kiss them cheeks all up

the bus opens up

around the hill

against the curve

away from the light

the baby standing on her lap

jerks the opposite way

two women in the back cannot resist

the pull

the shrieking brake

the mangled exterior

they would spend the day

kissing

what about the baby's head

the head-on collision

how the bus would kick

think about the baby

your lips on its cheek

dead tire marks in the road

a sheet of glass

storm cloud over dakota badlands

storm cloud over dakota badlands

i recall them now as through another's memory

border x border squared

heavy edged

600 pixels tall

when i stood beneath their belly
who was i?

was it me there unable to grasp the sadness of the past?
what these miles would bring?

longing
even as i went forward
there where more memories behind me

these things that were once for the future
faded

endless in their becoming
they no longer exist

storm cloud over dakota badlands

there are few eyes left to remember them

there are few moments left that are more than
just tomorrow
that are real

soon they will be confused
with other days other memories

the road will sink into nothing

the storm rages
washes the graves
cleanses the bones
polishes the mud

drowns the dust.

That Day

The first alteration--
--after it--the change in line
in sky color--in tomorrow's dance
--in the color I've bled--when
  I'm of the earth in blue--
--in white heavy cloud
   when I'm under it--singing
--not in voice--vibration
when the ground is channel--
--bounce--right--there's nothing--
only forward--not time forward
--land sea mountain river canyon
   grass gorge river ocean eye forward--
--mind forward--might I call out
   shook with lightning--forge--ahead
   in the rest--everlasting next life
--calling--
gray river--
--grant life
   new--life--
currents--clear stream--
--a delta--the next alteration
   of--the filament--sundered
--the surface the me the you the
   above--the stars tree line etched
   upon its face in darkest silhouette
--the screaming violet night--
the blazing day remade--rebirth--
--un-sexed--clothed in green
   landscape--velvet--
--rocks split by cold seep
   the rushing spring late
--the ground swell--fire
   fire--
--fire--doesn't burn--
reforged--
--bound for next understanding
   wrapped written worn on
   western surge--
--the last alteration--

Writ in Blu

fit between these covers
                                        blue ink
fine points of human life. many spills
make a line.
                    I am the only one who I was
at death. Does that mean the cycle repeats
or not? After death? or
                                      ever life?

This poem is the sunset.

                                        Until you catch
the clouds moaning      or the cars.
But that could have been the road. It just
goes.
          On--

without us
                  making those sad sounds into
periscope night skies.
                                    The orbs that are headlights
lead the masquerade.          

Plague

these times between          grow short

I am not me for what I     was

a gnawing at the bone          the ivory bone of things
at the heart     goes corrupt

this standing still     this one view

harder to see from the lip      of my deepening grave

there is everywhere else to go     and the dirt packs
dry and sick           about the horizon

About the poem I left in my car

I left a poem in my car,
in the slot at the bottom of the driver's side door,

it was about a closed road and geese landing
in a pond,

there were reeds around the pond
and the road was nothing but smashed rock,
powdered gray earth,

I was stopped at a red light inbetween,
then I was writing as I drove,
pen scratching steering wheel,

it wasn't until I was a mile away
and the car engine cooling down
and the interior heating up in the sun
that I realized I'd left my words behind.

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

Katahdin

(Written between October 16-18; Completed October 20, 2015)

1

Flash by Lowell in the Autumnal dawn

            Pink blear of morning

Rush goes the mighty Merrimac

            In Kerouacian mist of pawtucketville ghosts

            Turn go the leaves
            rough characters at gray full up stations
            waiting on breakfast lines

            In rearview mirrors of the tired mind

Red Massachusetts lonely

Golden in the night

            Like earlier darkness of Philadelphia

North Philly streets

            Shrouded Stranger

            Appear in faraway view

Flows cracks on long ago pound streets

Mystery of flowing cape

Gray gray gray gray

Lurching

Phantom of mindless fear

Great death chasing

            Out of the past

Or hero of wandering fools

Regardless

            A great horror thing

            Lost in break light red

            Big northeast leering eyes

And finally left behind

Become nothing corporal

            Omen harbinger spirit herald

Portent

            Friend—

2

Snow on Katahdin

            False peak faced north

Obscured by foggy gusts of zero degree chill

And somehow this clears at night

            To star filled starry sky

Night night milky night &

            Milky Way rush of constellations

At midnight

Untied boots and thermals

            Standing in clearing

            In dim light years

            Behold! Moonless night

Coal black night diamond forged

And

            Thoreau wrote from Bangor

From foot to wheel to backpack

to Millinocket

To Katahdin to stream

            & where are the primal spirits

Rage over mountain top

Immemorial

            Crag of split rock & kaleidoscopic tree leaves

Of fall’s ebb

            Inimical & endless forests 
of the mind
            laid out

Spread unbroken to Kanady

            To artic to frozen circle

To grim desolate wastes

            Of tundra north

3

And in morning

            White skies

Icy hands

            Warm steam of mouth

Smoke of fire dawn

            Rustle of tents

Acrid scent of flame on my beard

            Ceaseless cascading stream

My dreams

            At 4am

As temperature dropped for snow

            Lift my lost kitten

            To the moon

            He is lost

            I am lost

Oh Night!

