The Least Poetic Ending I Have Ever Known: A Poem

Flocking blackbirds foretell nothing except an early and colorless fall.
Apples are rotting off the tree. This is not a year for walnuts.
Small town biddies congregate to complain and offer solutions
that end in their deaths. They compare themselves to us
and find us failing – but forget to leave a gratuity for the waitress
feeding young children on her tips.

I walked by our old house yesterday. The new tenants
have trampled the bright orange poppies
I preferred to let grow wild among the weeds
in front of the porch. I missed the blooming of the magnolia tree
(I always associated it with good luck) and the roses
will make no appearance this year. The curtains were the wrong color
and they are not making proper use of the summer room.
I felt foolish walking up Pumpkin Hill,a stranger
on a street that were familiar, once upon a time.

But to be fair, I have always been a stranger.
Geography where I am known no longer exists
and memories of me are slowly wearing away
like an old quilt exposed to the elements.
Only the neighborhood dogs remember me and do not bark.
We lock eyes and nod the way creatures of the Earth do –
they are jealous of my roaming, and I of their perpetually full water bowls.
The self-appointed town exemplars know not what to make of me.
They speak of politics and invisible conspiracies.
They go to church on Sunday, berate the poor and bully the meek,
then collect the weekly tithe for soulless electoral campaigns.

(It's true, I suppose that some things will never change.)

I no longer have to fear your reaction when I come home
smelling of bourbon and misplaced rancor. Yet
I still paused at the top of the hill before I turned the corner
to check my breathe, make sure I was walking straight.

Nothing is in it's place. Everything is where it belongs.

My feet tell me I ought to keep walking. Only 10 or so miles
to the river, the Great Baptismal Western Boundary,
past which  there is Iowa to contend with:
fields of corn burned before the harvest,
farmers who can't remember a season
that wasn't plagued with either fire or floods.
But at least, I will be redeemed when I meet them.

Notes On Reading Lorca While Riding The Metro (a poem

This is no city for gypsies.

The man sitting three rows ahead of me offered assurances

that the downtown food pantry was helping more people

than ever in economic hard times.

The bus driver is silent and unaware

of the stories he ignores.

People who have known down and out tend to be nicer

because they understand the true currency of kindness.

Late middle age white woman talking about her

knee replacement, about the diet she's on (pre-surgery),

and how she really wants a milkshake and still writes letters.

Menopausal black woman, no tiny bird herself

talks about her recent vacation to Atlantic City

with her sister, and the varying and different degrees of orange lipstick.

Down Salem, transitioning from a fading center of commerce

to an old working class neighborhood – single family houses converted

into multi-unit apartments. (Good for college students.

Right on the bus line.)

Down Martin Luther King and Prospect Hill,

Liberty Hill, past the 5 and Diner on Sycamore

and into Government Square.

Sidewalks littered with workaday folks

shirt and tie crowd, bottle shaped blonde

in a short tight skirt crowd painted on

sculpted hips.

Street Vibes vendor, someone's grandmother maybe,

smoking s cigarette in the shadow of the courthouse

corporate tagged Fountain Square, bank skyscrapers,

and the Mercantile Center, with a beautiful library

hidden carefully from plebeian view.

I behave as I always do

and wait for my connection.

Impending Departure: Westward

(transcribed from travel journal)

Cool morning in Minnesota,

hot cup of coffee, cigar lit

the hum of the central air

like white noise, simultaneously

erasing and highlighting

the suburban buzz –

workday traffic in freshly washed

newish model cars,

lawn mowers brushing

manicured lawns, housewives

and daughters home from college

walking the dog
in ass-sculpting power shoes.

From the other side of the door

my traveling boots are calling;

whispering in a language

only we know: there are roads

to stretch out and miles to make,

mountains to see and people

to meet, telling me

what I already know:

whether among friends or even alone,

the road is it's own companion

stretches out endless

beyond the land of 10,000 lakes,

beyond techno-hipsters

in former middle class neighborhoods,

beyond Poor Richard's Common House

and the exhortations of old friends

whose kind words

cannot keep me away

from dreaming of the Black Hills.

