A whisper in a dotted cloud

A whisper in a dotted cloud
that is over your head
as your hat flies off
and starts to sail the
way of all your wishes
to be at the sea near the waves
that is damp with salt water air,


Cold air on the river front facing Toronto
in our California skins
though Michigan is the
state of our birth, our claim
that rings for all the time
our friends remember our names
when it comes to saying that we just got in
off the road on a long trek through the valleys and mountains
of a country
defined each mile by the brand names on
bulletin boards, cars and bran flakes,
Detroit remains
tall buildings and
the widest streets anyone could die on ,


It seemed that all clouds formed over the river
and came from the north
and stayed with us State side,
where the heart of the neighborhoods
were filled with coughs
and stutter from basements
where jazz blared into the cushions of white supremacy,


I throw flower petals
into the river,
and the garlands drift on the wakes of
freighters a hundred years fueled by
colder examples of life
burned into the tanks of
our station wagon couldn't trace
with all our maps and
anthology of hazy directions from
farmers in one-silo towns
who think anyone passing through is hungry,
in need of a old truck to buy,


I think so much for dotted clouds,
so much thinking, there will be casinos
in a writing that makes sense of its words,
make them march, yes , march,
and I shall smoke in my dreams
after the dreaming is done of coming home
and there is only
the dreaming of dreaming itself,

there is no sleep in these early pages of the novel
that is nothing but a skyline
amid the details of a river and
a glass city that faces a wind that
whistles up the nylons
and down the high collar necks ,
wondering about
who might have been here first dreaming
of these terrible orders of cars and train tracks
full of wagons of TV dinners, palettes of magazines, toys,
counterfeit money coming back
to California because
California is always hungry and
land gives itself over to
families that remember less
than insanity allows and takes away,
all the habits that stop feeling good,


all the silence only a knock on the door
and the landlord's eye
give you as you wipe your feet again


in panic at the little things when it seems
that you're in between two worlds, fingering
the membrane
that allows you to hover over
great industrial mistakes,


you are the dotted cloud
whispering instructions
on the breeze of a stale vibe,


you are the god of this world that saddens you,
every last gust of air on the last floor of the first
building you rode an elevator in
is a trace of tears cried in blackouts that is the rain
that washes away the sins and stains
of this earth,


dotted clouds
on the rail staring at Windsor
on a street where there's a giant iron fist
aimed right at the heart of the water front,
sing with praise,
sing,
oh yes, sing…

Lessons from the Seventies

It’s love that breaks
against the rocks

and not foam nor water of any kind,
it’s a baptism of irrigated contempt

that makes the horizon
burn in black static p1umes.

Stained cotton from
every beach front window.


We smoked joints
in the guts of the canyons,

the mired trails
to the sea kissed shale.

All the blues from
Chicago knife fights
and gunshot histories
are folklore all the kids destroy
with their breathing.


Even at dinner time,
forks are next to plates whose owners
wonder what’s eating their neighbors
with all the strange phone calls
about what’s going on the beach.


The armies of the night
couldn’t scare up a quarter
of something to decent for all
the beaches America has landed on
in search of someone to talk down to..

This goes without saying

Settle your accounts
with dimes and nickels
gripped with fingers fickle
to what they'll touch
as this life is one long vacation,
Too much grinning
station to station at the drainage rivers
famous for graffiti forests
and villages made from
refrigerator boxes,
there's little to laugh at
when it rains and the water
finds the incline of least resistance,
men in wool caps and fingerless gloves
stare from under the newspapers
and regret the distance
between we on a seat,
on a rail
going out of town
and the calloused knuckles
that becomes the fist
that challenges the skyline
for the right of way,

I shed my clothes
on the side of the tracks
to walk with the ties
until I collect a discarded
suit of random pants, jacket,
shoes that don't match,
crusted with motor oil
and pressed with convoy tires,

I take my money
and burn until there's
only a felonious ash,
the match tip takes to the credit cards
that burn black as they melt,
Lay me down
on gravel fonts
with a belt around
my waist
and have my head tilted to the right,
just slightly,
As if there was something
you'd just said
I might want you to repeat.

Father comes home from Chicago

Father stands in the front door
Where he greets you with the sound of
Rustling plastic, candy or a toy from Chicago, you think,

Your mother whistles at him
Between puffs of a cigarette
As he stands still, hands behind his back,
She smiles as he looks down at you
On the floor with toy trucks and
Plastic soldiers with teeth marks
The size of the scars
On the face of the moon,

"Guess what I have" he says , and presents the package,
A box wrapped red and blue, a yellow ribbon,
The vestibule is noisy with color,
You stare at the package
And wonder what it was he said,
Who is this package for,
Why are mom and dad dancing at 7pm
To music you don’t like, singer full of gin.

