discarded identity

Now.
(______), you primal sad sack, bald,
still married to the adequate but barren girl,
(barren by choice I am told)
inhabited by what fear she may have known
early on your life a dream of golems and
girls both elvis and lied von der erde
the subtle march of our own deceptions
hacking away in the forest of subconscious
memory who you once were and who
I still am and who twice-born though he
may be is the great wellesian actor who
has claimed your hours as blood across
the decades. Chump you are and, truth now,
did you fuck the witch? and does
your woman know? How many hidden
things are in this picture? Where's Gary?
For one. Where's the monument to the
house burned down on second street
perhaps for fun He played that banjo
badly in that time now he feels the
keyboard swallowing up the remainder
of days, thinking hard about not thinking
about those disappearing leaves of
his previous life. All over, all done now.
Placed in the wooden box, the river
water seeping in, the scratchy pages
not quite right the one on top the Great
American Highway Speech oh the cassette
of that on the back porch on Washington
Street in the spring of 1979 I can still
hear your drunken syllables calling out
for patriotism and fun for the glory of
an American scientist and engineer
as seen from space well you would
know about that wouldn't you? Once
the leader, the maker of decisions. Now
the shill for those who run the business
of education and in this slightly comical
state in this latest absurdist version
of the good old usa. How are you
going to find your way back? I know.
You're not.

Folk Music

the redheaded kid
in his banjo'ed rhymes
met at the apocalypse
or maybe appomattox
one or the other
free willie the bumper sticker said
the kid ran the story where
the witch had left him. amazing promises
none kept, some distorted.
his courage was an intricate vessel
shaped by someone else's hands
on the spinning wheel of his
betrayal, left me and the sand
of the timelessness in the wordlessness
of boredom and bureacracy. all
stories inhibit;;;that's why
he juiced his last newton
flailing in the monster world
shoggoth's a motorcycle betrayal
down the beach up the establishment
some pretty disturbed numbers
being rung on the wheel of deception
hey gary how are you now?
just about dead in the water.
right? I found that Madeline
L’Engle book the other day,
with your inscription:
friends forever artists
in America. a snow angel
in my memory.