Clock Watching In The Time Zone Continuum - A Poem

Seven minutes until the hour and the 12:01 to Kansas City

hasn't boarded yet. The driver announced a delay – some

“beer problem” he called it. Jefferson Lines – the great

Western Carrier from Minneapolis to Sioux City, Rapid City,

through Bozeman and Billings and west, until Seattle –

can't keep to a schedule for shit, and a drunk with a weak stomach

is one more reason to shave 10 minutes off a 15 minute smoke break

in Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace.

Strangers chit chat to pass the time.

It was 106 in St. Louis yesterday. Be 110 tomorrow.

Full moon madness brought to full fruition by the heat.

The western lands are burning.

(The Kentucky Hills are, too –

but no one notices when poor folks

go up in smoke.)

No storms predicted southbound.

But north of here, tornadoes fomenting,

and the rain is never enough anywhere

in spite of the prayers offered

by lips too parched to articulate

highfalutin' words

from a centuries dead faith.

Ten minutes to after the hour.

The bus to Kansas City rolls out

nine minutes late –

in spite of passengers bum rushing the door.

I want to smoke; but the night air is a wall of heat

93 degrees in the city –

and it's after midnight

and I am tired.

Eighteen hours to Cincinnati

via Chicago … where I have no friends...

then Indianapolis, which is kind to no one

with the smell of the Ohio River in his veins

then Dayton, where the alien bodies are kept.

Tomah, Wisconsin. It's 3:40 in the morning.

I am smoking in the middle of a McDonald's parking lot,

debating about buying coffee I know

will not satisfy and hoping against hope

I might get some more sleep –

that, not surprisingly, does not come.

The bus smell of salty grease,

burnt and watered down coffee,

and heat lamp cooked ketchup for miles

deep into the Eastbound darkness.

Chicago terminal 9 AM. Enough time to find my line

and pick a good place. There is no solace among the familiar faces,

the red shirted station attendant will not answer my questions.

I am surrounded by mothers traveling with children,

beat cops and private security pushing off the ne'erdowells,

(I have a ticket. They can do nothing to me.)

Passengers and travelers jockeying for a better position in line

hoping for whatever their definition

of a good seat is, praying

they will not have to sit next to anyone

and risk the conversation

or the potential body odor of someone

who has not had time to brush his teeth

or put on stink covering deodorant,

or to even change his clothes.

They do not know that traveling is as dirty as it is glorious:

that the world rubs off on you – whether you like or not –

and that humanity is glorious and smelly and crude

and honest and ugly and beautiful

and does not care whether you care or not.

We crossed into the Eastern Time zone around 10AM.

Taking note of the time on my cell phone

(which insists on counting for me)

and changed the time on my wristwatch.

I prefer old clock faces to digital time,

the sweeping of the hands lends the passage of seconds

a more poetic feel. Digital clocks tick fast

and no one notices until it reads the hour

they are waiting for:

Alarm.

Go to work.

Start work.

Finish work.

Go home.

Sleep.

Respite

is a sweaty hour at the gym.

Salvation is Friday cocktails with the women from the office,

when the office shrew will let her freckled tits hang out

and maybe not object to a casual grope,

but living to tell the revised tale to her husband:

though the other women will not forget

and will find some way to mention it

in some secret interdepartmental report.

The clock face lends the passage of time,

which sometimes passes too too fast, just a smidgen of grace.

(Which a vagabond needs in these interesting times,

in the parlance of the ancient Chinese proverb.)

Indianapolis is a quick change, not even time to get fresh water.

Just past the halfway mark, another 8 hours to go,

though it is, I know, only 90 minutes straight to Cincinnati down I-74.

The cafeteria window is closed for lunch

and none of the vending machines accept loose change,

and the drink machines all have signs warning me

they are not keep anything cold enough

and that I buy at my own risk.