Thick on my eyes

Someplace long ago

            Voices telling me

            It was okay to let him go

Drift from summit rock slide

From bone of holy oly peak holy

            I am cradled in the night

            Fetal

            By icy root of tree

4

Root of tree

            Wreathed through wet ground

Bedded with leaves

            Twisting branches overhead

The tent

            Shrouded in its shadow

Final thought

And now morning of the mind

Awaken

Wakefulness

Task

            The first snowfalls on Maine hills

            At edge of trail end

There’ll be 8 inches or more

On mountain paths

            Whooshing waterfalls

Cough cough arctic lung

            Tip tap of large flurries

Weigh trees down

So leaves like windshield wipers

On car windows bend over road

            Baxter through Lovecraft

Lakes mist on lapping water

Pebbled shore

            Stark inky and gloom

            Heart of the northeast

            End of the world

            Millinocket Lake

            Off Blackcat dirt road

Not far from Togue Pond Twin Pines

Log cabin coffee at River Drivers

            Snow falls on

            Cold cold cold Maine

Morning

Lake effect

Swirling flurry winds

Gravel path from window

Fireplace

Katahdin invisible

Opaque whiteness

Great white north—

5

South in the October foliage on 157

            Medley at I-95 back to Bangor trek

The farthest reaches of

            Hi-way gore

To seek the Atlantic now

            Cap’n at the wheel

Light with ginger beer smells

            Old world puritanical spell

Carved wood at the

            Cross stitched lamp of the world

In motel now

            Tents clothes bodies eyes

            Too wet for another elemental night

Dry on the furnace of mankind’s

Innermost Acadia Gateway hotel

Caramel brown ale smell

            Ellsworth Trenton toothpick toothache

            Too true Trenton

Of no this isn’t New Jersey

But gauntlet to Bar Harbor Acadia cliff spill

In the Great North

            In bitter wind

            In winter’s great American shore

Come morning

            A brush across the bluest waves

6

 Blue waves

            Fishing boat fisherman’s life

Wool caps thick beards barrel chest

            Desolate but beloved distance

Beloved lighthouses

            Cut & cold hard

            Icy of heart

New England ah

            Call of gulls

Burn of engine fume

            Rock & mast

Red painted rails

            Cast against heaving sky

Glory sky

            My visions in the cool

            Blackness preceding sleep

            What sunrise would bring

            What next?

Silence

            Thunder

Tinder

            Silence

Churn

            Frush & rush

And undertow and all

Blear blast black port

Great hulking rocking bestial ships

            Silent aw silent

Mad—

7

Answer at sun-up

            Brings blue sky clouds vanish

Route 3 south

            Onto Mt. Desert Isle

Bar Harbor

            How it got it’s name

Who know? Who?

            Rocky beachhead

Shimmer under sunshine

            Without warmth

No time tho but to race around

            Start those tires roll engine roar

Chariot headed south

            Congested traffic hell of ole New York

            To bar our way

First a swing on 9 from 95 from 1

            Lobster rolls at Dock Square

End of Lanigan Bridge

Kennebunkport

And every town has a sister in Maine

Slapped port on the end

West Westport Northport Searsport Portland

            Slapped mayo or butter or both

            Grilled bread 1lbs Lobster shelled

Last day of the season

            Cold gray water

            Thick with coming winter

Scent of lemon salt water fishy scent

            Little shore towns

            Hidden from time

            All along bottomless

            US-1

8

From there now gone

            From here now going home

Day falling fast to our left

            On rushes the night 515 miles away

            Our mason Dixon mid-atlantic line

Rivers Delaware Susquehanna Anacostia Potomac

States MA Rhode Isle Connecticut New York

New Jersey PA Delaware MD

Pitch black is October night shift

            5am of morning slow crunch of time

Last days fresh

Fresh like the recent dead

Hint of decay

Memory fade

            Slide in the rearview

Alone now at destination point

Last dead drop my own

Each goodbye one less body of the whole

Of the host six souls one car one mountain

Whole of Maine

            Six directions they go

            Gabow V Tommy Joe Chase myself

I go mine

I go it alone but not alone

            Really

Toward what future may come

This is spring this is summer this is fall’s truest end

            Faced in directions south face north east west

To roam loam roam roam home roll flat burnt leaves

Vibrate soul soil soul legs hands heart wheel engine

Ancient stone forged trail in gray-like dreams

            Go Go North a vision a god a martyr Go

            Ka-Tah-Din    

            Ever always standing
            Shrouded

            Watching
Indomitable

In the city, Stuck

mornings like this  

I am here     I am stuck in a city     cement monoliths

rise skyward to block sun rays     I'd rather have them laid down flat

stretched out into nothingness     the open road     the endless shore

remember pacific coast highway     victory

how the sun was golden streaks through windows
how the sun seemed to sink slower to linger

