Hangover Moon

Even the sky turns to rust

just before the moon

shuffles in with yesterday's

lingering hangover,

punching in late

to perform his ageless duty

as the gears grind back

the clockwork

of a working man's day.

Early birds' early bed,

still wet with dusk's rust,

was not fashioned for us,

not while the city slips

into its dizzy dream

where even death can sit

unsolicited and drink till last call.

I can see him there.

At the end of the bar.

Been mean-mugging me all night.

But that's alright,

for now we're both into our beers

and no one seems to be moving.

And I know how life's shortness

could feel so long

to human hands.

I know there is hope, too,

hope that rusts

as well as the pipes

draining the sky

of its quiet relief,

spilling out unto unsung vistas.

We would collect there

some nights,

but those nights

never felt so light

as when the world

would stop to sit in them,

perhaps mulling over 
some question

in the dark.

And I know

that there are beautiful women

in the bar

across the street.

They're sitting on barstools,

sipping on cocktails,

drinking in the room.

They want to be spoken to.

But if I found the message

in the bottle

I've been slowly nursing

back to health,

I would walk right in,

take off my coat,

and be at ease.

But most nights,

I drink the words too.

And I heard the call-notes

of a song sung

from some sobbing saxophone,

belted out

like the breath he had been holding

all day to play

for the moment

the world

would stop to listen.

Oh, 
and being is no easy thing,

after all the hope

and all the women

and all the music leave,

one must still stumble

out into the day

and fumble for the keys.

Oh, 
and time,

time too decays,
and often the breaks

needed replaced

when the passengers feign

their use saying,

“not so fast,

and not so close”.

The Spaces Between Them

I've heard the talk
of this and that,
these and those,
juxtaposed like pins
stuck on a map,
strings between
the ends stretching
across the barriers
of the jumbled means.
Yeah,
        I heard you.
But I was distracted by the
      click
         clack
            click
of the ticking pendulum
on its perpetual swing
between neither this nor that
neither these nor those,
a singularity sprawled
across the polarities
as the thoughts
we only believe-true
travel the vast proximity
between me and you,
between right and wrong,
between God and Devil
and a million other frightful things.
I have watched as Lucifer
stretches his hand across the table
while God shakes his head
and exits the conversation.
Yeah,
     I heard the talk.
But when asked,
I pull my lips back
and bare bloody gums
and dope-ground teeth
because I still search
for something to sufficiently
        stain my soul.
But this is the sound my bones make:
      click clack click
             rattle-tattle-pop
I want to hear a tear drop
and bury the sea
till fossils of drowned sailors
rise to clatter their last confessions.
I would bless the curses
left dangling in their mouths.
When I was a child,
I exorcised my own demons
and watched them dissipate
like smoke curling through door-cracks.
When I was a youth,
I saw God walk past me
in an empty parking lot
while I smoked my last cigarette,
and he refused to acknowledge me.
   Sometimes, I still want
       to call them back from the swine.
So what now?
     What talk?
If I saw the Devil again,
         I would embrace him.
If an angel passing
       would but wave, I would weep.
So tell me now
    of this or that,
these or those,
  and I'll show you
the all-too-nearness
  of the spaces between them.

Attendance

         I.

We stood in circles
round grandfather tree,
old and withered
gnarled round eyes
which searched
the ground for faces
he could still call names.
But how the names they raced,
running round the place
like children at restaurants,
scraps of dirty memory
cluttered round the floor
for some poor sop
with a grandson's name
to sweep into another room.

                II.           


Death is a secret
the dead keep,
huddled hordes
lining the eaves
all in black
talking of things,
things unknown,
things unseen,
things unheard,
movie-goers
trying to make mystic
when called
to the occasion.
And the rain
tries to touch them,
leaping from puddles
just to lick them,
tugging at their heels
just so that they
might be noticed.
And the air fills
with the hum
of voices
across the street,
amongst other eaves
and other dimfull
visions of things
projected, perhaps,
between the theaters.
And the drum
of choices,
the splatter
of tires throwing
devil-may-care
indifferences
that lead you
to seek such
minimal shelter.

