There are whispers in the night speaking
spells and swears and dares and proclamations
and they sound as playground chatter sounds,
or somewhat-dated hip-hop (Just like that?)
And when the sun comes up each morning
all that’s to be found are the drinking glasses
from the night before.

But to count the glasses is to count the mis-
steps in your adventures, and steps so missed
are not so forgiven by Pitfalls or God or Anyone
(Or Me)
So know, as truly as one can know anything,
that when I catch your lips sipping from another cup,
I will not cut out your cheating tongue.
I’ll have known you’ve bit it off yourself already.

Them boys is just a-
pickin’ and a-grinnin’ an’
the drummer ain’t bad
neither and they got themselfs
a real-life, full-size
Imitation Jerry Reed out front,
with a tractor hat and
a smile fer miles and
he’s just singin’ and a-roarin’
and a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’
and Son! I said Son!
you best feast yer eyes
‘cuz as far as sights go
this big feller’s top-stack,
why, I think I’d bet the farm,
at least, that
he’s the best one I ever seed,
that Imitation Jerry Reed

These identity crisis are
viscerally minded ’till the
briny, bitter end.

Pour sugar in my drink and
salt in my wounds and
I’ll tell you which stings more

and you tell me
weather I’ve got this whole thing
backwards.

I have a funny feeling.

Could it be a crisis of
Identity?

I can not tell.

But I am optimistic.

They saw you sleeping
on hoods of cars
and could not fathom
for the life of them
why that’s where you’d be

So that’s why I’m there
with a knife in my pocket
and a huge fucking grin tucked
underneath my coat just
in case one of them wanders by;

I’ll show off the edge with
a twinkle in my eye and
I’d say not a word but
I’d guarantee that
the place where you lay
you’d continue to lie

Slithering snakes reached out once
to touch me,
and I reached back and stroked
the tops of their heads and I
was reckless, but not foolish
and when they bit
and they bit
I could stand the test of teeth-in-flesh

But slithering snakes recede, whether
pulled or on their own and
I am left to nurse my wound
and perhaps to suck the venom
so my fingers don’t just
fall off
and then maybe I’ll send snakes out
of my own
and recklessly
I’ll let them let you feel me

we drove something like forever to find that break
in the sky.
We could see it, but it was too far to make out
so well, so
we fed a few more gallons of gas and strapped ourselves
down while the
engine bellowed and white smoke plumed from
the tailpipe.

The wind must have been blowing up there, though,
we couldn’t tell,
but when
we shifted in to gear and looked up, the break had flown
just above
our heads. Unabashed, however, we drove something like
forever
to find another one.

They’ll drag you, too,
behind the backs of cars
right down the main drag
hooting and hollering
and as your skin scrapes
from your body and on to
the asphalted ground with
your screams buried behind
the 8-cylinder roaring, you’ll
bleed out over miles while
the ropes around your wrists
near pull your hands right off

At those speeds
nobody here
can save you

And Death, he is a beautiful bastard,
A Home-coming Angel and a Devil
with snatching claws. Master of kings
and countrymen and not a soul
can stand against him. With his
sword he deals in truth alone, and
his terrible visage is as a nightmare
and a burden and a final flash of
freedom so that the young will flee
and the suffering will beg for him to come.
He wanders every street and field,
his blade in hand, and while I haven’t
been around the last time I saw him
he was looking pretty down on his luck
with his black robe all in tatters so
I guess his gig doesn’t pay so well and
maybe he should try to get one of those
cushy Government jobs instead.

the rabbit ear is bent
or there is snow in the dish
or the line is cut
and sure, I see smoke, but
I can’t read the signals,
and even though the mail
always gets through,
it’s tough in this weather.

O, that all the pigeons
are dead. O, that they
were not mailbirds instead.

There was a story told
about a man who’s hands
turned lead to gold
and what an awful burden it could be

Because, really, you could
never touch anything again.
The guitar does not sound
so sweet so gilded, nor
do trumpets,
nor do saxophones.

How does one eat? Or
sleep on such stiff pillows?
The paper in a photo-album
erased, worth a thousand
dollars to a thousand words.

Someone told me the story
but I can’t remember what it
means. I think, though, that
I’ll keep wishing for heat-vision.
After all, what harm could
that do?

I was walking down a country lane
to get my guitar tuned again
when I got knocked off my feet by a passing truck

When I hit the ground my guitar neck snapped
So I stood up and figured that was that,
Some other pickers just have all the luck

I can see the blood
and I know you think
that you’re dying,
and the stagger
that you’ve made
so obvious
through the snow-bank
shows me all the pain
you’re in, but
swear though I’m sure
you must,
I don’t think she ever
cuts to kill.

