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

I'm a White Horse Dylan Thomas

Graffiti Kerouac Go Home

Bryzgalov and the Merry band of Flyers

How bad does a team gotta
be to make you write a poem about them?
as bad as the Flyers are playing right now
is enough, and fans scream kill Bryzy! Trade
Bryzy! The team doesn't trust him! But,
you ever play hockey before? and you
realize the goalie has to trust a team,
I wouldn't they don't back check,
they give up space, get taken in the d zone,
they're terrible and it was building slowly, idiots
just don't see it, can't see it now, yeah sure
he could make some saves, but when
he doesn't know where they're coming
from or how, it's not that easy, just like
it isn't being the gum Laviolette chews while
he can't figure out what the hell is going on out
there on the ice

Round 3

Finished edits today,
baked chicken with potatoes
on 400 degrees and the whole
place smelled like rosemary, it's
70 outside and sunny, tomorrow
I'll be in the archives reading
Revolutionary War pension files,
it'll be raining like it always does,
I'm in DC again, scrawling in red and green
ink, I've got all these sketches tucked
away in my journal, part of me wants to
post them here, but I can't bring myself--
I watch the cleaning crew outside my window
5 stories below...they're speaking Spanish
and I don't get it, I don't get
much--

All I'm able to do now is Dream

I find out that my mom was outside
with Stonewall (my cat) & someone pushed a tree
on him, I cannot figure out where, why,
that could be, it's right outside on the front
lawn, Everyone is sad, mourning
my mom doesn't believe he could have made it,
survived, the tree is sunken down into it's
stump, fallen over & we go about lifting it,
it's light, underneath is a deep hole lined with
metal, like the entrance to a shuttle, steel ribs
flashing lights & I drop down to find him,
there is a bunch of strange
animals walking around, sliding around a
circular tunnel, I realize
Stonewall must have been placed inside
this brown turtle that appears to be just like
a miniature wooden figure that my sister has,
I can't pick him up
but push him toward the door,
the tunnel starts to shrink & the other
creatures begin to close in on us
I manage to push him against the door
but it closes trapping us, the turtle grabs the
handle tho & pushes open the door, I
push him out, then pick him up and rush
to the top of the tunnel outside,
***
I wake up, toss, remember the details
fall back to sleep
***
I run toward the house
& everyone is with me, I push the turtles head in & it opens,
or becomes something, spits out something, I open that &
some sort of gas mask/airplane oxygen mask is
inside, I'm confused & run back, my relatives are
peering down into the tunnel, I tell everyone Mike & me
are going back down to get him, there is
fear growing, I feel it like the air becomes
clogged in the dream, I believe he's down there okay
So we drop down again and there is a kind
of society where everyone looks like a fire fighter,
or policeman, I run frantically at first, watching the
eyes on us, there's chaos, suddenly the ceiling
is 50 feet above us, I realize
what is going on & stop, I begin to yell,
it's dawning on me, "Reptilians! Reptilians! I know
what this is! I know!" No one is listening but one
who turns sick lizard hateful eyes on us, he is dressed
like a cop, Ray Liotta, I yell louder & he uses
a psychic blast to silence
the crowd, walking like the body snatched in trolley lines.
I challenge their champion to a duel
in return for Stonewall, who I believe has now been
kidnapped, Mike agrees, the first man that listened
forces a crate 40 feet above us to
fall but I move out of the way & it falls harmlessly
crashing, he shatters glass and holds it in the air,
"You are blind," he says & fires the shards at me, I
close my eyes (watching this outside myself) & it harmlessly
passes, "I can close my eyes," I tell him, he is
angry, We walk on, "I want your champion,"
I tell him, he controls two high heeled shoes but
I grab them and hook them onto his clothes
that are now torn in two long slashes & he pulls himself
to the ground, growling, howling hissing lizard, I've
become impatient & the underground world is shrinking,
"I just want my cat," I scream, "You can keep ruling
the world, I don't give a shit, we couldn't rule ourselves
anyway, just give me back my fucking cat!"
My opponent casts cold green irises and struggles with the shoes.

I dreamed dreamed dreams ago

Just came out of a 4-5 layer dream
partially terrified, laid on bed on my
stomach watching transparent beings crawl
along the wall in the dark with window light
illuminating, was really on my stomach with
no light. This was not the start but the end
of dream.
Was watching Phillies 2 on 2 out
was on field but field in house some long
winding tortuous house thing, couldn't run
& was caught, stabbed at him--
woke up & bed deflates I roll
over on my side rooms like 1780. cool
Joe comes in and says I should use a couch
I think it simultaneously--
I wake, Tif rushes in moving furniture
that shouldn't be there, Joe says "She's
really into moving shit," I tell her it's okay
rolling my mattress, it's still deflating, it's
pitch dark night tho with blazing colors--
I wake up--sun spilling in like
it did at Nana's and Pop's, it's beautiful
out, I feel safe but something is not right, I finally
made it home, get up, rooms seems strange/different a
at this height, now that I'm standing, goes off in four
long directions, I wonder where Joe
is, I walk through the house
reach a bedroom & man, pale white, turns
his head toward me,
I hold my breath/ realize I'm still
deep in dream--
I wake up outside on train/bus--the
sensation of coming to--taken accidentally to
wrong house, I'm confused, I get up slowly
--same scene--roll around, walk downstairs as people enter
room downstairs--I hear them--see animals in cages, notice
lizards standing on each others backs, old
lady at desk & packed in I walk out through
doors & it's like I'm on tracks carried
toward big animals, lizards, they screech, I put hand over eyes--
wake up at start of poem, inhale
hear Joe or something in the hall, in his room,
I reach for a pen to write this all
down before it's gone--
it's gone long, Joe coughs
I hope I'm here to stay,
I fall asleep--

Post Title (Road Pome)

There's paint slapped onto
my sky, thick like an impression
on my aching--scratch ink into
leather bound sketch journal
one long poem out of love, want to
take road poem and turn that into
novella that's effortlessly sad but beautiful and bring
back those days roaring through
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois--breakfast,
sausage gravy--bat factory--beer--
Dave and Joe up front and me studying maps
in the back, shouting directions--no GPS
bullshit, horseshit--doing it ourselves,
it's been three months--three million years,
the crops are shriveled junk melted down
and shot into our arms, the city is torn down
about my knees--I've nothing left but
survival and words

Attention

Whit took his time cleaning himself

on my keyboard, focused on his left 

ear, his (there's something off about them)

orange eyes focused on a thing

I couldn't see, the light

from my window wasn't enough--

I was wrapped in a blanket and flannel and

plaid patterned pajama pants, I wanted to

continue my edits--Whit kept cleaning,

left leg scratching his face, tapping keys

underneath his feet--now he wants

in the closet, now he's out and mewing 

and mewing and meowing and rawling

and laying down and jumping and typing himself,

I rest my forehead on his and he snorts,

bites at the wires on my desk, I push him off

I bite his ear, his stomach puffs and he opens 

my door