            III.

At my grandfather's viewing
I thought I saw his chest move
up and down, up and down,
thought I saw a lip curl
round the inside of a joke,
thought that in a moment
he would rise and laugh
the deathness from his clothes,
stretch and ask for attendance.

Cannibalism is a Condition

My mind wanders so much at times
     that when it finally deems it necessary to return,
           as if just to say with some proof that it does,
                         in fact, reside there,
         I am scarcely able to recognize it as my own...

                               ...from out of the cold
                                  my thoughts come shivering in,
                                     taking off coats,
                                                        hats,
                                                         mittens
                                                           scarves,
                                                                shoes,
                                                         thermal underwear,
                                           till naked they stand there,
                                                completely unaware of my presence.
                                                            Am I the intruder?
                                           

Perhaps                  
               I swallowed
                    some unfortunate twin brother
                                   in my mother's womb,
                                       gobbling up fingers,
                                                                  toes,
                                                                     hands,
                                                                           feet,
                                                                             arms,
                                                                                 legs,
                                        but his mind was left somewhere
                             implanted behind recesses in my skull.
                                    No, I did not eat all of him.
                 This, then, is my greatest fear,
                        to have been born a cannibal,
                           or at best, a body-snatcher,
                                 because the only place
                                                       he is ever found
                                       is somewhere far off
                                                                  and secret.

The Formulas of Physics

Forget what the loveless and luckless
       say about love and luck.
They haven't the vision.
    Beauty is Lady Luck
leaning over a billiard table,
  radiated for a fleeting moment
in the incandescent light
   of a smoky country-western
       bar and laundromat.
In the sublimity of unplanned games
    we learn how to bounce and play,
and perhaps we scratch,
    but one moment transitions
seamlessly into the next
   with the ensuing encounters
of ricochet rendezvous
    and colliding chance.
So forget again
  what the corrupt
      and disingenuous
say about innocence
    and sincerity.
They haven't the heart.
Purity is Lady Luck
    taking a wild shot
with a sly, knowing grin,
    a feather dangling from her hair
and a mischevous twinkling
     behind her eyes
as the formulas of physics
   we do not understand
        or premeditate
set beauty
                 and purity
  in motion once again.

Rubber Snakes

I almost died that night,
    cat screeching in sync
        with skidding tires
while blown-out speakers
         play my dirge in mp.3.
I almost wrapped around that tree--
    mixing blood and iron
       in that mud-grass
          just past the underpass.
Cars passed,
      dancing their headlights
 in the refracted glass-rain,
    like the tunnel-light
        that never came.
But still the radio crackles,
    singing,
       "the good times are killing me"
and I have to agree,
                                you see,
I almost died that night.
Eyeballing that handfull of bliss
    because happiness had thus far
come in pill form,
   prescribed by the bartenders
      with degrees,
         who can't listen
to drunken sailors
    with all these wind-up monkeys
clanging their clanking gongs,
    playing over the quiet music of the ditch,
where life so tenderly takes its leave of us,
        like so many coiled rubber snakes
in God's forgotten toy-box,
    each one hissing,
      "I almossssssssst
                       lived."

The Ballad of Senor Shucks Pigknuckles, Professional Consultant Extraordinaire

...and I still have a song in my throat
and a prayer between each hand,
           but my teeth,
     my teeth I keep dug in
              real deep,
    so that these days
       my tongue seems shorter.
'Cause I've sung
     too many unheard hymns
 to really sing anymore,
and I've prayed to
      too many faithless gods
to really pray anymore.
    I think I was a child
when I lost faith in myself,
        a youth when God left,
but yesterday,
        yesterday humanity was lost.
Yesterday is the blood in my eye,
       the tear on my sleeve
   so I'll wipe
             the blood off your face
      but me,
          me I swallow mine
    and dig in deeper.