riverboat chorale

i pulled the leaks clean out that white fleece hovering
thrown the reeds clean mounds in the dried grass covering


sew them good
sew them good mind the greens


larks bringing clouds to the fulled
mouth of tennessee
deleware river the catskills
full-send forever seeds

sew them good
sew them far south roxbury

let my girl go proud let her go in the spring
when the ferns come on 

innertubers laughing in the breeze

where the distant dawn drove dires and fauns
wild streets beckoning

miracles
singing rounds sweet st louis

the carillon

in the islands north on a crescent of day i took a long road that wound where they stayed, through the winded leaves that slept on their stakes on a break in the rain. on the way stood a door clear and tall as the trees, a great golden sail that loomed in the halls and it breathed, and it walked and it shimmered and spoke to me. like some far away thing that watches all the time and lives on in a stream. 

carillons a musique, they made a road that winds south at eastsound.

ive heard stories about the key that lies in the center just off the beach.

but unlike the trees you know time never sleeps, so as the sail died i stalked through it and knew it was mine. because those words that still stand, though dead others who died, those words were a mans and the end of the night.

the huntsman

Drifting through this press of castellated steel and concrete, there's been word of the old cat I met back at the gallows. I don't know what he's up to these days, some have seen him watching jeopordy in the dinner hall in a hospital bed malaised, some working in the 5th street garden they said in a ball cap and cordoroy or puffing a cigar, streaks of gray whisked round his head. Or playing hangman at the park on the bricks in sidewalk chalk, in a crowd of lunch kids tall as a corn stalk. Myself I thought I saw him on front street once stood in a window striking a match, turning round only found a young attorney in tweed checking his watch. 

And in the papers they say there's danger on the edge of town, I hear shouts in the alleys and the parking garages, loud sirens calling up the 90 or on broadway or paramount. They've seen fires at the precinct and I heard a clerk say sams bakery is also gone up in smoke, I think. I don't know what it's all about, and I keep hearing 'crazy times these' and 'funny that', but today I'm wondering about that bloke the one with the bow tie and cane. With the wheezy stare and a wheel of fortune grin. Where is that old man, whatever happened to him.

A flodgin peddler wandered through yesterday with the tribune. Thats watches rings nickles and knives, and three dollar bills that rhyme with plumes. I asked his name he said ben, ben from everclear and I kicked down a wad of fifteen fins. Offered a seat he pulled up a chair tossing me a luckystrike and set his derby down over the fare, 'Remember that Lorie w the trunk you know I think they called me up the other day'

I asked him what about, but saying nothing fished into his pockets and presented a rock his hand stretched out, just some rock and says there's danger on the edge of town. 

'you still on the mephedrone, guy? what was it about'

'can't you see it writ there, fires, and a lighthouse'

Squinting, I motion warily for the bottle and he throws the duffle up on to the table next to the hat.

'I was seeing my brother about a gun out in Roanoke. Two quarts and an old coach. He lives up the drive on a few acres of trees. What's a roan billy fish hawk like you need with a hitch I said and he says he's got a couple out to buy his ford and they want his wood too. And I say but no gun huh.. "Protestants".

What's a city slicker like you need with a gun. Look, move along with your news we're not all daft, I can read too, and no more passages from the sunday oatmeal, I think I've got something I have to get to now..

'We went out to the back to fetch the piece and there's deer, a whole family of them maybe ten or fifteen, grazing. I said these your animals? they don't look scared. He says the rivers been right flush with the buzzards since the tackle shop down the way closed up and "wait watch this, hold on and you just watch".

So he loads it up..

'No. He goes inside and returns w an apple. Walks out to them casual as livestock and sits down at the first stump, ten or fifteen feet between and with a bowie knife in hand offers the apple up in the other'.

12 31 2016

Hitched down into austin tx this time from Temple. A lot less picturesque than the first go round, when I had rolled in out of Hearne / Houston / conjunction Kirby and san anton. And not nearly as much fun. I lasted like five days total after reaching austin, and then changed my mind about everything. Mission failed successfully.

Had been told before to look at slaughter siding for camping spots. And came in w the intention of doing so while I tried to go unbreak my bank account for a little while.

Under slaughter bridge there's a whole pack of riders. like ten of them. it was like finding leprachauns.

Two of them have got the kind of train grease on them you'll only see on the genuine articles that've been riding since regan and probably carrying more narcan in their packs than anything else. I still have the girls breakup texts to her babydaddy on my phone.

I sit down in a circle with the other six and give a nod to each, exchanging names, and set a fifth of sailor jerry in the middle next to somebody's pack of smokes. They're all good kids, roughly my age maybe slightly less but I don't look but half my own in the first place of course. With the exception of Mr tough guy hawaiian shirt to my left who claims to have just completed a tour of the south and looks like he could be my fat cousin. He does most of the talking and I let him.. Raising him only with the bottle every couple minutes. I'm surprised with how well I get along with the other four and we seem to want me to go along with them to san marcos and wait for a northbound there for a moment. 

