Horses

in a field constrained
by cultural fences
though wild in veneer
they stare at the wind
riding shape-shifting clouds
with a twisted sneer
and consider cars
racing into the heart
of the triple crown
home money children
and huddle by the far fence
at a place where
the grass grows tall
in dreams for the stream
eroding the upper places
to the commons
where pilgrims hunt witches
or a white lightening-bolt
is swallowed by the green giant

-- old poem, working towards the next chapbook --



Living in a Disarranged Home

I fold what remains
of today into Ella’s voice
and Satch’s brass; arrange it
in a drawer of alleys,
where weak lights are turned on
by weary tradesmen
and doors, set in mortar,
in stone and bricks, lack
any sense of definition
or destination.

I dress a statue
of Christ in a French maid’s
black and white uniform,
place Him by the window
where He can’t watch frail
boats on steel water, where
He can’t feel the desert
in this city swept with snow
and intermittent rain. I trust
that He will know
how to sweep up and make sense
of the ashes clinging
to everything in my mind.
Without grace, I pray for this.

In this dusk,
my mind is a motorcycle,
my hands are the curves
in gravel roads, my hair
is the wind courting barbed
wire fences which stretch
between one thought and the next,
which are the crowns worn
by those who desire.
Oh, I lust to suckle on Ella’s voice,
to flow into a room from a horn,
to smell the oiled rags
of long dead relationships,
to stare at a clear sun riding
the wings of crows strafing
cold fields and not
this drop of blood leaking
from the sky like dust,
like a tear.

Thunderstorm Grass

Subdivision sunset/roses fade/maple lurks
and the sky bleeds from blue to black.
The child within/the child who never sleeps/
the child who ran the backyard fences
and thunderstorm grass/the child who explored
the basement caves of a thousand musty houses/
the child who slide into home plate
on every ball diamond in the city/that child
recreates each moment on the ashes of the last.
There is no dam to hold back time/there is
no time which contains the child.
Child and time/time and child through
the swirling atoms which have for a moment
settled and become this image already gone.