Even the water from the fountain is warm

and tastes like old minerals.

We got off schedule somewhere between Indy and Gary,

there was no time to stop. And no one wanted to, anyway.

Smokers only get bitchy on night buses, when they can't sleep

and the drivers are sourly and unsympathetic.

Down I-70 into Ohio. Outside of Clayton and Englewood,

the landscape started to roll more

the way it does in the southwest corner of the state,

formed by receding glacier that formed the riverbed

and the seven hills. An hour and twenty minute layover

and an hour bus ride down 75, into the city

via the Norwood Lateral, Gilbert Avenue,

and into one of the main arteries downtown,

next to the casino being built

(that has already collapsed once).

Construction is ongoing, the Hamilton County Sheriff

needs a solid retirement plan, when graft and petty racism

run out.

The bus rolls in at 8:30 – a full 10 minutes early

(slower holiday weekend traffic). I step off the bus,

into the humid Ohio Valley summer air,

and hold my breath for moment

giving my soul a chance to adjust

to the stark change in scenery.

THANKS FOR READING. Look for a post about the trip from Minneapolis to Cincinnati in the next day or so.

And if you LIKE what you read, please (purty pleez?)

SHARE THE LINK

CONTRIBUTE TO THE TRAVEL FUND (Gawd Bless!)

Pictogram (Sunset Over Ames, Iowa): A Poem

The land is still flat, brown,

not scorched but overturned, overused,

a little too loved and a little to abused

until finally it is pummeled down into dust

even Adam's God wouldn't recognize.

Clouds float atop the stratosphere

like algae atop of a pond

where the water is too polluted to drink.

The sun bleeds out like a christ on the horizon,

puddles of orange and red and blue and purple

oozing an oil spill across the sky.

From this distance, no one hears the sobbing,

and the tears are mistaken for spring dew.

In this America, some sacrifices are necessary

even at the expense of heat and light.

Next to the interstate, three baby doe nibble on our remains.

Accustomed as they are to headlights,

they fail to notice the spotlight and the pooling of blood

that looks like water in the liquid darkness.

Disappearing Geography, Bluegrass Slingshot: 2 Short Poems

104 E. Main Revisit

The pet mouse in the cupboard we lacked the heart to kill is long gone.

So is the ageless onion skin wallpaper, with it's hint of a print

and stain from old glue, mold, years of cigarette smoke,

and what was probably several lard-based kitchen fires.

Gone are the buckling boards, the crumbling dry wall, the scent of soup beans, books.

                                There is no more cheap wine.

Gone is the couch no sheet could redeem that we searched through for loose change

to walk across town to buy cheap cigarettes with the hope the free beer girl was working.

No more the door of revolving women who cooked and cleaned for us

who looked to domesticate and mother us, love us and smother us.

No more nights sitting up sharing the community jug and talking about poetry, art, and life.

Gone is the small plaque of the torah on the door frame that bid us,

whenever we left, to remember there is a vengeful god.

All Too

O, hills with clouds rolling over like a drunken lover,

this rain will not wash away the stigma

brought on from years of profane neglect

at the hands of cosmic middle managers.

Each and every Sunday, self-proclaimed preachers

spew sloppily prepared fire and brimstone sonatas 

to pious congregations of empty pews,

cursing comfortable beds, mini shirts, the NFL.

There is no dogma that will combat this American ennui,

born out of forgotten troglodyte urges:

latent lizard brain impulses like the one that insists

the sun and the storms clouds have nothing in common.

Disappearing Geography: Snapshot Not Yet Developed (a poem)

The aging poet by the seaside a bottle of vino on hand
Red like blood, like ink, like the sun
On certain days over the southern hillside.
Shoes and civilized senses abandoned
Scribbling poems on napkins, the back of playbills,
And recently devalued and worthless currencies
In between games dominoes with retired fishermen
And meals of tomato bisque, fresh shell fish and strong coffee.
He speaks only to his wife and a few words to the waiter
When the bottle is empty. Eyes colorless
Like the ocean staring out, recalling some winter
Once, when his children were very small
And still knew how to laugh without bitterness:
Like only the innocent will laugh, not yet knowing
There is never any reason not to laugh.

