nests in our collective imagination. 

Earthbound, we drew them on our walls with ochre and ash, built up a tower of words to reach them.  

Lizards have transcended to the kingdom of heaven and we are all Icarus, falling.  

14

Not the sort for jumping, but the ground is coming up either way. 

We all confess. There were Plans. Capital letter plans that were as real in our minds as memories of first kisses and child birth. All of those flung out the windows together. 

All the moments spread out before and after stop and all the adding up falls down like ticker tape and acid rain. 

14

13

Precipitous observation of the lack of social progress as evidenced by rhetorical automobile decorations adhering to propaganda, driving home the message, proud of ignorance and hate, propelling it into the future at 65 miles per hour down the rural state highway of my otherwise bucolic life. 

13

12

11

11

The morning clings to the grass and my eyelids heavy and damp. 

Moth-eaten glory yellowing time's teeth. 

Webs unraveled and restrung in the corners. 

Harvest moon fingernail slides down the jutting spine of ancient mountains. 

Golden cauldron pours cobalt onto the sky. 

The age of the crone arrives. 

10

10

On the heels of wound up

Chasing the tail end of a loop

Sit. 

As long as you drool on cue

Buy peanuts for the gallery zoo

Stay. 

Must have every latest ball thrown

Smarter than the pup you own

Roll over. 

9

My broken teeth gnashing at my own back in the dark. What kind of days are these the end of? Gold and glory. Pestilence and plague. Inside each hour they feel the same. Colors have different names and songs have different tunes, but we all see and we all sing. The well shod and the down trod. Hearts race with the joy of love. Tears salt the cheeks of lovers who've loved and lost. Every one of them sleeps, in every age and every city. Every one of them dreams. Every man chasing only himself in the night. 

9

8

Summer's tantrum is throwing itself against the metal roofing. 

She's hurling branches around in the yard. 

She doesn't want to go, it isn't time yet, you promised. 

With the top of her voice she protests. 

Slamming the air and rolling. 

Flashes of anger. 

The tears, the tears. 

And then done. 

The cooling and the calm. 

Collecting. 

The wreckage, the broken toys.

Still didn't change the sun. 

8

7

7

Home. 

Home.

In a few weeks the fat writing spider on the deck will disappear. 

The paper seed pods of the golden rain tree will fall. 

The fog will hold on to the grass for hours. 

Suburban residential rules dictate that the wreath on the front door be changed to something orange or golden. 

Pumpkins will sprout on each stoop beside pots of mums, manipulated to bloom too late, becoming ironically representative of the wrong season. 

We will begin to batten down the barbecue, unpack the cover for the glider, insulate the garden spigots. 

The fire pit and the earlier darkness. 

The last cut of grass. 

The sigh of summer fading. 

6

5

5

Double underscore. Left open scissor. A Late closed door.

Flat cracked glasses. Walk the hall. Straight letterman passes. 

Steam washed spaghetti tray. Cacophony of pheromones. Biology and anthropology at play. 

The red ink and the hard nose. The doves and the crows. 

Pleated skirt sanguine. Squeak on the line. 

Take away what you steal and keep for glory days.

4

4

A society of hyenas who think themselves wolves. Don't go armed unless the intent is to take life away. Don't finger the trigger if not to pull it. Consider gravity. Consider light. Consider waves. Particles of energy released , scattered again, transformed. The surface of the pond rippled. The strings humming. Boxes of cats stacked infinitely. Some saber toothed tigers, some Siamese kittens, some bones, all in the same scene. End scene for one player. Red pools and the hyenas gather, laughing. It's all a show. Curtain.

3

3

Fragile. Something vulnerable. Tiny creature with closed ears and blurry blue eyes. Great grandmother's crazed porcelain. A glacier. My ego. Balanced on thin stacked shims. Shifting in the shaking. Tilting with the ticking of time. Hips aching. Attempt to preserve dust. Pause. Repeat. Memories in the ether. A song. A dance.

2

2

This little light of mine. One bulb refuses to unscrew. Another is burned out. Those new fluorescents don't last as long as they say. The whole fixture is dusty. I think spiders live there. I'm gonna let it shine. The milk glass vase on the uneven table cloth. Sweet pink lip gloss on a tired face. Chrome headlight rims on a rusty VW bus. New penny in the change tray. Let it shine over the whole wide world, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

1

1

Iron weeds. How did those get there, blooming, already? Is it really late enough for iron weeds to bloom? How did the light grow so long so fast? The dogs were just shedding and now geese form deep Vs in the fog. The last fireflies float ephemeral. Another dirty towel, another empty mug, pile up, spill over, boil over the cook pot, the filthy stove, the unopened mail. My soul is tender, blistered and sore. Less ill fitting shoes, more running blind.