You speak but
every time you
open your mouth
I can smell the rot
and I can fell you fading
and I get this ache
in the base of my being
and I can not touch you
with these fingers,
I fear your sick will spoil me,
but I wish I could
hold you close and
squeeze the ichor from you.

For a moment I could bear
to watch the snowflakes
as they drifted past a streetlight,
but too soon the winds
blew me back inside where I
drew the curtains closed to keep
the cold air out, and touched
up the thermostat to just below
a hundred and three
according to the folks
in the other room.

I spent the afternoon counting
the pennies in my jars and
folding t-shirts that won’t
ever come clean after that
last brake job while the snowflakes
collected themselves
in smooth white sheets atop
my walking-path and Pontiac.

If the city has ever been more
gorgeous,I haven’t seen it, but
I’d give it all for a driftless drive
and maybe a snow-drift-free
drive-way, too

Does their psychosis comfort them?

They wear it like blankets
on a cold winter’s day.

but with so many patches,
it’s a wonder the things stay
together at all.

I dreamed of fresh-mown lawns last time I slept,
and there were no tracks and no trees and no
yellow spots to mark the dandelions and no matter
how far you looked you couldn’t see the house this
yard belonged to.

It must have been a nice house with a three car
garage and at least three stories. There’d be
pillars out front, I bet, to hold up the balcony
that walked out of the master bedroom so
the gentleman that owned the place could always
watch his guests and enemies come and go.

There may be a fence off in the distance,
making a long, unbroken circlet about the yard
and lining up the property with everyone else’s,
so there wasn’t any question as to who’s grass
was who’s.

Perhaps it was a magnificent stone wall instead,
so as to keep this perfect green as beautiful
and lush as possible, however untrue it may be.
Then, it may have been a picket line, but why
would the gentleman spare any expense?

The drive out front had to have been cobbled
and clean, mortared every spring to repair the
breaks and cracks from the winter season. The
traffic would be sparse, of course, as the
Gentleman only has so many friends who can
match his stature.

The pool would Olympic-sized, weather Olympians
swam in it or not. Or perhaps the gentleman
forwent the swimming pool, and made a glorious
fountain instead. It would be gilded with gold,
I can only assume, and would sit at the mouth
of his great, fine, shrubbery labyrinth, the
aisles of which he has never wandered.

Or perhaps it was just the perfect field. After all,
I tend to dream silly things when I’m having these
dreams of mine.

I feel crisp footsteps under my soles
as my soul attempts to search itself
I always make this walk so long
but what is there to find, turning out
all of these empty pockets?

Is there worth in lint? In so much lint
to fill these empty closets with?
Each turn finds naught but lint and
each closet fills so slowly and I’ve
got so much of this worthless stuff.

But maybe it will catch fire.
Cause it’s own fitting end to a life
spent stuffed behind faux-wood doors.

The latch doesn’t even fucking work right.
Though maybe that’s okay.

Sometimes soulstuff needs to breathe,
I reckon.

Maybe that’s the problem all along.

I asked about your politics
and you leaned in real close
so I whispered I wouldn’t tell a soul
and now here we are. Days later.

Though they could be simplified
into smaller terms, These days I
only count the days exactly.

And even though I promised,
I only know the politics you tell me.
And that’s a shame too.
And that’s a shame.

My lips are chapped and cracked.
They are also inconsequential,
as I should not be speaking. Pleased
if you do not let me speak.

I will foul things up I’m sure. These lips
don’t work so well to speak so chapped
and cracked and inconsequential
as they are. I will foul things up.

I will sit and wait this whole thing out.
I will let you do the fouling, if fouling
must be done, for these lips are chapped
and cracked and inconsequential.

You are pent up aggression
yet you hardly move a hair,
Laid out and on display
like another used up metaphor
that no one consults anymore.

Though your fingers twitch to
scratch the ink to paper to scratch
the itch of lust of blood just
beneath the chin, you have not
made to move your mouth.

You could make bared teeth,
but faulty teeth too. How to
break the skin when those incisors
break upon it, really?

But though the rabid dog may not
deliver his pissoned gift, he still
will be put down and directly and
by any means requisite to keep
his faulty bite at bay.

Though hardly can we credit you
as a rabid dog. The dog, you see,
like his cousin the wolf, has the dignity
to mean to bite what he bites.

Your nibbles do naught but
cause to order up
an execution.