poor post-it notes II

stretch like the pale ghost before me

darken my sad child's brown eyes

narrow in thinning periscopic lament
your great unknowable self

become once again the implausible dream

Finks (Reading for the Binnacle)

Finks (also for the Binnacle)

Second poem for the lit journal Binnacle
dedicated to Old Bulls centennial+2

drawing that thin blue line

drawing that thin blue line
crushing the plastic of the world out my window
flattened under the tires of the multitude
going for that reddened spire invisible ghoulish thing
across abstracted fields of invisible untouchable fields
of wheat and flax and prunes and strawberry jam
over the latest idea in type
in permanently inky darkness
stars glint like life
the babe's crying eye
heaven inside it
drawing that thin blue line
driving it in mechanical stone monolith bliss
grabbing at that setting sun
pulling it up from the ground

Rain Pome on Take Off

There aren't many nights like this left in America;
still, but for the shower that comes without warning.
quiet, but for the gentle tap of rain on street.
two storeys up from my window ever dry,
two storeys down my wet earth washed away.

to remain unfinished

in 100 years there'll be pilgrimage to Junction City Kansas
all these hyper kids on I-70 walls between them and the sea
head against the windowpane watching for that famous gray exit
there'll be a line of junk and hope straight down route 1 half-moon to L-A
visions on the shore of Carpinteria, California like Key West or Desolation peak
this will all be done via virtual reality if we're still here if necessary
when the beach as black as oil and the plains are toxic waste dumps
and I'll be long ago buried in an anonymous plastic tomb outside Camp Hill, P-A

Eat Your Fry-bread

Black copters over five corners
fly,
'If you are an enemy to the status quo,
you are an enemy of the
United States,'
that's not my America
         not yours
         not ours
that's an occupation force
a preoccupation with violence
staffed by brainwashed control uniformity
at war with civilized state
at war with mountain, valley, hill, tree
          the city is a reservation
          corporations are casino towers
          at work to determine what's at stake
                    America's fate
                    yours
                    mine.

Poems about American Road

got that pit in my gut running
entrails like the gray road spun
beneath my tires, that uneasy
nervous tick before setting off
hands on wheel, so different
in my imaginings than cool
relaxed reality of humming miles
eventual ends, dreams again--

they told me, "write a book about America!"
                                                  so I wrote one about myself--

I get where I'm going
daydreaming, weaving
involuntarily, unconsciously
working on learned motion
subliminal practice,
hours miles feet seconds exits

are you wandering still?
                      throwing your voice across the mountain,

I gotta get my head right,
it's not so long now,
it's not so long,
before I'm
gone.

theme here seems to be my own paranoia

oh, america how have I gone
this far into the cold night
of darkness
locked away in my room,
watching past orange lights
and silver spiked crown
at your pentagonal heart?

Where do I go from here
slipping through your
varicose veins mucous
dripping dried up white
blood cells waiting from
recycled heavy and war torn
overblown hero stories of
imperial empire anguish?

ah, oh, I am just one flicker in
the star scarred sky,
a falling streak of light
struck by a shadow,
never was or here or going
which-way any way,
but out out Out

ah, longing for that voice
on the page, hoarse and
mumbling and calling,
I'll be patient, still as
skeletons of old dead white
bones, faded to grey dust
scattered like poems
as ashes on western wind

500,000 minutes

slept in a car outside Eau Claire

never broke that mountain

faced the shores of Ross Lake
either

but we did break Canada

2,973 miles

or maybe it broke us

I still got the black fly
scars from Algonquin Provincial Park

I've reconciled with that

they're never going

woke up yesterday in America

East coast gray sky

snow

no longer where I was
or where I was going
having traveled 8,000
miles here to there
and now back

looking out on flurries
dreary virginia winter scenes

listening to the tires
roll 3,500 miles away.

