For I Know You Hate the Rain

Avenues you surely know
by conjuring the careful thought
that lets you waltz so slow.
Sunny sled you pull behind,
the weight of leisure’s load.
Hurried hands never to catch
the twists in pleasure’s twine.

Stack of wax around your wick
melts past the unkind cold.
Temporary ritual
in every bell you tolled.
To know a grain of what you give
away you’d have to stick
a thousand feathers to a dog
and free him from the fold.

Beyond the milky sky of red,
in futures where all is the bright,
two ancient waning rainbows fight
to seize the colors from your head.
Caring not which one was slain,
for I know you hate the rain.

When hounds of evening start their bite
through fangs of some invented light,
the neon riddles top the shops
like coals of trapped galactic heat.
Have you seen the soul of day
in signs electric when it’s not?
In rock your sword was never caught
as Arthur in his shaky feat.

The kingdom of your worried cheek
will still with glory strike a laugh
should its territories creak
upon the sudden floors of wrath.
When you find the grace to go,
a star of wailing burns aglow.
Raw from joy that can’t remain,
we keep these waters from your plain.
For I know you hate the rain.

The Blues in Choosing

I bottled up the truth of man
And sold it to an honest hand;
Death found him trying to
Get the cap off still.
Then when by truth I was set free
I could not call that victory,
For I was lost before
The morning finished.
And though in soul I was replenished,
I kept these eyes upon the limit
Whose bound I broke but stayed
Defined within it.

Then when by truth I was delivered
To Heaven’s heat where good men shiver,
I climbed the gate to
Find it but a river.
And when the waters all convened
In undecided valleys green
To dare my land to make a choice,
They listened as my stranded voice
Refused the blues in choosing anything.

So I pressed the darkness onto night
And fed a sugar cube delight
To see if sweetness
Understood its toll.
I cut the corners off a dream
To roll this stone more easily.
It ran a road where freedom
Could not follow.
If what is whole must still be hollow,
Then tear my strings from old Apollo
And a silent chord my sun
Will hum tomorrow.

Eyes Over Jackson County

Son of God sighted where
Ingalls men drank in
the moonlight
Charley was lord of the catch
but the kid caught the rig
in the October night

That caravan drifted
from ceiling to sand
The bayou the altar
The fishing poles froze
in their hands

Blue were the lights of His code
Just the touch of His robe
clipped the wings of a storm
in a shaken snow globe

Came back to save us,
He ripped up the waves
The men hoped for rapture
but just lost their reels
and forgot their names

His spaceship was burning
His message was beamed
to these shippers who swore
Pascagoula had long
been redeemed

He said, “Red white and blue
new graffiti
will tag every train
and heat every vein
You’ll run on the tracks
waxed in blood
when oil’s the chip
in a king’s poker game

There’s a hole at the bottom
of the everything store
So the only one standing
is an old shrugging whore
chewing velvet gum
in her formerly darkened
door
giving soldier boys
a discount
from the war

The Saigon spirit keeps intact
Like a thumping
junkyard artifact
But the confidence
is never
coming back

Cherry blossom
and the fleur-de-lis
They were burning ants
in the colony
Till the sun
caught cold
on the cracked
magnifying glass

Then Superman torched the
secret trail
with his orange soda
and a woman’s scales
But a blindfold kept her
from seeing
through the
jungle grass

Saul chased David through
the neutral zone
So the school kids shouted
in a megaphone,
‘The hounds of war are likely
overfed’

Saul invaded every
ambush cave
but David wouldn’t
set him in his grave
since Saul will stumble on
his blade instead

A people born
from the lost and found
will soon peek out
from under one crown
There’s normally the fall
after a sprint

But ache not for what can
be buried
When I sent rain
you said, ‘How dare He?’
Now tell me
you don’t know
just what I meant

Your lionheart from
the lemon grove
in the freedom room
with his hidden probe
He once got around
on a donkey’s back
like me

The money leads
and the pockets follow
And the pencils jot like there’s
no tomorrow
when there’s no disciples left
to disagree

Seven suited Boy Scouts
told your lionheart to run
The ropes that have
been put to him
are not so tightly done
And when the press pulls
the alarms
he’ll take the pillars
in his arms
and bring this castle down
on everyone

So Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
exposed the apple pie
where flipping all the coins
meant getting heads on every try
They’ve seen the ending
from the start,
that everybody’s the lead part,
and there’s a little bit of love
in every lie

When you go knocking
at the midnight door,
will it be me that you’re
looking for?
Is there something semi-sacred
in that lair?