There's an even better looking girl that left down the tracks searching for her boyfriend, who I already know I'd seen leaving the other direction, the one I'd come in from walmart. They'd had a group of blacks come through shortly before I arrived.. apparently they zero'd in on boy toy up the road for their opening act and slapped him around a little to exercise authoritah.. If I was smart I'd have followed the girl down the track with the pretense of telling her she was going the wrong way, but I"m not that smart unfortunately and was more about sitting down and getting drunk in the sun.

I gave hoola man the two tabs of leftover acid in my wallet. I warned him they were real, but of course he insisted my dare was good and he ate them immediately. Boasting that his awesomeness level only increases with every tab. He didn't say it like that but it was something to that affect and that's when I decided I was going to finish getting drunk and leave instead of watching him finish making an ass of himself.

Later woke up in the dark on the other side of the tracks, to shouts of beligerant threats and intermittant gunshots. Assuming the gang of blacks had returned for round two.. but it could just as well have been fatass losing his shit all by himself. I was 200% trashed still unable to stop the stars from spinning. And very glad I had the sense in my inebriation to disappear while I was still able to walk.

Not a minute of sleep for what remained of the night. After gunshots I thought it wise to move along north somewhere and find somewhere more quiet. But the first spot I found had a dog on the other side of the fence. The second, further up, there was yet another gang of rather violent sounding young black folk who heard me in the bushes through the dark and had come searching for me, specifically me no two ways about it, keen on discouraging homeless from staying anywhere on their turf. And spent the proceeding 2 hours running from them. Jumping fence after fence through suburban backyards, a few dogs on the way, to afford myself a headstart. Later dissappearing into yet another greenbelt full of trees, next to the tracks.

And there, just as I'd bedded down in the pitch dark and before dozing off, I heard what I could only assume was a bull elk or a very big worthog. Passing through, not 30 feet away. I could almost feel it's hoofs hit the ground. It made it very clear for me too that it knew I was there but was not sure just where.. stomping and blowing air out it's nose very loudly. I suppose its possible it may also have been a horse. But the thing sounded too angry and I could only imagine a moose, although I knew that was impossible too.

I waited for the thing to leave me 50 feet slack and then scrambled away back to the tracks.

I scouted the tracks for another few hours until the fireworks quieted and the dawn crept out. Nothing good. Nowhere to lay low and leave my things.

I gave up and doubled back to slaughter. Seeing the headlamp of a train down on the siding. And said goodbye to texas. 

Road to memphis. Just over the mississippi... Explored the city, and then left the same night on a train straight back to Socal where I fucking belong. Hitting Sweetwater Texas for a brief layover, to avoid getting pulled off by border patrol in the middle of the desert on the intermodal out of Marion. 60 hours by general manifest, from there to LA, stopping just about everywhere. 5 hours outside of pecos. 3 in alfalfa yd in el paso, 3 in santa teresa at the border, 2 hours each in one ghost town and another.

One hour, staring into the blue sunbaked miles between pillar after red pillar somewhere in southern arizona. 2oz of water left. The sand smells like my ex's panties.

welcome to ehrenberg

We filed quietly onto the open grass

Dawn calls first dimly down

violent at the ramparts

somber in the first and jade fingertips

I like to remember.

Drenched in felt

swallowed 

as the sun stricken in stone

each of us alcoves alone  

smoked and

silent as no ember

badges at our breast

elite and numberless

as the the foxtails 

chests full of thistles and florets.

Sure as the burs on the bull in the heather

as the pride of all our savior fathers

as the flood of the love

shoulder to knees

for our daughters and mothers

and lovers back home

to whom we'd sacrifice anything

or ourselves dive readily
drop like alkaloids out of the ether
black as a sun behind the ramparts
I like to remember.

Some rumored us cloven statesmen

or barons 

in town they ruled apartheid

Some said we came from the forest 

others 

smugglers from the lower rhine

Gamma rushed first

Delta thrice behind

The hairs on my neck stood

when they met the north wall

circling down over the open side

The rest we went west to find

A straggler or a visitor

a naive or a slave 

however meek 

however blind

We filed quietly into the vacant halls

Zeta calls first, a grim sound

Violent in the silence and somber

It was a disappointment

I like to remember.

There had been a coup

And the dissenters we believed

had come here to pray

I put my hands in my pockets 

anstatt hof watching walked away

the only remaining occupant 

was a hanging bolshevik 

wrong castle, wrong day

the gift

Asleep, I held a small child in my hands, six weeks six months
We were at the beach, I think, and I said things to rouse a smile

The babe looked very happy, and I handed it back to its mother

I then dreamt I was myself a small child, no more than six

Sitting alone in an old porcelain bath, the room very quiet

I held a large gem the size of my hand. a flower cut into quartz

With small motions it seemed to hum and play a strange music

Sounding like windchimes or a dozen windup carillons
The craftsmanship seemed infinitely intricate, I marveled

And gently handed it back to the water

The shuffled deck

A drunk native w a revolver in his hand
Told me there were six spokes in custers throat
beneath bighorns last stand w six fingered ribbons
preserved in parrafind sand
And that a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

