October

Jack's October
nearly gone, Wolfe's
revelation, turning leaves,
World Series, dreams--
the Shenandoah brawling
in corner of Virginia's mind,
little boy silent, lonesome(?)
on hilltop gaping into the void,
everyone goes home in
October--or walks away
into golden sunset,
the last sunset before winter--
gray and cold and gone--
gone--like the glint of the autumnal
eye, like it blazes its wink
all over that blue mountain backbone
that we kicked last year all the
way up from
its beginning to its end--
to the high watermark and finally--
I can't even say it--brown and orange
October--what it means--

I woke up just to tell you

Walking through those
photos last night, each image
a different room
alternating consciousness,
altering consciousness,
both indoor and out,
then tagging the faces,
faceless features, images, actions,
reactions I've seen,
blue skies and 10 foot ceilings,
unknown bathrooms, oceans, rain,
unrecognizable gathering humanity,
laughing talking around
bonfires and street corners,
I breached the two dimensional/third
dimensional internet/photo gap, the social media
society string-suffocation theory
warping through the turnstile
machinery at slow motion speeds
I noticed all the walls set to knock down
all the names and faces linked into
the superconductor running the engine
I walked through those photos last night
tagged the locations faded
fated to my sleeping memory.

Grips

You seem to be falling out,
like fading away, playing
fool/goof/phantom/drunken joke
to grown up little boys and girls
across sad broken south Philly homes
that chug and churn like the machines
of the past regurgitating old
memories onto old faces and wrinkles
of the mourning night too
close to sunrise to remember--
too locked in twisted horns
with dead things, meaningless things
that need to be let go-- a drowning
universal truth slugging its way
at your temple-- a a a--
just to let you down and you brood about
these things that can't change
next to open window and open veins,
when you're supposed to be the one
that lives and blazes and burns--

Incoherently I'm incoherent
137 miles in hell and away
like fading rivers pulled under heavy roads
of gray dawns--I'm connecting these thoughts
drying out--

You seem to be losing your grip
on where your reality resides--

Saturday Night

I walked horizontally on the street's
walls with V by my side, it was
a treadmill rotary phone
Rolodex turning around us,
the same homes same cracked
pavement over again same hoarse voices,
until the park and something new
because the ground
was sinking further beneath my
stumbling feet, keeping up with the
speed--

It's a return to the biblical age
and the party has spilled out to the street

Which street?
Don't ask me, I couldn't find the river

and
Tommy yells at me from across street
in matching (my) shirt and white
construction worker hat
but
I wander over and sit down beside the
gorilla on the sidewalk propped
up against building on corner
watching (seemingly) tumbling toward him
SUV,

It's Joe
sweating and tired and sweating mad

V heading back inside painted white door
upstairs to talk to the girls
tho there's girls out here
and in 51% of everywhere
glowering and scowling
at sad men with sad pockets and nothing
to give of but themselves
which is what V has got,
all of his great and beautiful self
but that isn't enough for this world
NO!

I can't take that and I never will--

So Edd comes rushing downstairs
throws a full pitcher at some stumbling
asshole punched him in the face
and theres a scene like any scene
with beer and working class
that you could have seen every wild
night in every city America when we were allowed
to live but now it's so alien and strange
and it's broken up, Edd turns back rolling
which is where and when we decide to split and head
on back up that same street,
my heart street and only street, to V's car
where we pile in and slowly lift off
leaving fresh screams and sad dripping memories
like somehow we always do--

Mornings on 19th

Rain on gray street
and gray marbled sky--slow moving
clouds just finished overnight--
with brass band playing somewhere
out of sight, the only other smells
are starbucks and subway and you
can get that anywhere in america
and probably the world on every
city street corner that isn't ignored
or shoved headlong into some ghetto reality
that doesn't exist here, we're living
a choas dream of all the wild stagnant
dreams you've ever heard of in squat
skyscrapers that taper off into block
house hell with the only visible resistance
a pile of wet blankets soaking in
a park that no one else bothers with
until lunchtime fantasies--I get it, no kidding--
and when to cross the
street I'll never tell ya, just watch the signs
that get us there in one piece--

Unfinished

Aw Christ,
cast me off onto some road
along blue skies and
plains without fences
and it's just green flat
golden free land as far as
my eyes can see, which I pray is
too far to follow--great beautiful
America that I've been chasing
after for God knows how long
and which I fear I'll never
find or catch or run fast enough
to escape what's coming for me--
a concrete existence and bottom
of my soul unhappiness forever--
I see it before me and it stings my eyes,
the future, is it out there?--or here?--
and it's like I have no choice.

Summer is Gone

Moan of windshield wiper
horror, falling rain, gray roads
of I-95 sad trip back-
to-back, haven't rested in
years of immeasurable 137 miles
of road life between bridges and
missing most things on
tumbling wheels of 3 hour time,
never catching up,

I am a forgotten ghost
forging nothingness

I've become meaningless

I wish to drop everything
I've written into the great lake of fire

Bus pulls up in Baltimore
too dark to see, I don't get off
there's an hour to go on this
empty coffin, the rain is
slowing down.

Hold that door!

She closes the elevator
to say sorry, juggle your drink
in formal wear work party
shuffle, sorry sorry
red faced surprised lips
con job,

you wanted to get to your
floor 5 seconds quicker
I get it,

It's the end of the world
dig, it's the end of the world
so don't frequent the elevators
God hits those first,
the cable veins
and blood cells
souless grinding 13 floors
with those colors underneath

but what do they mean?
R O G B
figures out,
it's Gold and subscriptions and payment
increases,

backs of broken
labor shnelling yelling
why don't'cha just drop
the dirt in here! it's six
foot and deeper,
it's the elevator shaft
devils work and lunch
time is no time
is half time is half hour time
is the clicking lock and
the fumbled coffee
is the rush to get wherever whenever
for no reason other than nothing else exists.