His poems are pithy epitaphs on the changing world,
Written sometimes in the voice of a young man
And sometimes as a wise old woman.
He searches for a child's voice -- one that will echo
Like a daughter's laughter.

(He refuses to accept it may be impossible to find without moving.)

Fresh young women on the arms of jealous boys
Find him curious. The women push their breasts out,
Hoping bare skin will entice. Meanwhile,
The boys plot his destruction, hiding vicious cowardice
Behind smiles and quick sidelong glances.
Four more bottles before the mid-day meal
Of fresh baked bread and raw oysters on the halfshell, shucked that morning
By three lovely virgins whose dark eyes remind him of Kentucky.

Soon it will be time for a walk down the sand
Hand in hand with his wife
Who has spent the day painting worlds
and inventing new creatures for him to give names to in poems.
Dominoes will keep. The napkins are saved by the waiter
Who sells them to tourists that love them, love is work,
Even though they have lost the art of reading cursive.
They pay for his oysters, his soup, his wine,
And a quiet table facing the sea -

To which he will eventually return and drink wine
Watching the precise spot where the water meets the sky
Searching for the arrival of a quiet, anonymous Death.

Brief Introduction to The Atlas of Deep Time

Roads cut into mountain rock like long memories,

though the names and dates and reasons

have all been forgotten. One fresh grave

among the long lauded and appropriated dead

give us something to tell stories about,

each with a hint of mysticism and rebirth.

What is this place? Known and unknown,

traveled and unconquered, mapped and mysterious?

There are stories to be told, wood nymphs to chase,

crones filing ageless knowledge away in dusty bone husks.

Worries about the garden. Beware the killer mosquitoes

and the wrath of left turns.

If he is not careful, a man can come to this place

filled to his gills with the knowledge of good and evil

and leave feeling new born. Conspirators and coal barons

and tornadoes come and go, the sound of them

simply become rhythms to the songs

that have been sung for generations

and will be sung for generations more.

If he is not careful, a man can come to this place

broken and find his messiah

sitting beneath a tree in a lone cemetery

blessing the fresh grave of an infant

lucky enough to avoid the curse of naming

knowing love and turning back into dust.

Porkopolis Revival: (Re)Return of the Native (a poem)

I have written this cityscape and it has written me –

chiseled into these bones, memories like the rings of trees

will tell the tale when I am cut open upon the slab.

It's not that I don't love you. It's not some need to escape,

like the one that first brought me to you

all those years ago before the road map started

etched itself into my face

so that my daughter tells me I am old and wrinkly.

(She is young, as young as me when I first wandered

your mysterious streets, and does not know

what age looks like yet, or what it is to be soul-tired.)

No. What brings me here is, as always, expediency.

The tape measure snaps back

I snap back, and the measurement remains. Some nights

I close my eyes and I see the city of my memory

– not the one that has risen to take its place –

and part of me longs to return. Yet when I do

it's not the same place. Even cement moves on without me

and I am left no choice, but to find my way

with an outdated map that indicates landmarks

which were moved in the name of corporate expediency.

Though the subway was never completed, Losantivlle,

you have roots winding all the way to the river

and just as deep and underneath you

so much moves that is not seen on the sidewalks.

The oligarchs have not stepped down

or turned over their power.

But this city is not theirs, anymore than it's mine.

And yet, when I leave, I know

I will sometime return and find some echo of the street names

that preoccupy my dreams and give depths to my nightmares.

Wayward Sacredness, Intermezzo 3: The Last Supper (A Poem)

You cooked dinner and I tried not to notice the small differences

since I'd been gone. Mexican Night: simple taquitos.