on the other side of a diner's outside

This is an experiment

I
could
do without
the background
music, but we'll make it work

        on this cold
night, Friday night,
in March, everyone is
heading home under cover
of darkness, sky is void black
flatness, kind that's infinitely
impossible and construction
paper thin

          what it hides, if anything,
from me--

my every thought having
been written, spelled out,
removed, dissected, lobotomized
(an ice pick through
both eye sockets) & set
in place--this
          trip now,
it's getting clumsy,
jealousies & like V
said, what does it matter
we're not trying to make it...
          make it...?
we gotta
          make it
there's no one
and nothing else
but out there--
I'm folding the coast
and stars into my eyelidded bliss
          I can't rest--
wearing this tumor on my soul out
I lit a cigarette a million years ago
& the match,
          it hasn't gone out yet
it burns toward the center
consuming
the very heart of the world
and to find it,
each night in my dreams,
when I sing, she's
got a way in
 
          a diner, alone,
watching my hollow
self in the wall length window
obscures
               the truth of the cold outside
suburban northern Virginia
23rd St., Friday &

we're alone in the
collective isolation
of pretended reality
feigning cries of outraged
happiness, hatred--it's
motion--we've been

detected--abstracted--

          from--motion--

we return to--
are limited by--

      the brain is aged
      the body is victim
put together like
      legos
      and equally plastic

I
d
rown i
n c
o
ffee

drown in
self
image

(muted,
thankfully)--in favor
of satellite beamed
love songs--

radio--played behind
the walls
wind screams
friendly voices
              aged
boiling like the maggots
of the cheese
curdling

I--

I--

am seeking
an obstruction

god drew his finger down
through this great land
and dug a river
in it's marrow
that's our hearts
          to cross it
          is to really
          truly
          believe America
          to really breathe
          really live
          America
on this crusted earth
all the angels have
found it
have sung of it
          eternity like a
blaring wave
gilded, guiding my hand
oh, it is true
that we've forgotten much
          an Earth
          plummets into empty
          space while
ants scurry, are tortured on its surface
until not one shred of
understanding
remains

     dig your brow in its shimmering memory
and hot subjective
rainbow-scope reality
          collapsing--
feel for the open sprawl
and rushing (falling too) hills
     go--out West
is a song that rings in all
     true souls
never blinking
     &

that dream to
keep on going--well,
it's knowing--

All roads are one road.
Forevermore.  

Supplication; The Road III

Stirring in my
gut, in memory
in visions of past
and what's coming,
I see long gray
roads bleeding out
into the great distance
ahead, straight as a
Gad damn arrow at the
heart of eternity
and so real, real,
that I can't shake it,
knowing a new season
is coming--a new race to
the coast--my body
picking up speed
going 70-80-90 mph
hitting hell and storms
blue waves and endless
oceans, I can't remain
still, I can't! I tell myself
again and again,
I can't!

Five Lines Prayer

Eat, Sleep & Drink my Darling
East travel the wind
       west of my heart
               North to my home
                         South to America's soul

A Supplication; The Road II

Somewhere deep within america
traveling down the gray corroded arteries
of the continent, metal monsters
carry weary souls home
to rest, to worry, to long for more,
to wonder on thoughts lost,
to climb the snow topped mountain of the soul,
to pry into the immortal desert night,
great heroes unknown
but to themselves, writers of the great novels
of the american tapestry, shadows in
the grand obscurity, I lay you to rest under
the mighty redwood tombstones of the west,
I pledge my life and word to you,
I drink to your memory,

forever must you be forgotten,
Amen.

