Songs From the Corporate Chuck Wagon

Songs From the Corporate Chuck-Wagon

You got to be Cowboy to pony
through today, spurs
to bank book, straight-up in

enterprise’s saddle, to negotiate
tumbleweed Starbucks,
morning’s first cigarette

like abrasive prairie
dust howling down your throat—

you got to be Cowboy, on I 75,
pinched by the herd
(slow-motion stampede into

thunderhead-defined city),
fording market river, lassoing
driftwood profit, thalwag man

of the world, tipping your VISA
Gold hat to each passing merger—

you got to be Cowboy to survive
snow love winters in deep hope foothills,
desperate, camped under frozen

touch forests, living for moments
of tenderness and promises, before
storms of lingering withdrawal—

you got to be Cowboy, forever
stretched toward horizon, to gallop
upward from each training course,

degree in holster, schemes in saddlebag—
straight-shooter of the greenback sage.

How To Get Published

How To Get Published

Lie still, spread your verbs
to examination.

Don’t quiver in the assault
of attacking adverbs.

Be benign to the voices which will never understand
beyond the field of their own vision.

Realize there is not one noun
which will spell ‘world’.

Adjectives are perception
and perception is the tide time deposits

on the beaches of experience,
the rocks beyond which we float.

Be accelerate to floatation devices
delivering you to the beach.

Begin to crawl and never stop.

When the night moved through my room, crystal by crystal

There isn’t one way to bear witness
to the world, or one place to feel its spine
coiled squamata-like
through the lustrous energy of light.

Disassembling alchemist,
I pour between
the beakers of one moment
and the next.

The horizon is a fallow field
accepting the seed of moon,
the trees are shrouds draped over
a paralyzed asphalt river.

I’ll travel blind under this strangle of clouds,
I’ll bury the pieces of myself
in deep woods and I’ll search for them
in the bleak ice after time.

Lips 

Ebydale Woods Jack-In-The-Pulpit

The Fine Art of Maintaining Virginity After Use

long after I looked at the scars—
long after I saw time draped across
this tapestry of skin
as though a snapshot expresses anything—

when the moon was folded over
asphalt and the sighs night releases in August—

in that precise moment the assembly line falters
and everything sails out of windows
into the woods/into the sun’s seine—

then I know that my eyes are
an airbrush for the moment passing
like ants/linear on the linoleum of this place—

I walk the rails/tightrope walker falling
into the never ending sea of possibility and belief

Conversation and Confusion

So what about asphalt,
thin folds of sky draped over
downtown offices,
light laughing into windows,
the distance between the words
and the listener?

So what about this rhythm
consuming any hope,
any time,
the desire to slow down in a field
of blossoming interpretations
uncertain of where the landmines

are placed in such a simple
sentence on such a simple spring day.

Prudham's, Friday Night 

For the Surprises

stretched out on
the flat page—
meaning tanning in

the sun of a dictionary—
open menu—
construct your meal

a consumption of moments
on the piazza—
relive and relive again

the one word which tipped time into
the maelstrom carving a new future
out of the topography of what we share

Welland Canal, Lock Two, Waiting For The Drawbridge 

Welland Canal, Lock Two, passing the drawbridge. 

Red-Winged Blackbird 

Sunrise over Zeller Drive 

In Steckle Woods, the trilliums are blooming. 

---

Moments About

I’m writing poems to the echoes.
Life was here, but caught the eight-fifteen
somewhere. Sat in the day coach listening
to the same sound that opened
the petals of a country. Only sadness remains,
guest unwilling to go home, full
of anecdotes about. And in the rooms
I remember, words are arranged like furniture.
Easy chair for contemplation, coffee table
a wake-me-up call. I’m writing lyrics
for the shadows so they can sing.
A choir standing on the rift between
imagination and the dishes.

Poem as Immigrant

The geomorphology sun creates—
tablecloth
spilled across morning.

Although stitch-worked into
our conversation,
fantasy seems as plain as
the phone bill,
bank statement, or that note left on
the counter
beside the spent dishes still to be resurrected
after last night's corpse,
along with our enervated mood.

(Snuffed candle/closed book/bar clothes in the closet' s furthest corner.)

I drift with dragons
through the ether of purple sun.
After breakfast,
my molar hurts again.
The rose has genuflected to the table—
a dance to come?
The garage should be swept,
our car washed.

Let me stand
on the first leaked strands of today,
as though I'm at the train station,
surveying schedules in
another language,
for destinations that mean nothing,
except a difference from what exists,
from the earth on which
my feet seek to gain a purchase.

Let me empty my knapsack of experience
for security,
watch it disappear
as mist at the foot of buildings,
watch it creep down alleys,
through unlocked doors,
listen to it laugh at jokes and situations
I don't understand—
let me imagine a grey coat,
black shoes, well-worn pants,
a certain gait and an acquired romance
with the mysteries a stranger sees.

Friday Night 1 

Friday Night 2 

Friday Night, 3 

Morning Walk