Perfidy

First her dogs,
then her mind,
pushy children ruin all the fun,

she lived as she died:
unknown,
unfounded,
no certificate,

out in the hills, her sunlit room
was her paper moon, angry
foreboding men darkening
her door,

in the 1920s, they said,
though it was wrong, it
was always wrong,
when they named her June,
she believed it her birth
month;

one evening in the holler,
a man came through
pushing a cart with beets,
to sell
no one stopped him,

she remembered, she said,
a smell like earth, dirty
and depressing, musty
like root cellars, and
her father lifted his
hand;

smoke swirling around
her finger was pleasure,
so was soda and peanuts,
simple, she was, and
callow, math on paper,
long division, no
money,

then it got dark, no more
Christmas, nor husband,
nor love; shattered kids
beating their chests,
and mangey dogs ratting
around the flea house,

a decade later and her
thoughts were blank,
except her last words:
“I want to go home…”

her home was the hills,
her life was there, and
she whispered it in-between
moaning,

her face gaunt and
ghoulish, I asked
her how she was, like
a breathing bag of bones,
she stared at me, I know,
I thought,

then it came, she
was the last one in that
epoch, a hillbilly like
none other, I left
knowing that was it,
and I made peace
with it;

guilt is for the lifeless,
for the messiah, for
biblical bible buffoons
and their mean dog-
eared women,

I told my mom; she
wasn’t having it, I
don’t care, I don’t have
to explain myself to
you for this,

so I changed my number,
I moved out of town,
rotten apples collapse
into the same pile,
I have fallen so far
from the tree, I am
an orange.

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Bar Call Catharsis

Does your chest burn?
I’ve never seen you smile before;

errant women walk loosely,
among men-wolf-masturbaters,

fueled by/soaked in alcohol,
skunk skanks sipping loaded lots,

and in the corner,
dread and mistery,

next to the bathroom door,
a sailor smokes in peace,

midnight chimes,
each count a click-check-lock,

when they arrive home,
they search the oven for leftovers,

then crawl into stained sheets,
on cool Monday mornings,

they all wish they had died instead

Moonlight Provocation

I imagine myself lying on the ground at night,
and yes there are tears in my eyes, and yes
it smells like you think it does, the summer
sun warmed the ground earlier in the day, and
yes the earth below is wet with dew, and yes
I miss being young, but it isn’t in me to wear
a frown, so I pretend that I don’t want to die,
but I am passive in all ways, and yes I think
about not waking up, and yes I wonder how
the time will come, but the earth holds me
in rapture, this night among the wastes, and
yes I still see terror in beauty, and yes I am
nothing outside aligned with this night, but
I return again and again, sating my desire
to return to the ground, to become a ditch or
a well, and yes I grasp at each moment like
I am ending, and yes I still cry at sad songs,
so it’s too late to make excuses for it when
I am alone, and yes I feel like forever won’t
end, and yes I will hang myself out to dry
even if it hurts, so my imagination takes me
out of the trap, and I open my eyes, still wet
with dew, but no left tears to wash my face,
and yes I miss them like you think I do, and
yes I won’t stop trying to find the right words,
so I will remain in this place until it finds the
time to end me, and I will always fight the
finish until my nails dull and my skin sallows,
longing for the pressure and pain that fills
my heart with song, and yes I know how so
many have died, and yes I still taste the wind,
but with each phase and light transcendent,
I wake and walk and wish, for presence in
being is sweet sadness for those alive in fear,
and I, but one pawn, panted black with white.

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Penny Full of Grace

here’s to you,

sad matron of men,

sunken eyes of dirt,

castigate of faith,

sugar cube,

stuck in mud,

and after midnight,

in cool treason,

your eyes water with purity,

sanctuary sediment,

muscles unbend,

Protestant heathens,

holding the gavel

of malice and blood,

tasting the night,

like a doll burnt,

carrion comfort,

lapsed in wine,

searing and blinding,

purpose black,

suffer children,

hold it thwart wise,

and desire death,

hope is absent,

in a gutter rat throat,

patches on patches,

monks in brown,

so sing your song,

chant your wretchedness,

and collapse upon us,

in libel waste,

you permit my hand,

but it’s the end in sight,

and the light is dead

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Among Iceland’s Greatest Dons

Across the divide, in between the dogwood
and valley green, I tasted your lips, like a
pure sugar—sweet, as the sun blistered, and
I held you in my arms, and I can smell the
water still: sensuous and sinewy, much like
this day in the North, as the light fades into
the dark, we quench our thirsts upon one
another, and sate our needs in the glen on
day, and drink from our essence, and drip
honey into the grape leaves pour greens,
and sour blend, supple friend, so moist in
the night’s air, sunk into our bound life, all
have failed to capture this moment, this
glory, but our hands grasp and lock with
unctuous sunder, belay no blunder, perhaps
we’ll lose each moment as plague eats our brains,
but rest in your bed tonight, my sweet, wonder
and life live on, no memory sanctions to one’s
attention, for it lives in spite at mere inception

 

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In Dog Years

My belly seethes with spit, and he writhes on
the floor, a blackened crutch whipped in trust
and stink, and my head hurts and my ears rip,
I can smell the end is near; rotting soot, bright
canned failure shifting and stunting, his heart
brilliant like lunar landings in vast vacuums
sacked in bread bags, bad gas and lapsed pass,
but it’s the heat that hurts the most, it’s when
I can’t smile, when I can’t reason with the dark,
the last stance and trance I ever had, the battle
at night, in proof and proves, and nothing will
save him, no metered banality nor rancid meat,
no white coat or salty, sweet tear, we were in
this, until the robe closed, until we crash the
party, cast the leg, bash the art, I held him in
the shower, his body for destruction and abso-
lution, when, in what morning, will the creature
lose? I hold on until I can decide for him, one
cough after the next, I transform from wheat to
chaff, to caged bird, to valued soldier, to anger
and deceit, he’ll never know, purity was his life.