Corn. Black beans. Tomatoes. Over lean beef that will inevitably

over cook. We joke that food is never spicy enough since leaving Arizona.

The cat is acting needy, you tell me. We talk about our days,

the current and those that have past in between the last time

we sat down together and supped. There is no blood here,

and no body either, and no more salvation.

Keep the conversation light. Polite and pleasant.

Your voice echoes in my mind, back when you said

we were both rational... that we were both reasonable.

It didn't have to be difficult, you said.

I find myself faking chit chat and laughter

as I pile on the red pepper. The burn

always makes it better, keeps me present

in these moments I want to fall into my emotions

like one more failed baptism. It'll be okay, I tell myself

if I avoid your eyes – eyes that have been the only ones

that ever really saw me. I wish the water were bourbon

and then I could be a demon

and it would all be so much easier

and you could remember

and I could forget, just for a moment

that this is something we both need.

The disbursement of things has been easy, at least.

Packing at the end of a relationship (I'd forgotten)

always brings out my unsentimental side,

makes me want to burn all the memories out of my brain,

start fresh. But that only works in the mythology of crash and burn.

This is the one about 40 years of wandering the desert,

being led by columns of smoke and fire and praying for manna.

So there's no point in squabbling over DVD's and kitchenware.

Sitting on the porch after dinner smoking, you ask me

if I feel better. I confess I've stayed too long, that Out There

is calling me. My discomfort shows. We speak casually

of divorce, like butchers dismember carcasses for steak.

I can hide behind the pipe smoke

so long as I avoid looking in your eyes,

where I might be tempted to say

Save me. Take, eat, this is my heart. 

[I normally post poetry here. But since the poetry is tied to the traveling and experiences of the travel log, I'll be posting more of it here... especially as it relates.

Thanks for reading. Remember, if you like what you read:

1. Pass the link.
2. Hit the donate button on the right and contribute to the Travel Fund. 

Every little bit helps, especially as I gather steam to push westward.]

Listening to the Earth Groan In the Space Between Sips

The grass will grow for sure. 

Three days before the first day of Spring, 

the first real rain falls 

after two days of preternatural heat.

Drinking coffee, I can hear your voice,

the way you used to tell me

You know you'll have to mow soon.

You used to be so excited about it.

Then again, grass grows different in memory

than it does on a three-quarter acre corner lot.

Over on Pumpkin Hill, the roof doesn't leak anymore, either;

no more dance to set the mop bucket

and empty coffee cans just right.

Old house, old house problems

I would say.

Drinking the last of the morning coffee,

I wonder what it must be like

to feel the groan of the Earth under foot, 

the way an old crone groans

remembering her last moment of ecstasy,

that moment of thunder and cloud break.

Do all men mistake that moan for interest?

Spring planting is all cow shit 

and bad porn metaphors, anyway. 

Nostalgia and bad commercialism

designed to make urban shoppers feel better

about not knowing where the plastic wrapped food

comes from.

If the Earth is a woman, then we really are

beyond all redemption. 

Epitaph For A Warm Winter In The Corn Belt

It's warm this year for late March.

The mosquitoes have hatched

and the mysterious downtown gnats

have moved in. Local criers prematurely whimper

that the Tinkers might return early, too.

Town girls traipsing round in butt hugging short shorts

inciting judgment and fury from the new mothers out

pushing baby carriages in defense

against the onslaught of middle age

and distracted husbands.

Fathers of teenage daughters

drink heavily bewaring nightmares

of early grandchildren

and preternatural impotence.

No one has started mowing. Yet.

But that is simply a matter of time.

Elsewhere in the county,

the agribusiness barons fine tune

their seasonal plans for conquest.

The ground barely froze,

and is pliable to the plow

like some recently wed rape victim.

The small farms prepare for the open air markets,

make sure to guard against the strong winds

and genetically modified corn seeds

that sneak into their fields –

following the pattern established by nature

before the CEO of Monsanto was born.