A ribbon around the heart of the world

The white people

have gone crazy

in the back seats

of All American cars

looking for the sex life

that fell between the cracks,

meanwhile screaming the rudeness

of Romantic love

that finds them

hung-over in court

too early in the morning

of a business day

where they'll tell the Judge

that it's only rock and roll

and that there was something in the way

the singer dropped his "g's

and a manner

worth noting when the guitarist

grabbed his whammy bar

and that all they did was taking

Creeley freely and pile into

the four-wheeled remains of a rumored prosperity

and drove into

the running gag reflex of the night, down a blvd.

filled brand names and bored cops,

cruising to get "some", to find "it"

and where "it" lived,

a slobbering example

of failed bonding

locked into habits

where even as their language of outrage

is bought

and shredded

in magazines

whose pages stick together

just as they did

in the parking lot after last call,

harassing the cocktail staff

that's going home,

they'll stick to principals

familiar and vague,

like that song whose words you never memorized

but tried to sing anyway, with a hushed secret at the core of the chorus

Saying that love is somewhere

just around one of these thousands

of and that it'll shake your hand

if you drive long and far and often enough,

if you've the gas

to complete the journey, the journey

Celine dreamed of while lying in bed,

staring at ceilings, concluding

that his language of outrage could only

describe the surface details of wrong turns,

that it had been bought and sold in a tradition

of literature that speculates about how wonderful

our lives might have been

if only the dream hadn't ended

when we opened our eyes,

Our eyes are constantly

getting used to the dark

absorbs every inch of brick

in parking lots

behind buildings and under bedrooms

of others who've made

their peace with

the sameness of the night,

the radio blares

more guitar solos

emerging from the

static of stadium

drums and strumming,

crazed cadenzas

whose neurotic notes scurry

and cleave to a neuron receptor

and keys a change

in the brains chemical balance that changes

the language of what the night was really been about,

But we remain where we are,

white heterosexual males bond

by nothing more than

the chain sawing motion

of jaws lifting and falling

on the pillows and

sofa cushions in

desert motels

in time to the pans of a camera

on the silent television

where it's nothing but a wall full

of clocks telling

the time in

three separate

time zones while

temperatures are mentioned where

anger and rain mix in the fields

and valleys of economies

based on pride,

some abstract grip on selflessness that

needs no sleep

as do the bodies in this room,

dead to the world when the

engine blew, when the gas ran out, when

the last drop in whatever bottle of

cartoon labeled beer vanished on the

buds of a tongue

whose thirst could not be slaked by?

promise of fortune or even

water, pure and free of lies,

We sleep in shifts until

our time here runs

out on us,

until the phone that rings

everyday for twenty minutes on end

stops finally and leaves

the house quiet

from stairway to attic to porch,

with only the whir of the

refrigerator engine

starting up

and filling the stale,

stale air that

used to carry

mean jazz, drum boogie,

scratched riffs of declarative guitars,

the frets of God announcing

a life worth inventing in the notes

that passed through the room,

the boredom,

we realize in frozen moments

that any excuse for getting

out of the house

is a magic trick

that's performed after

they've shown you

where they've hidden the mirror,

"language is the house

where man lives",

let us say

that this life is

like being a fish

that cannot describe the water it swims in,

endlessly at 3AM

when only the coffee at

the 7-11 has the

aroma of anything

real enough to make

us think of getting

out of town

with one suitcase

and a bus fare,

next to a god-damned big car,

five shoulders

to the wheel

and no one able to drive

between towns , from carnival to still spot

where ever we could

pitch tents and trailers

and set up Ferris wheels that

would rattle against a

large scowling moon

hovering over

Modesto and Turlock

on dry August nights

when dollars are

grimy with mung from

many a farmer's and mechanic's hand,

power chords slice through

the speakers, destroy the cracked dashboard,

your face is slapped

with a power

not your own,

it comes down to something

that's a secret

that even The Judge won't cop to it

before he lowers his voice,

"The beat goes on,

the beat goes on,

the beat goes on,

the beat goes on…"

We can do better

this far away

from our past,

we have something

we've turned toward,

a light in eyes, a sun

that shines a light

those blades of

grass and long

stemmed flowers lean toward

even when clouds

and the stammer of fire eating transistors

sizzling from car windows distort the

image in the minds' eye,

I see a city where we come

and plant our feet on lawns

where we can sit

and plant in turn

new seeds, ideas

of a future worth having,

let's lean into the sun,

into the sun,

ride bicycles into the sun

on the road that becomes

a ribbon around the

heart of the world.