Atlantic City beat

AC is bleak in the night
Phantoms lined up along the shore
fed by highways blowing in from the west
on this cold March wind, we scream out
into the heaving sky that blankets the
Atlantic ocean in inky darkness,

we run across white sand,
it burns our feet like summer in
the chill, we wash our feet in the ocean,
advertisements as background noise,
the hellish casino lights, Steve calls us back
waits back on the shore, it's time to head home
the natty bo is running out, there's no food,
or money, there's no hope

we left that alone inside the Wawa outside town

Portrait of Chinatown this time

Ah, there was no English
but rushing and orange hues
coloring the pink floors and
red cushion covered seats, I
gave a 25% tip to the vests belching
in my pseudo-dream state, I'd forgotten
my notebook so I felt naked in some
foreign country, there was a stark plane,
depths dropped forever in cold blue
wonder, tho I reeled myself back
to the front counter and dropped four
dollars, but my brain hit the cellulose
splat and the man, we both stared a while,
impaled its gelatin ridges on a small golden spear,
and the ducks quaked in unison as
I hit the floor moaning like the afternooon

Moon poems

At night dreaming,

my head folds
like heavy shit,
blurs the keyboard
revolving around the lost moon
with lights out and only
the glow of far away windows
bringing me down

Charger

Don't know why
I just thought of your
76 Dodge Charger (cobalt blue)
driving 120 mph on
the old beat up industrial highway
on dark sweet high school nights
before we stalled out laughing at
an intersection on 420 running the
red at a crawl, because really
you didn't quite know how to drive a stick,
the road poured out at us,
dried sprouts of brown earth to the
side illuminated by headlights (we
could see only feet in front of us) tires
kicking up dirt & dust, there were no lights
along the straightaway but our screaming eyes &
mouths as we hit the one hundred mark, each
leaning forward in old bucket seat, heads bent
with that rumbling machine, a hell of seat belts
& leather, a demon in the
youthful purple suburban sky

Aging

An elderly couple
     man's arm around
     her waist
watching a baby in stroller
     watching life
                    grow up
               go by.

And the angel asked one dream of me, of which I gave this one

Where are you
on this too big earth
waiting for me?

I'll hit the miles
to carry you home
and rest you in our bed

we can just lie there
for as long as we like,
reading the lines on the ceiling,

I'll hold you close
for the scent of your clothes
on my skin,

a breeze through the window
rattling picture frames
of the past, the low rumble outside

the screen, sounding far off,
eating away at our bones
locked in grinding halt,

water falls blueish brown
under my bridge, my aching bones,
your tired brown eyes

dragging me to sleep,
beautiful brown eyes I see
in waking dreams,

there's a low stone wall
and white petals blowing silently
through your dark hair.

Cleaning fires

Time to trip this one
with a pitch and a dark earth
sky outback and Whit like the
junkyard stray he is rolling in
the embers of lost prescient fires
of last night under the stars
where there's more out then usual,
even the red lights blinking in the
distance don't look so afraid,
so I chase him running around the house
me cleaning off the dirt and wiping it
on my plaid pajamas, the
air is smelling like Spring mid-March,
I'm falling to the trip that is
what my life will be forever,
I see the west and the day and infinite
roads to infinite places, I see where I belong

Happy Birthdays

Den curled up on my bed
forcing out the music and me
joe and tif carried the tune, there
were 3 bottles of port wine shared and
vomit in the sink (Den couldn't make
it to the toilet) we played Saturday
night three times for Tommy and
then Joe and I sang Billy Joel
for hours to each other on the
floor in my room until the sound ran
dry and the sun came up,

I passed out to Kerouac reading from Visions
and rolled onto my bed,

Den slept
soundlessly next to me

A dedication to

Somewhere in timeless America,
where the peaks of the Rockies blaze
white into the bleak rumble of solar-system
time, where amber Indiana fields
shine golden down a tumbling age called
heaven, the children in dark world
are tracing the night that is wordless
like they have have have since
there was nothing on the coast but beach
and oysters and flags and they call out
to lost angels whose mouths hang agape
and wonder how? and I wonder too...

How?

and someone answers back
out the void
in a rhythmic voice that's so familiar
because it should be ours,

"WHERE are we going?"

A drifting

Had this dream I was climbing down escalators from some raised up perch on the floor D5 which was like a high school tho a college and I had to walk down steps to the bottom floor to get there originally and some girl was bugging me and asking me where I was from and I was looking for a classroom, something to do with science, that after  sitting in bed and thinking about I realize had to be from another dream dreamt years and years ago it was so strange and otherworldly and I back tracked but couldn't find it, or figure out where I had thought of it and I was left coldly wondering in the darkness whether I was forgetting my own life, but I was not alone with Whit sleeping on my pillow against my face and biting my hands, so that the bites retained my sanity or what was left of it

but this feeling of deja vu is eating away at my memory and I can't place the colors or the desks or the life, just the swinging on the rubber rails of the escalator and wondering why the workmen hadn't sealed the steps off if there were no steps tho I made it down easily, they weren't even mad that I risked my life swinging down 5 stories trying to find the second floor which wasn't there

Now I feel a kind of emptiness like life leeched from my bones and some lost speck of love is burnt to nothingness in me and I'll never be able to find it and bring it back, there's so many pieces missing

I see through my glasses only what the world will be

Ark I, mass extinction

The Chandelier was a black mass
on bronze circle, the participants
glowering globes circled around a
hollowed center & dripping
the human worldly abyss
a golden globe chained to the
wood finished heavens--
metal & cardboard containers
imprisoned on small second floor
ceiling, sit in darkness in
the old 1800s room of old clocks
& slow modernity,  and the
people sift through the Revolution
& the Civil War,
white ceiling mass descending
small desk lights, gold chain
pulled, the east wing high level
of first days-- the 6 months
to come