Carnival barkers of unforeseen future events

talk casually of increasing ocean temperatures,

melting ice caps, the cost of gasoline.

Conservative church biddies blame the President.

From here in the coffee shop,

where I sometimes sit and dream,

I imagine meeting you on the sidewalk

after returning from another long journey.

We hug with less tension. You laugh at my beard.

We talk about having coffee and almost forget,

for a moment, the onslaught of weather

that drove me out in the first place.

Move Along

Walking back to the bar after dark
I passed our old street.
Looking down and up the hill,
I noticed the porch lights were on
and I almost turned towards it,
the way insects do,
flying headlong towards their destruction.
How many nights a beacon?
How many times my salvation?
The drizzling rain informs me
it's pointless to ask questions.
Standing there, I thought of
that Frost poem backwards.
Instinctually, I felt for the ring
on my left hand. It is gone,
like my reasons
to stumble down and up the hill
drunk towards a light
that is no longer lit
for my personal illumination.
The rain picks up.
The lingering winter early darkness
wraps around me and I feel the wind
starting to push me a long
up Benton Street in search of a light
that will welcome me,
another pair of warm arms
to guard me against the wind and the rain
and the onslaught of the coming storm.
There is no point in arguing.

Worth Waiting For

Hauling ass out of the Appalachian foothills,

I wasn't sure the car would make the trip.

Two rusted off back quarter panels, exhaust pipe

gone, primer orange and beaten ugly

from drug running through West Virginia,

from that summer driving across country

from Norfolk to Chapel Hill to Cincinnati,

(where the axle broke) all the way

to Northwest Illinois corn fields where

later, we thought we might grow dreams....

though that was for another life, nearly a decade

away. We had so much more desperation to go through

before life would find us there.

                                              Knoxville –

it wasn't a pretty place, but you were there

and that was enough to call it home... hauling ass

out of Eastern Kentucky, you and I

                                               escaping

though there was nothing to run from

and (we would find out years later)

nothing to run to.

We ran from there, too, you and I,

to Cincinnati, close to hearth and family,

away from the toxic waste in Tennessee water.

Cincinnati, where we watched a Christmas Eve

riot out on the street

while my daughter was asleep on the futon,

watched the cops take down children

with rubber bullets

while somewhere, in a richer, Caucasian part of town

dreams of sugar plums and gaming systems

did the trick...

                      … where you were robbed

and afraid to go downtown, and we ate

dumplings without chicken, potatoes and carrots,

dreaming of some other place, some destination

where it was safe, and the winter

was not so cold, and our dreams would unfold.

Arizona let us down, too -- though to be fair

it tried. But the state could not contain my anger

and you could not be contained with it

and with me simultaneously.

So the Midwestern cornfields called to us. Finally.

We went. The house was old and the roof leaked.

And the yard was too big. But the rent was cheap

and there were no drunken arguing neighbors

on the other side of thin walls. We could see the stars.

We traded sand drifts for snow,

palm trees for orange poppies

someone planted in front,

and a magnolia tree that reminded me

of New Orleans every Spring.

Yet my thoughts of late

are not about the poppies

or the magnolia tree. I do not

ruminate about the leaky roof

or the yard I didn't like cutting.

Home is not a house, because a house

is an easy thing to lose and to replace.

Even so –

                   my home is not my home anymore.

Snap Shot: Ash Wednesday, Lower Manahatta

He asked me if I could buy him a hot dog.

But I was already bumming off a friend

and had no money, and told him so.

His pants were rolled up, too long

from the bottom of the clothing barrel.

The soles were splitting from his shoes.

His flannel jacket worn thin. He smiled, his

charcoal skin dry with shade of gray

from exposure, and shook my hand. Then

he told me he had just come up from the South.

He told me he liked it so much he might stay.

Scant Minutes Til The End of a Long Distance Romance

Bus Station flowers

still cold from refrigeration

hands wrapped around

tightly. Red knuckled.

Eye out for a bottle of wine.