But there was a couple kissing in heaven
That looked maybe seven whose hands held only five
And seven were their daughters singing
That the eight hides where the spades reside
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Elephants are good for many things, poachers
Use nightscopes, Kenyans cable snares
Tanzania cyanide
They take them down before the ivory is gouged
From out the living brow
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Baileen too, whales are used for collars and glue
For them there is penthrite or a cold harpoon
I watched one die smiling in the rip tide
good blubber gone all down its spine
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Less lucrative though no less necessary, debarking a dog
Although easier I hear just taking the ears
Sticks and stones w nothing to mind,
They incise at the throat
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Others in the courtroom or bed blow for blow
w leashes or sometimes lines of coke
I like to reign them by the hair and ride
dig an elbow in, or over a chair until they’re broke
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Like the temple I’m looking at now, a chancel fire
Against the clouds, looking more like a giant well
Or some ancient lighthouse somebody felled
From whatever brimstone sea from begone seas
Of places and purpose whose name escapes me.

And the fennec descends from the morning light
Like a blood born bard to Eurydice twice
Like Jerusalem in etamine when Judith came
Defenestrate w the head of epimanes
And Ive already robbed the sun dye.

The guest house

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

I spring w bandini

I Schlegel in the midnight hegels

I dream of jeannie

I stand w standing rock

I eat w ahab and drink with houdini 

I settle by candlelight vigils
I convulse in the entrails of oregon rails

And green is the blue in the starling hearth

and the black on its back over croft and garth

And eloquent the cries of gjallarhorns at war

in the somnolent skies of faraway lore

With a fistful of doves and a few dollars more
There is still wordsworth, still derrida, mozart 

Because home is the spring of the morning I left
Eyelids filled w your face in the dark

Its the phantom limb still lodged in my skull 

Asleep in a bed now skulls apart

Is to whisper again what I said to you then
the sands in your eyes that live in my heart

the unmarked grave

When I was a boy I was asthmatic. Not as much as I am now after some years of smoking but now and again it was severe enough that I would need to borrow an inhaler. But it only ever came on bad enough when we would visit my grandmothers in the country. We came from the mountains and the air was different, but I could usually opt to not spend too long outside in the pollen and dust and survived that way alright. But there were times I thought I might really suffocate, when there was no inhaler available. And lay awake all night scared and miserable to the point of delirium.

I once headed over the high line, not so long ago, looking for apple harvest work first and then anything at all.. And then there was one such occasion, similarly, when I thought maybe that was it. That I was going to die.

Getting around that year was beginning to be like pulling teeth already, with brand new scheduling having been recently introduced to the rails and I was seeing a lot of maintenance of way cutting through the length of it too. But it was also rough going because I was having these episodes of asthma that weren't normal for me and uncharacteristic for that time of year. I would spend a week here and a week there just getting off the coast and east. Seattle.. Everett.. Gold Bar.. Wenatchee.. Spokane.. and each hop taking longer as I got farther out into places I wasn't familiar with yet.

The aim was Missoula, but I never managed it. I was wearing out faster than I expected and getting lazy w the job search.. best I could do eastward was Spokane and after that I was ready to go look for a cup of coffee back in Portland somewhere and wait out the cold — time was up and winter was setting in quick by November out there, not even as far as Idaho. So I went back the other way. Down through Pasco toward the river and lower elevation.  

Pasco is still the high desert but it's got a lot of crop land and smells like drainage ditches and miracle grow. Lots of wind and brush and a lot of dust and things sounding like they're going to rip right out of the earth and hinges and blow clean away. And I was sitting out there one day in the sage land just beyond it waiting, watching BNSF operate. Hours into weeks and my breathing getting worse every day. Too cold and winded by everything to move.

I laid down in the dirt and looked up into the dark. Nothing improving on my back but too tired to sit upright, I listened to the crud in my lungs and it sounded like a creature apart from me in there. Creaking and shuttering away like a sunbaked old hay barn.

And I got angry and then scared and then angry again, and then — nothing. And I wondered finally if there wasn't anything I had to say for myself before all the words I ever knew all floated off into the wind and I with them. And if I was going to die alone was it going to be as alone as the tree that falls or as the dunes blow. Unknown, impossible.

And then I remembered, among many things, a dream I'd had once and I felt rich then and wanted to spit in the face of the world and I began to laugh, suddenly. My whole body racked with it and it sounded like the death rattle itself.

I was frightened, but then there was this obscene triumph.. and I thought yes, there was in fact something I wanted to say, offer up to the night before I sank forever back into it again. Something that I could have screamed. Gleefully, wildly, unrepentingly.. If I just had the wind left in me.

'I'm going to die here and not even the heavens will ever hear, not even w my face buried like this in their ear.'

But then I struggled up again into a sitting position and all the fluid moved aside for a little more air. And life cling to me, just so.. like a disease.

And for a long time I was obsessed w the image of a somebody, a body.. orating.. 

while all the neurons are dying and the brain 

begins firing all its first words.. indiscriminating.. 

conferring, w death itself only maybe. 

defiantly like.. the first 

grand constitution and bylaws in some crazy dream. 

Just as all the lights were burning out.