Immense Signs of Light in the Ohio Sky

I've been

to that cloud

seen its rapturous vapor

envelop me.  There is

no loud rule there

telling me to be

silent and kind

to my enemies.  If you

thought it was a wide

dark space, you're right--

flat and smoky

indigo with a crepuscular

light.  The tight

sense of favored

but awkward gifts.

When the final

gig begins, then,

pick up your

instrument gently--

the guitar should

be close to 

the hips, following 

the rock &roll

chakra.  As for the

sax, make it an tenor,

a man with hyper

mobility who must

play like he's Sonny Rollins.

And me, I'm just along,

picking chords

as if each one

were wrong, the

progression I make

near satanic.  Thing is,

who cares?  The band's

long ago split up

the players gone

 home to kitchens and lawns.

Chicago, Summer 2008

The one night.  Stipe was

singing at the United.

We ate at a diner

then bused down with some

anxious kids.  Who’d never seen

the high rise Moloch

up close.  I recall

telling them about the time

in ’99 when

we stayed at the Palmer House

so I could look for

a job.  A way out

of the far north.  It was cold

10 below but I 

went anyway.  They

remembered the indoor pool.

So I’ve been there.  A

hard place I wouldn’t

want to stay.  Where the music

goes “hey-hey”

and the lights last an

eternity when the last

train, the Empire

Builder pulls out, hot

for Milwaukee then empty

Wisconsin.  I was

there when the hard snow

fell, there when the summer poured

its heat into a singer

and the Chicago

river was dirty, green,  like

a story from Illinois.

The Loop

What to say.  That

I've given you

to say.

The daylight falls

the night is ripe

with wildness.

In the corner

of the yard

morning glories

unfold.  Under

the canopy

under a sky

you certainly

share.  The

line is still down.

You’ve seen

the same lakes

the storms

forming over

the plains, the

tornados, the snow.

It’s no

longer the case

I know not

your face,

the fate you chose

to hack out

where the sun

don’t shine

& the buildings

are monuments

to Moloch.  That

is all.  The Loop,

the Silversmith

Hotel.  All I know.

The crack of trains.

 The phone

 Hopeless

 As a dial tone.

Apple Cider or Some Kind of Vinegar

I am the poet who died

inside you, although

my world is green and close

at hand.  I am who you killed

sometime in ‘93

as the hot Phoenix sun

cast itself long into

the bright day--you were

alone and the only thing

left for me was to die.

I am the poet who didn't

drown at the pool.  I was

no fool was I to fall in love away

from you, alone and sighing

for release.  The was no error

there in the hot light, the dry

ugly city surrounding us like

dead rocks--it was a colony

for the insane, I swear, and

driving by the hospital scared

me, at the end.  That you

would leave me there. I knew not

what powers, what unreason

kept me at your side for so long.

So when you killed me

I fell into the marihuana haze

of Eastern America like a leaf

falling from an oak in autumn.

Of the distant highways

I've traversed, of the stony shore or

the delights of heavy winter

snow,  you’ll live in me, a cold

ghost who I couldn’t banish

for my shame is gone and I see

nothing but the darkest of skies

ahead of me, there in the closing

distance where we'll all fall down,

 letting time overtake us

in his big red ‘67 GTO--

we’ll have no place to go,

and I’ll watch my children from

his back seat, as they build

their own impossible cities

along this road where there

was never anything to begin with.

There’s a poet dying in me.

Now.  In the clearest spring

air.   My body, O my body's

made of glass.  The mind

wanders to its end, the rustling in the trees

awakens in me things I've never seen--

the silent white window frames

of the neighbor's home in twilight

become absurd portals to my existence

out here in the suburbs

where summer advances

whether I like it or not.