Letters

I'll scatter a message
to you across the gray roads of
America,
you'll have to get out there
to read it
tho,
you'll have to get
that pack up on your
shoulders,
you'll have to sleep
beneath the million billion
stars,
you'll have to know
Utah in the cold blazing
night,
You'll have to find
the Rocky Mountains freezing under winter's
chill,
You'll have to catch
that Pacific ocean with the sun yellow coming
down,
You'll have to remember all
the stories I sang to you that
night,
You'll have to look back
and see yourself in the blue-green
hills,
it's there you'll find the
letters waiting, written in cloudy american
skies,
It's there you'll understand
why I left them for
you,
and why you have to keep going--

Say it, see it, gone gone gone western blues

Just so you know
I haven't forgotten--
been lugging my bag and
banging my head on
down that dusty road
west, been out and
gone in junction city kansas-
style on a sunday
nowheres to go and no
car to go it in--been lost and
cold and wet on that
highway life at 4am in
the thickest tar black night
you could imagine--been high too
digging everything all silent in
my wanderers head--thinking
and writing whatever hellish unprintable
mash I could envision
been takin' down the days the hours
as the tires turn wear out rot
and angle--seen every god damn
god fearing thing--unconquerable
unquestioned--rising out of the
gray american fog--
lost all my words trying to figure out
what it is
where it went

When we hit it

when we hit Cali
I'll wear a Panama hat
Hawaiian shirt & khaki shorts,
because it's Spring
ride that look the rest a' the way
'cross rainbow desert expanse
sky painted ghost towns
knowing old forests
foggy ancient mountain ranges
those great & mysterious American rivers--

I'll christen myself
old man of the road
the fading spirit infinity--
                        forever wandering
                                                   soul
going
bitterly achingly to death
     one heavy mile--one golden
                                               bridge--
                              one earthly abyss--
at a time.

Stirring

The first sip of Guinness and
a toast to the empty
bowels of this tipping universe,
I wipe the drip from
my chin with the back of my
hand like a ritual of earthliness,
of the ugliness of stark American
realities, at my table alone,
set in the back, masked by laughter
and drunken cheer,
it's a triumphantly sad gasp
calling out to those who'd found their way
across this land that's always been,
singing boozing passing by,
living breathing loving
humbly truly every moment

If I don't get out there soon I'll die

Close as many roads as you like
I imagine one straight golden line
leading out to the coast through
leaning wheat stacked plains and closed
snow covered mountain passes,
trees taller than the buildings
sent to suffocate and teach me
to keep my head down, teach ya to ignore
the sky, walk on walk on walk on
searching aging dying calling
out into the sweet dark American night
that still smells sometimes like that
greasy sweat we used to know
and weren't afraid enough to ignore, labor
sweat and poet's sweat and jazz-man sweat that'd seeped into
the life blood of the continent unnoticed--
before it was paved and potted with
new factory blend soil and re-branded
old, meaningless, bygone and tired,
meant to be looked at out the periphery
of embarrassed eyes and dry throats--

if ya let it, it'll spill its secrets,
its true self unadorned
I'll walk into the night for the rivers
and sounds unheard,
I'll get out there and find you--
god knows I'll try

Take a Hike

on a perpendicular street
off the main highway drag
up about one block--no parking on
either side--
the waiters are crooning
to the scents of the classic
american breakfast-- two eggs-
two sausage-two bacon-two pancakes-
side of home fries and hot coffee served
steaming from the pot-butter popping on
the flat iron grill--and
scattered tables of one
sit patiently ingesting the newspaper
news and the tv news and
hushed conversational news, it
seems like it always was the same but
it isn't-- it's older and newer
in a way that isn't approachable
or recognizable--the past is a concrete
existence that's wholly untouchable
a destination that can't pointed out--

the ceiling is reflected pockmarked and
stained in the shiny metal trimmed
tables refracted underneath--we're all wearing
black but ya just can't see
the dripping white shadows,

the melancholy distances we've gone.

Kesey says Holmes says GO

Git west free
rollin' spirit of green
vast rumbling hills and
grand rivers and white capped
mountain ranges you can't even
dream about tho you try
to come to some
semblance of
under-
standing the thing//is
it's out there
even if we're to pretend it
ain't, it's stretching farther
it's brighter than it
was not duller darker
it's a mystery again
a frontier
we're all forgetting on
purpose to remain in
our place--but I won't
I'll keep reaching for whichever
coast is further--it's a
state of mind--it's a distance--
it's a memory of what
used to be