Originally posted on 3/3/2010.  My 50th birthday, by the way.

Watching “The Real Old West” on
the History Channel:
blued barrels
hanging off leather belts
as always; but it seems
that the rotgut was mixed with fruit juice,
if this is to be believed
over the mythology 
of bad gin and whiskey
shot from dirty glasses,
burning neat all the way down.

I trust this.
It’s more like
who we are,

telling ourselves
we’re tough old cowboys
but too scared of pain
to dare to toss
our poisons back
straight,
no chaser.

Originally posted 11/12/2011.

St. Teflon, patron saint
of bullet dodgers; St. Tango,

source of comfort against
unwanted outcomes; St. Bullhorn,

defender against the wealthy; St. Lifter,
guardian of the doomed.

St. Angelcake strokes
the heads of the robbed.
St. Watchfob picks fruit
and cleans the poisons from the flesh. 

St. Linger, warrior with no hard weapons.
St. Rollie Of The Bones,
bringer of square deals and luck.

The old saints are retired and disinclined to help.  
“Not our world,”
says Michael. 
“Not our Gospel,” 
says Francis. 
“Not our problem,”
says St. Gabriel. 

For this you want
The Blessed Version, 
The Sherman On The Mount,
The Irascible Conception, a new Bible written
by scribes drunk on the manic milk
of modern circumstance.  
For this, you need

St. Rattler of the found quarter,
St. Lobster of the century reboot,
St. Jack (whose feast day is the Festival of Unicorn Meat).
Depend on The Long Shot Testament 
and take a number. 

There will be a saint for you
someday. Maybe
it’ll even be in time.

Originally posted 3/31/2011.

talk about walnuts dammit
speak of bananas or plywood
maybe there’s a door to consider
or typewriters so sexy and willing
to be closely observed

talk about bricks dammit
spend an hour staring at one
until you live and breathe red dust and pitting
until the brick’s soaked up into you
and you’re ready to be wrung out

there’s the pavement — kiss it
here’s the cobweb — swallow it
there’s a key — stuff it up your nose
remember that brass
smells of dirty fingers and ozone
tell the story of how you know

first time you noticed it was when your mother died
the keys were in your hand
you bunched them up to your face
you could smell and taste them mingled
with tears and dust and polish from the oak table 
where you had laid your head to weep

talk about something real
conceptual rage has no flavor
neither does slogan-born love

but bodies do
and objects do
and so does your blood
say what you know of those
if you must speak of rage and love

Originally posted 3/30/2013.

I was a kid
All I knew
was what imagination offered

A blue disk in a blue sky
a spider bridge resonating
a concert hall in sections rising
a myth as good as a country in resolve
a story about where I lived
noble rot on a hoped for harvest

So I reached for

that blue disk in a white sky
like a heartless monkey of change
Set a blank slate falling
Donned the most savvy rocktosser outfit ever
It was not me and that was the best thing ever

but not for long as I could sense
how amusing the change was becoming
so I called out again

this time for
a blue disk in a red sky
a meteor shift
a clown nose on a garbage can
a tease and a poke and a hand on my bum
the right drug on the wrong night
fell hopelessly in love with throwing up 
was glad I was no one
was no one
but that drug
swallowed a blue disk from that blue sky

What did I know
I was a kid when it all happened

a blue disk wrecked in a desert
picked over
a myth after all to most

I have had to live this
remembering

that I once belonged
was discarded
fallen
from
high

into this now unlit manhood

Originally posted on 12/8/2011.

Overheard words
on a Germantown street

a toothless woman
a rusty gun 

have kept me quivering
for two full days

perhaps because
I fear that I myself am growing

toothless 
and rusty

Whatever put them there
the words have clutched my ear 

I want them to leave
They are having a hell of time doing it

I don’t know where they should go
I can’t send them home

So struck was I by how they captured me
I never even looked up

to see who in Philadelphia
was using them

Never even looked up
to see who truly owned them

Originally posted 10/30/2009.

I think of what I won’t finish
and break a little.

It’s a form
of grief I’m feeling,
akin perhaps
to imagining clouds
meant to bring rain
that will never even form.

This work would have been
the nearly perfected explanation
of me;
it might have even
engendered
some kind of forgiveness:

yes, it is a form of grief I am feeling.

Someone will do it
because it will need doing.
Because they’ll know the need for it.

Because my name is unimportant to the doing
as long as it’s done.

This is also a form of relief
I am feeling.

Originally posted 5/9/2012.

A man approaches.
He has dirty arms.
I look closer.
No, his arms are inky-pictorial.
There are dirty pictures
but the arms themselves are clean.

He spreads his arms out.  
Wants to give me a hug maybe?
Big arms with dirty pictures and he wants a hug.
Wants a hug or wants to give one and get one back.
Oh, big armed men with art full of sex on their arms!