     music laughter      rolling wheels
     nothing behind      everything beyond

Look for me, I'll be out THERE

those vibrant greens of georgia
snake and wind around fresh
cool rivers, bubbling springs,
manmade bridges, creaking &
flimsy under heavy foot tread,
those green fields cut by
wire fences, shrinking barns
lead right up to foot of sprawling
brawny mountain ranges
stretch from here to here and
from the corner of your eye
to the end of the earth,
those colors of the high hills
and nothing like it as cars wind
on winding roads a silent
rumbling slumber of easy
curves and dead man's curves
and drops and rises, steep and
rushing switchback elevations,
battered trunks and
faded rucksacks in back,

how many lands have you seen, hey?

Look out for me, catch a flash in thy windowpane,

I'm flying along, breathing it in,

here and now, foreverbound.

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.

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!

Short films

watch from two
holes in wall,

they become one; rotate
360°; bleed in and out;
focus unfocused make no
sense;

wall turns too, from
behind, from periphery
stabbing out

scene of river bed,
4 bodies, moving
north, south maybe,
gaining elevation,
going upstream,

one of them a boy,
so too, three others,

skipping rocks;

watch from mountain
perch, from holes,
from 9,000 feet above,

skip comets off the
surface of the earth,

listen to the magnetic fields

hummm hummmm hmmmmm

rock skips into space

burns
in
the
sun.

We'll be angels on the ocean

Discontented, disjointed
hurling thoughts into
never-was-being-like-human-
waves-on-the-spiral-lines-
of-collective-understanding
a mirage o' menagerie
of mind-image-fog,
sever my wings above
Pacific clouds, I'll float
down, I'll float, we are the
roads starving below,
disillusioned, ragged

Thought about this on the subway today

Remember the desert
outside Las vagas
everything dusted
dusty brown, burnt umber
orange, looking sculpted
from the sand,
gas station at corner
selling ice, drinks
gas, only things
you truly need out
there where the city
just plain ends and
sand begins,
Remember filling the car up,
smashing the 8 lbs ice
bags on the pavement,
the caffeine candies
Gabow shoved in everyone's
face,
Remember where were were
headed and how far we had
gone, remember the blue
sky without clouds
and the heat, remember
that fucking heat.

Can't find the road in a bottle

label was the same
but street was cluttered
madness backed up
rush hour mess, wait at
light three times, rain
coming down, smell
of sweat damp stench
M street to Wisconsin
time it takes to get
home on a normal day
what're ya gonna do,
this ain't Kansas brother,
this ain't the open plains

I drew up the memory of
40, walking under overcast skies,
lost in a place I'd never been,
never believed I'd be,

now, here, here
the beer doesn't even taste the same,
it's not unexpected,
and it ain't the west,

I choked it down,
I ordered another.

Mapped out

I've got the map
down in my head
memorized the blue line
on the screen page, the red
marker hand drawn state/provin-
cial lines, boston (skipping NYC)
borderline, montreal, ottawa
toronto 24 hour drive along
great lakes thunderbay winnipeg
moose jaw medicine hat dinosaur
bones calgary kickin'horse pass
over rockies vancouver and the pacific sea
north pacific down back into old U-S-A
desolation peak 7 thousand feet up
over ross lake, seattle portland once
again seaside and the sea crater lake
the great big empty yellowstone
and ole montanny butte cross the state
north dakota minnesota milwaukee
on great lakes again chicago heading home
over familiar paths and western PA
part I don't wanna get to
part of line obscured
rather live on that first
half that western bent
this is the hard ink path
we've chosen
this is the goal we've set.

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

You know she's calling to me,
great siren of the west,
yellow flower, desert rose,
mountain girl, and I'm
looking for those pacific blue
eyes, those endless cerulean swells,
I'm ready to answer the call,
I need my foot on that pedal,
that white-lined road,

You know I'm calling to her,
golden haired beauty,
pioneers dream, snow
white dress, and she's
looking for me to make it,
singing her song,
blearing that blue sky to heaven oh,

you know,
you know--

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