nostalgia

dressed in a coat of scarlet concept
stressed in that deliberately combative manner
you channel rivers of the captured heart
into argument and envy this need for revenge,
a carnivore's intrinsic lust all this
twisted into threads to hem the apron
you would wear this day

the universe promises an end
not one you'll see of course
it isn't anything you could apprehend
nor need you fear its carrion horse

we all walk the stone steps of sanctuary
remembering our mother's sanctuary heart
the conflict's roots born from that initial act
someone's apparent come within her womb

truth is, we're all bastards now
we drag and dispose our desires
and our woes we chuck our facile reactions
into the roses and pick and choose
the words we long for most

everything is magnified
by these frozen choices the self's
remarkable journey away from fact
into the lariat swamp of memory
where we shirk the truthful pain
though chained by guilt,
and its awful recognition

and is there charity in the realm?
is death's specific justice that of truth?
can Calliope's freakish song remark
the boy hiding in the reeds?
these questions magnify this heart's suspicions
chambered now for a hidden truce this piece
in that auricle this lie in that ventricle
this memory kept a secret, not a ruse

hello little one

sabrina welcome home to oregon now
I knew your dad when he was little
I held your sister in her infancy
the world turns every day
the light greets you
hello little one
can you hear the music?
they tell me you will sing in reply
how I would give anything to hear you

welcome to oregon
your dad was always a good son
welcome to 2010, a good year
now that you've come

scavenger hunt

there isn't much in this rambling memory of you
bits of trash from different sundry evaluations
your image clinging to the dirty dishes
the noises of that music in the anteroom

he waves a forlorn palm hoping for someone prescient
these are merely errors lining the cage's pan
covered with the headlines from the gossip of need
splattered with my own disingenuous shit

the rooms I walk through every night they are
crowded with lost delight empty of even an ancient promise
the houses are half constructed the old ones unrepaired
every step is new every journey is mirrored on a map

in the dream state spit licking time do I stroke my hammer
in anticipation or defeat, dream hunger in Illinois
stuck in a land out of time one stone impediment
or another washed with the bitter seed

or is there an arc here, a memory made into an image,
committing neither error nor ambiguity?
the sequence of events; not the critical disinformation
is it really just a scavenger hunt through this life?

who made up this list? some of these items never existed
somebody stole my copy of the rules, darkness fell too soon
was there even a prize, or was that too part of the game?
when will I just sleep again, ever?

Failed Suicide, 1993

Her moans from the sunroom on 117 South
Grand were the first tracks of her betrayal;
later those cabins at Allerton she looked on
the young father from west illinois and found
another someone new to replace me she had
always had that list of boys/men
―the farmer-poet, the would-be Vallejo,
the jazz-drummer—methedrine in his blood stream,
the saxophoner from the punk band, food & money
singing about Argentina, “land of meat”.
She sent that one mash notes. Her spirals were
composed of bitter, innocent stories,
her passions avoiding the real issue:
her father's religious requirement
to void the dark lust that lived like
a dead snake deep in his armor,
a ghost snake a snake of hatred.
And my catholic pre-occupation with
her pain primed me to take her path
too many times (my) mind overlain
with an extra-terrestrial reality.

She fucked me over boys.
The truth is, she got tired of me.
Tired of the same old stories,
too much like her sick grandfather.
And then the bad chance, the poet laureate,
he didn't come through for her.
Left her living in a garret
with my five year old daughter in
a sad neighborhood in Bloomington.
Is this history or just a long-awaited panic?
I let the pain take me to the hardware store.
I bought the plastic and
walled myself in the kitchen,
turned on the gas.
She almost killed me.
I am certain that was her plan.
Fuck her. And fuck her minor art.
She could have been the real thing.
If only she could have gambled honestly.
If only she could look in the mirror
And open her eyes.