I have known another like this.
He also wanted hugs and arms full of body.
Wanted to rub his dirty pictures on me or anyone really.
Man, oh man,
he was a dirty man even after a shower.
Man had the grip of a roughneck.
Man, he had the arms of a bear.
Man, man, man —  
he had the appetites of a bear man,
bear art on the skin, the teeth of Ursa Major — 
constellation man.
Can’t be out at night without thinking of him.
He led me to the North Star without my looking up.
He had a tattoo of the Bear King tearing flesh.
That was the old man I knew with arms and dirty art.

I don’t know this new man.
He might be lovely.
He might prefer Ursa Minor.
He might be less of a bear.
Might not even know the Bear King.
Might not even know I knew the Bear King.

He was walking toward me just now.
He turned into the arms of another, must be a lover.
He’s not the same, even with dirty pictured arms.
I knew there were other Bear Kings out here.
I knew I had only to wait to see one again.
This one might not be one for me to savor

but there will be another.
There will be another.
There will be another.

Originally posted 2/7/2013.

My dance, my bad;
here’s my deep
bad dance. 

I gave a sorrow entrance,
loosed it on
the gap within, now there’s 
tantrum, keening, layabout,
fling about and cry. 

Going to victim this whole long day;

bury face in kudzu, funeral bouquet
for never ending grief show. End up one 
sad grinder.  End up damp with bad 
with bad still soaking in deep.

Still, got rocker hips, 
roller ass, jazz groin;
joy ends up somewhere
when pushed out of 
head and heart so
off to music while still in the hole
to give my bad, my deep 
some resistance.

Rhythm’s big mole digging in;
earth body now a quake 
spilling light, starts rubbling
the dark village.  I, frightened, shake; 

dance my dance, my bad, my deep.  
My gotta happen. My joy’s
on the far side of gotta happen.

Originally posted 5/11/2009.

No sir,
no.  I won’t
grow up — I’ll
grow down instead,

drawing from the earth
shadow nutrients, 
gritty water.
I will serve the Goddess of Dirt;

though I may present to you
a form that seems
symmetrical
and bright,

it springs
from the insistent tug
of holy underground.
I grow down.

I send up into the sun 
trunk and branches
to be seen, admired, climbed, 
used for shelter or shade, 

logged and laid out
in board feet 
or carved into
utilitarian shapes.

The tree is what you count as important —

but that’s not the truest part of me,
no, no sir.
That stump you leave behind?
That grip of roots holding on

long after you think
you’ve gotten
all of me
that matters?

Try grinding me out,
blowing me up, poisoning me. 
I will remain Hers.
I’ll be there, somewhere under

your feet,
well and deeply dug in,
still saying my 
“sir, no sir”

to you
with the ring
of sucker shoots
that will rise from me,

offering Her
a live crown 
for Her dark
and somber head.

Originally posted on 8/25/2010.

Enslaved to a horoscope:
some won’t drive far when Mercury is retrograde.

Engaged by humor:
offense slides off their numb tongues.

Enthralled by heritage:
no credit ever given to others.

Eviscerated by holy writ:
scourging unbelievers while in prayer.

Enlisted by history:
they reap and pile the designated scapegoats.

Every time it happens
we call it inevitable, divine will

or the stars setting wheels to rolling,
when in fact it comes down to

whatever excuse we allow to rule us
without forethought,

and from horoscope to Holocaust
is not all that far to travel.

Originally posted 2/10/2012.

The whisky drinker says,
“I suck the tongue of truth
in every glass.”

The wine expert says,
“This sweet burning
puts my eye on Heaven.”

The pothead at silent devotion
sits on his hands while praying,
grinning at the answers.

Whatever we stone ourselves with
revives in us the kick
we last used in the womb.

We smoke or sip as deliberately
as we would swing a leg,
trusting in that illusion

that in here, we’re utterly safe
even as we fight toward 
what might be out there,

certain that
although we have never seen it,
it’s what we are meant for.

Originally posted 9/28/2009; original title, “Remembering What Four Stones Said.”

There in the stream 
the first: 
white as fish belly
and small, so small.
It said the Way
has no sense to it, but
leads forward in any case.

The second:
black, seamed as wood
long submerged,
slick as a suspect.  It said that
if you could risk believing
that it offered solid footing,
you would find yourself
halfway there.

The third:
rusty skinned, top high and dry
above the current, solitary and distant.
It mumbled a secret worth hearing,
perhaps only minimally intelligible,
but still invariable and true.

The fourth
lay below the surface.
It was no more than a shadow
holding a threat of tumbling
and of immersion.
It urged and coaxed:
venture, it said;
leap, it said;
it said come now,
steady as you go.

That far bank was high and green.
There was sun
on the high meadow,
to be followed by
moon on the high meadow.
You fell in love with it at once
from this side of the stream:
it seemed a perfect place for dancing
with wet feet, wet shoes, 
and wet knees
still knocking with joy  
from the journey,

and so it was.