In fishing stories I read

In fishing stories I read
a slither of histories that peal

drying on the gray wooden deck
and get pried loose by a youngster
who has no idea that

there's anything more important

than finding a dollar
in the street and putting it
in his back pocket, for keeps.

As is, flies buzz around
the lights in bow-tie formations,

poised at a minute in history
when I couldn't do anything else

except watch as they dive bomb
they seem to worship.

Detroit cars and sand dunes

in towns forgotten by interstates
pull down my eyelids

like the whispered fringe of Andrew Wyeth drapery,
wheat fields surrounded by large sky and spectral maps,
someone tonight is in the highest building

on the water front playing cards
as the cow jumps over the moon

and the spoon finds a drawer
to sleep in until a meal appears
as if by a magic that makes
the heart sink.

An Idea of Fantastic Moonlight

An idea of fantastic moonlight

on the water's wavering surface,

we are concentric in our desires

for the rest of the meal,

it's only during full moons

when the dogs feel like singing

and the trains and trolleys,

running along parallel tracks,

to screech and whistle and yowl

into the black slants of downtown

in the iron grey sheen of lunar gleaning

that makes the arid

and thirsty with desire as all the cars

rattle in line and the steel wheels

grind around the bends of the tracks that

move between buildings of cracked brick

and scarred, grey cement,

cutting through old neighborhoods

where trains are go to and come from

places distant as the face of the moon

rippling and quivering in snaking white lines

from the horizon, over the water,

to the beach and the mirrored hardness

of the sand,

I want to you scratch my back

and rub my neck,

you are saying, turning around in your seat,

your computer screen on a web page decorated with

floral print and drawings of naked men,

there is so much left to write about before deadline,

there's a mountain of data that needs indexing and

some other line of scrutiny, you place a finger

over my lips, you say Listen and there are barking dogs,

car horns and train whistles sounding

in cryptic orchestrations, shrill,

and thirsty among the ashen hues

the full moon brings us,

it's time to let data just pile up

so we can pile on each other

and books fall to the floor

as they would in perfect love stories,

The camera pulls away and floats to the window

to settle on an image of the full moon,

the full moon would be smiling, yes

but no, not that, clouds drift over the orb

and the world loses some of

the grey glow,

yet the sound don't change,

whether trains, dogs, cars stalled on an over pass,

both of us stuck on each other,

noises stuck on the black tarp of evening.

You turn your head,

you cough and recover,

hand at your throat,

the mike buzzes but not before,

You shuffle your poems

and read yet again,

you go on in a room

where everyone has a first line,

I would read about your eyes,

Wide as they are as saucers,

cups that are deep as pans of bread

that come from the oven

and into my heart,

and that's a start, I think,

You fold your hands

on the podium as you read;

you've got this memorized,

yet it all seems extemporized

from the bottom of your heart

which hasn't a bottom at all,

Now some one else reads,

a guy with tattoo of his tongue

across his left cheek, he screeches

to hip- hop clicks of a clock,

but he's young and

not far from done as long as

His homies throw their signs

with fingers that cross a language

of quieting the flutters of the untested heart,

I will read you later, on the phone,

with every court and hand gesture,

you wave goodnight, I know the line,

You'll see me in the funny papers.

NEVER THE SAME

All this time standing here
waiting for a man
to step through his door
to catch the air he couldn't breathe
from his windowless room,
half hours and then hours
of vapor trail and jagged cups of coffee,
my fingers cannot feel

the edge of my papers
through the calluses and gloves,
we'd been experimenting
with pronouns,
the way "I" comes after a catastrophe,
and how "they" are invisible and ubiquitous,
how "we" are strong through the week

of the ugliest possibilities,
the man was late
and so were the buses,
things were never the same.

The old drawers are pulled open

You worship the ground
that took me in full shovel embrace,

you wished me well
as I trekked past
skulls on post
lined up like
road signs
advertising a place
to sleep for the night,

I dreamed of you
while in hotel rooms
in cold cities,
steaming breath
twined with steam from the coffee,

I wrote your name
a hundred times
on stationary paper
in a hand I couldn't read,

We remain
in present tenses
with senses confused
by what where we've been until now,

in photos
drinking cocktails
waving to ourselves
when the old drawers are pulled open.

An easy path to follow, a hard path to get off of

Who could walk in your shoes
when your laces are barbed wire
and your soles leave tank tracks
which respect neither
street nor flower bed
to get to
where you
think you are needed?

No one wearing baggy clothes
dares
stand next to you
because you smoke
and wave your arms as you speak
your burning desires
for more fire escapes
in buildings
who's wood floors
have cigarette scars.

"I'd like to take
a wrecking ball
and a flame thrower
to this place"
is what you said
the last time
we sat at the same table in a public place,
"all these snoots
with their toy dogs
and ransom note sobriety,
they can fall
where the stand
and attract vultures.
I'm a nice guy.
Fuck everyone else."

A week later
Merle asked me
where she could find you.
I said
look for a destroyed
piece of public property
and then follow the trail.

if bullets could talk

if bullets could talk
there would be more speeches
and no applause

for tipping your hat
to the customer
who gave
your first bottom dollar.

There are no more clouds

There are no more clouds
on the other side of the pillow,
but it did rain
minor cures for big feet
in the shower stall
and there are Navy boats
shaped like shoes
scraping the sheets the river bed,
gunned up and baffled by drought
and cracked earth
and all that science bullshit
that says
you'll not have a happy day
until the grass
dies around your neck
and squeezes you until
your eyes
light up the street