You’ll find out nothing
can’t be poured
and the antidote to
being bored
is doing only half
of what it is you dare

You’ll get sick from
the Saturday night
when its sorcerer’s clothes
dance in white
They’ll be snatched from the hips
of a simple lightning kid
Like a blink knocks the twinkle
off an eye

You’ll hail the wild vagabond
The rider on the desert
His horse is now a death machine
with racing-oil leather
Where every execution is
an interrupted pleasure

He’ll pull the pin
and clear the smoke
and wander off
into the choke
The road’s a crow
and there’s fire on
the feathers

You’ll build a laboratory
where the galaxy begins,
studying the samurai
whose research is within
You’ll pray for some rebellious
force to free you from the sin
of thinking good and evil
is a line verging
on thin

The cow flew wide and high above
the local lunar piece
She read the letters in the stars
that baffled the police
She’ll watch the folks beside my gate
wait for the big release
The line is long but never wrong
with Decades
on their feet

If you follow Father Sunglasses
to the candyland equator
and drink whatever he stirs in,
I’m sure I’ll
see you later

His temple’s hasty remedy,
the carton in the fridge
Then spoiled milk will
christen every
fine Pacific bridge
You’ll love the
nights of ivory
reminding everyone
what passion is

They’re greasing up
your golden age
till the totem pole
slips on the page,
all toppled
in a dirty
magazine

When the highway butchers
start to swing
to the tune of
anonymity
When no one needs
a mask on
Halloween

I’ve searched and seen no underbelly
There’s no good place to hide
You’re saving up
for a ticket but
you were born on the ride
I lit a candle on Calvary
It blew out in the city
I made a promise
to the promised land
But don’t wait up,
Mississippi”

The Hatch in Eden’s Floor

That first week saw me in.
The final squinting eyes
Of the loved and living pile.
Leg over leg the beasts
Assert their crawling, flawless
History, like baby on the Nile.

Wrought before the resting day,
Long and on I am to plod.
In youth when all was satisfied,
That serpent played his simple yarn.
His question flickered past my mind.
For the light above was not inside.

As I with my companion fled,
That serpent’s game was never heard.
The charm he whistled at our backs
To fool machines without their ghosts,
To sell the recipe to the roast,
That an oak might make her own red ax.

Beyond those fruits of either or,
I strolled where wisdom would not grow:
The corner with no choosing chore,
Unconquered as my fledgling soul.
Did I jump or did I slip
Through the hatch in Eden’s floor?

On the Romance Between Fuel and Locomotives

I put a hundred dollars down
that the carousel would go around
She’ll place a rosy-hearted rider
on every plastic saddle glider
marching on her twisting
circus sun
They’re twirling as the golden age
that burned up the old motorcade
whose drunk triumphant blastoff
narrowed down the list of
chosen ones

Like the silhouetted spacesuit man
who proved the moon was made of sand
I kicked the scarlet tumbleweed
on the velvet cobweb movie screen
Then the cowboy turned and said “My son,
have you done all you can?”
He spurred his steed and fluttered by
on an Armageddon crystal sky
And when someone switched on the lights
to drag me back to mortal sight
I still could understand

Now I’m knighted by the river glades
where the winds are sugar serenades
blowing holy Christmas whispers
through the telephones
where we once prayed
I swapped the shepherd for the crook
so the angels of the meadow brook
aren’t wounded by protection
or the kindness of surveillance
Swapping islands for the shore
’cause leaving’s what arriving’s for
and moving on is never
quite as dangerous

You were squeezing lemons
for the simple and the sacred
at the skinning of the ages
Where muscles meet the naked breeze
so bones can flip the pages free
from any limitation
on a future conversation
where there’s talk of living longer
just to die a little older

The technicolor cherry pie
beyond the halls of wondered whys
would solve the question of it all
and point me toward an empty wall
I’ll never know a better spot
for gazing
It’s not the waters of the dew
that wet the whiskers of the shrew
It’s just the fear of getting what
he’s chasing

Your weeping lion’s lullaby
with jaws of crooked daring tries
could chew through any monument
like the tightrope and the rat who bit
while we beneath in jealous seats
pretended not to know
The coliseum fired a shot
but the bullet’s now a parking spot
And your councilman has guaranteed
that the idea of community
is sitting at the bottom yelling “Hey
look out below”

Back when we were mastering
the science of without
we lived on doubt and radio
and halftime midnight mistletoe
counting billboard dreams
on the ancient frozen highway
When feathered wax stayed cold and still
and we wore our wings only for show
’cause we didn’t have a sun
worth flying close to

If the calendar’s torpedo slithered wide
and right into my blackest brain
and used my favorite summer gun
to eat and drink the laughing screws
off of this Huckleberry ball and chain
I’d polish every bumper car
and snatch from some lost minotaur
the contents of this grand
investigation