Bus will arrive any minute, he thinks.

Does she like white roses?

Are they even real?

Do roses come in white?

Lover Boy believes he was short-changed.

But what is a few dollars,

in the name of love? Besides,

he was in a rush. He forgot.

Meant to buy mums;

but he didn't know

what they look like. That

he thought that she never mentioned.

Sometimes, you just get stuck no matter what.

Remembered she mentioned

mums were her favorite flowers.

Once in passing. Pillow talk.

Early on. When the sex was still good,

and he didn't mind the way

she hogged the sheets

and farted in her sleep.

One eye on the clock.

The other on his surroundings.

Gets hit up by a bum,

shoos him off with the flowers.

Another approaches. He gives a dollar

to avoid the conversation. The flowers

look like they were starting to wilt

seeming more yellow

under a different light.

Do roses come in yellow?

Eyes a crusty old man

holding a plastic shopping bag

full of smelly clothes

and a key to a padlock.

The man holds these things

as if they are his most precious possessions.

Lover Boy despises and envies him;

but the stench made it impossible

to ponder further, as Lover Boy posited

that the smell is bad for the flowers.

Détente and Domestic Policy

There is no resolution, sometimes.

Arguments over things

less or more important

matter more or less

in an endless geography

that makes up a tiny home.

Toothpaste caps gain weight,

resonate with horror show sound.

When the world reduces, becomes

this compact, this confined –

down to paper thin walls,

remanded décor, plywood cabinets –

random couch cushions become

entirely new countries.

More or less.

On Rothko's Seagram Murals

Paint your way out.

Find sliding doors

and wide open windows

only to find the world is bound.

We give ourselves a little room

to move, call it progress

and watch as our feet shrink

out of atrophy and neglect.

There's no escape, Rothkowitz.

Not in this America.

Not in your America, either.

We lumber through this world

baboons with scared souls.

Feel the viscosity of the blood

in your veins, thick like paint,

thick like ink

on skin         on paper           on canvas.

Boundaries bleeding over.

Take this, you are saying. This is my blood.

Paint your own damn Holocaust,

your own cultural genocide. I am done.

A door limits movement, tells us

where to go.

A window limits vision, shows us

where we can look.

Bleed, you bastard. Bleed.

The edge of the canvas only pretends

to contain you, most

Promethean and cold

like street grids on a map.

I Did It

I did it. And
I did it without you.
Hobbled around,
(as is my custom
these days) until
I found the Rothkos
in the National Gallery.
Then I sat down,
and I took it all in.
At one point
I nearly cried --
the murals were so
sublime, like the way
church ought to be.
Then I felt something
as I sat there,
that was all my own.

Then I caught myself
trying to call you
so I could tell you
all about it.

No Martyrs Here

There are no martyrs here – only a drunk without a bar

in a city where one should either be drunk

or between a woman's warm thighs

(or both) in order to stave off

the soul cold wind blowing down

from Capitol Hill. 1 St NE

is a ghost town on Sundays;

the arctic chill whistles through

empty church pews, and underneath

the caged locked doors of the liquor store.

The National Gallery is overrun today

by cynical skirt chasers posing as romantics

and women looking either for that movie moment –

or maybe just better jewelry.

And if I sound cynical, ignore me. The onslaught

of Hallmark cards have slaughtered my sensibilities,

render me incapable of appreciating the emotive nuance

of proposing to someone in front of a Van Gogh,

who lost his ear for love, they say. Nowadays,

he'd have to sign over his 401K

or proclaim his love on television.

And then, the hooker would still charge

her hourly rate.

There are no martyrs here – only broken old men

looking for God or some rough equivalent,

sleeping in bus stations and under overpasses

everywhere across America. God I tell them,

is a bum that gives away loose change

and menthol cigarettes,wanders half crazed

on civilized and unforgiving streets.

The wine is cheap, they say but

the grace is grand, and the path

to a warm safe bed is a sacred calling.