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.