cadillac hearse drives thru snowstorm

the steam heat turns my skin into dust
I remember you're in reno
I remember, like Elvis
the karate in making that love

there ain't no rock and roll
here at four a.m.
friendly fire is asleep in the bedroom
but apt to get up, coughing w/her alleries
or I'd jerk off
to the acrid guitar music
of your remembered flesh

–all those cars
—the occasional couch
—the stolen bed

well/some chances are crazy
and sometimes I gamble
you don't/that's why you're still alive
somewhere in the desert
while my skin turns to dust
in this silence



Springfield,Illinois
February, 1982

perfume rising from memory's swamp

down wind from your memory
high enough the clouds are mist
in my constitutional I breath
deep the perfume of your time
in the living room at scarritt
on the red couch my hands lost
in the circuitry of your golden
wires you grew them so long
trying hard to find a recognition
that lived beyond these simple
years I am you know this
still high on my desire the burning
incense your woman's flesh
swollen and suddenly wet in
a post poetry night at scarritt
you failed to wear panties what
a good girl I can smell your
asshole in the fall evening
my self and its tongue an active
participant in this memory the
red couch it opens now in the
night of memory your too white
limbs arranged the lights low
the candles flicker steely dan
plays in the next room or is
that dolly parton hard to really
know I am so distracted hearing
again your words your voice
your possibility in that time
some decades back we did have
the slightest opportunity
to change the story

but we didn't

she turns sixty in las vegas

You were sixty years old
yesterday you were a vision
in the bath when I was
younger you chalked up
another defeat in the court
of memory you saw my ghost
parenthetically in the motion
that you filed you were still
seeking a transubstantiation
in the fall of yet another
year your justice girl scale
still balanced between "I
don't know" and "can't decide"
just like before a hundred
times you're sixty now a
skinny woman aging with a brand
new law degree and your ancient
memory is suppressed and
replaced by that need to
avoid the possiblity you were
wrong the pain accompanying
a sudden fit of anamnesis
the paper a virtual storm
of madness and desire the letters
the worms of careful half truths
laced together in a garment
you have worn these decades
now an irish custom mis-stating
your responsibilities until the
wake where you will wander
in the land between, avoiding
the truth that must be confronted
before you will return

it's an interesting story
there's no doubt
I appreciate that much of the error
was mine then
we had our role
given so many turns of the sun
ago and both of us have
flinched on many an occasion
this time though
it was you who failed
you who said you didn't care
didn't care

that's pretty much it.
now you lawyer up your caring
in a western courtroom pre-
tending the vinegar you
taste is wine

another year then
another dispensation
absolvo te

yeah that'll work
adieu princess