I saw scars upon the hurricane
and tears shed from the red remains
of truth
Dust crawls on television beams
like roaches give the pharaoh’s face
a nimble-legged youth
Like a leaderless sentence
your kingdom has no subjects
And your dynamite hairdresser’s
gone bald
from all the peace treaties

The swans are finally done
with the bloated weight of grace
when the upstairs filing cabinet
learns that we have been its killer
and the glory in surrender
is just choking on the key
So I tracked my motivations
to a shed across the street
Behold a single mirror
and a shadow on the sea

When the skeletons rise faster than
the morning star’s confession
and the night has screamed
its final insurrection clean
I find you in the winter tree
searching for a living leaf
out of which it ran
when I went slaying
all the branches

Mercy Proves the King

In the high red hills of
Egypt old
reads a tale of
gravity’s victims
But tell how trusty of
a tongue
are the agents of
God’s wisdom?

When Findhorn struck
the Scots’ last wolf,
the British Isles wept
They missed their game
and prayed the dogs
could howl their way
from death

There’s Eucharist wine
in Caravaggio paints
Genius comes easy
when dipped
in the oil
of saints

Some truth had found us
on the loose
blowing smoke on a
bulletproof tire
Objects of physics
and subjects delivered
whenever the law
requires

Tethered to the in-between
of a give-and-take dynamic
Find me the side
of a pendulum
that nets you
an advantage

I’ll hope that I’ve cost you
when I stand contrapposto
laureled in the limestone
record
Servant holds chimes
for the master whose spine
roams in pastures
where wind is the
shepherd

The torches of the
revolution
never burn
quite clean
The Sun gives warmth
but guards the source
and mercy proves the king

You’re drunk off survival
Nailed to the city
Sentenced to serve
on an honest
committee

If the lion only
slayed our foes
we never would have
caged it
A million mouths
were fed
outside of Galilee
so ancient

I wonder if,
chewing
their fish,
they choked on any fear
’Cause if a man
could walk the sea
He could rip them ear to ear

Rain Riders

Soon drops the backyard ball,
warring with roots and stickers.
Sedated in the pillow clover,
mellowed in the arrest
of my return.

New grasses for the old ground,
with their doubting squint,
watch alien fingers
pet their replica feelers,
green as a child knows.
Stumbling away
with steps more thudding
than before.

Drunk off the toll
of roaring, gorgeous bicycle bells
whose proud appeal to heaven
chronicles the seasons—
when riders could not fall
but flew through the rain
like heroes,
when streets were just
places where dreams washed
across bare skin.

No wayward firecracker
could cut the head off
the silver pecan tree.
I could not climb it,
but I was there.
Were you?

Task Worth Goodbye

To hope for
the last I ever do
to fill entire a jug
from the creaking
silver well
and truck it inside
on whiskery sanded wrists
to a waiting other

To carry it past
outspoken barrels
and the gilded pyramids
of summer’s barley,
beyond skittering
half-free beasts
whose rumors of
their immortal master
soon extinguish
Smile coming on
from my undusted mouth
which will drink not
A wind stops
its croon to listen

Something is Burning in the Roman Woods

Something is burning in the Roman woods
where geometry’s sensible fragrance
is gored like a speared sail
Excess shaved
by havoc’s disciplined treasury

These curling igneous lips
bob amid the fraught pathless bounty
like sun-dried jungle gyms,
crowing noxiously the
gossip of alternative

In the roary swarming haze,
dormant no longer in oxygen’s shut gaps,
the witness jars not the redundant flies
whose halos find mothers in angels
and sons in Christmas electricity

He pencils instead the wallops, jabs
of the roped orange
that fashions morning out of dusk
for a sleepy old village
who have tonight gained a historian

As a text of any,
sturdy as dinner tables
before mutilation by interpreting eyes
or the searching fingers that cross
and lock prayerly over charred scribes

Painter whose name is educational
Fire whose masterpieces trim and gloat
jolt the wanting blood of any nerved body
Nero’s search party has returned
with empty hands

Slimming John Henry

Every bone-white seabed
Forlorn tongue under settled night
Overripe flank plated as accepted supper
Muddied scowl in footstep misplaced
Listless Hercules and drowning Hamlet
Gutted melody by seatless fire
yells brotherhood to that steeled tooth
which slimmed John Henry
and melted into the running glow of horses
the outbound skeleton key
that might have cracked some otherwise door
glad now as the jumping day
to be nursed by a kinetic immortal stew
never again still as windcaught candles,
nor resting, peckish, like the hush-black
grin on a shouldered devil