Toast In Two Parts

Had we wandered
so far towards (and then well off) the hardpan back roads?
Thick with bird song and ticking
without stopping for water
or branch breaking
or passed hours on blue grasses. To discover that
young quaich—hewn of living hemlock, of bonze, and mud all for once—filled
on night to brimming. Loving cup as moral as its wood
to catch our blood as quickly as we spill it.

My vessel is false bottomed, and glass, and holding her dropped hair
beneath mostly peat smoke whisky,
so I may take two handles like an oath
and drink.

Say This While You're Driving And She'll Remember You

Some say the tambourine holds the scurrile of its own shake
‘tween its rind and rims
casting chatter like an obligation
on our listening while we baste the scolded, sunsetter
skies with glances, calls, utter and tormented staring, and base hope.

I believe the percussive rings rattle longer for wantonness
Like the dying path of lightening on closed eyes
or
more perfect remembrance of thunder through thumbtips on a hazard steering wheel

Hotel Montage

I’m naked and the green apple bolus I work
near to chokes in the back of neck/ the girl in the lobby holds her own hands/and the English
work the room.
One substantial moment after another in Beverly Hills
(far greyer and broken down than you’ve been led to believe)
who holds true as a pistol under a pillow.
I will not transfix in the heart of america’s worst city, nor settle for less, or expect
those hot dying sunrays to brown our insides clean. Too alone for cryptisisms
too married to my work to carryon through this sand.

Monterey Blues

At a whale house, the Mazda pr man tells me that it’s black
and white on Cannery Row.

That’s not a poetic phrase. Really, its here up high in Monterey and that’s what I was told. He Says,

That deepening shadows are endemic, but don’t spread. Fall structured instead. Broken at least in two

dark and light,
north and south,

Like a back break
Like a bisector broad face.

If The Alamo Had A Boathouse, I Would Be In It

If the Alamo had a boat house I would be in it
writing a poem – sons of clean-calved Texans – while curtained
by a rose of green heartwood too lush for this desert stone sacrament.
Hailed by Travis and hurricanes
these staged stones may have baked for a few days, sucked blood, and fell silent; had not
teams of signing ladies laid it plain.
Had they pitted in the lofts of Pharos,
cadre would have lightning roped-a pyramid
instead of sticking idly by four palace walls, sweating drear night, and a fruitless homestand.

Boathouse stays humming through reverie
Five electric fans, green grass, and thee.

Worrisome Nannerburgers

I’ve avoided the pitfalls
of the obelisk of LA
so far.
Hanging instead like
Adam. Aloof near gardens grown in the pyramid’s
thrown shadow. There is game here
fat as the early earth. Easy to track and lowhanging.

Bite in, feeder, there’s ground meat and past-time vegetables
in your order. Grey stitch of the city’s
center and borderfruit.

Believable Cowboy Costume

“You’re short again.”

She prodded an avalanche, sticky, of fives
and ones over the We ID
laminate. A smell like burned
hamburgers
haloed her face and neck and Bad Brains
was playing and it was gasping summer. He wouldn’t
pick up the pile or look up.
But rocked back
knobby heeled and smiled a little. Glint-dust
crazy grains spilled
out along a tired chin when he spoke.

“Always a little.”

He said. Knew it was true
and didn’t stammer, “love to hear me say.”
She heard. Stumbled.

Elegy Sees Red And Says Red

When fixed at its course
this ironhead missive
might slant
a dugout through one-reader-skull

bullets like ringed thought
poem shot of dancing ideation
of burrowing and exploding
of mindbreak blood blowing
bullets of barber pole alliteration
like chance through fingers
hands over faces

stand a stonethrow away
from this unsanctioned retelling when reading
the hot write is rising near it
danger, dear poets, is followed here

Hunting

You cannot recognize yourself
In the eerie coming of my heart

whose beat has mimed your beat Hungry, twice for nighttime
starkly, slick or liquid by rote.
all salt and sinew seek to keep

mad creatures from clocking at my throat's slim thumping.
Like a cannon, cold and still,
might nonetheless hurl raw

a sack of metal cured in heat.

You may, lost for choice, take a chance and thin hot

fingers for the feast.

Notepad Poem #1

My belly bears a jaguar
scar. Ripped fast
by an unknown hand, an enemy rock,
or other, purpled intruders.

I know I deserve them. Hard times are here in America's
middle west. Beset on pearled banks by spear carriers
and minor lords. Our smoked out greybrick buildings,
once held the thirsty world's wine,
are now slummer cruised and filthy.
Bucked like my poison stomach down.
A land of great water grown cold
slurping, frosty, dancing to a graduation tune stoned.
Tough sleep, dented bedposts.

I saw a country in my viscera
while it was pecked at and I was falling,
beaten like a badguy who'd done wrong.