Mountain Mists

The mist of mountains

Seduces the heat of summer

From the wilted plains.

Seasons

The Spring breeze

Tiptoed through my hair

Barefoot.

It was then

I had first noticed

Fresh leaves.

I felt new.

Skipping through days of

Summer.

It was then

I had first noticed

Bare trees.

I soon took

A fall right into

Winter. 

Spring

A leaf in budding,

silently pushes the world

into a new Spring.

Flood

Wind blowing silently

Veils today’s romance,

Sending leaves in a courting dance.

In begins to rain eventually.

It is giving seduction half a chance.

Then the pour begins to steam and to swell,

Like an ovenbird roasting upon hot coals.

It turns lumpish, it bloats, it swells like rolls,

And its friskiness breaks apart the spell,

Turning romance to nervous hems and haws.

It comes flooding, rushing and roaring down,

Obviously everything letting go,

Tolling bells and dousing fires. Now we know

What is the meaning of the thudding sound,

For in this seeping are the seeds we sow.

Booming down, it beats across all the land,

Swelling the belly of the pregnant streams,

Streaking the heaven with the labor screams.

As it grows we begin to understand

Just why dampness saturates our dreams.

Two I Have Known

There is the scratching of time ticking at the wall

Just out the window is a sky in tearful squall,

Inside the room is a doom stronger than the pine,

But it isn’t doom at all. It’s just the ticking time.

Sitting in her corner is May, the flower-girl,

Lost inside her weedy world of smoky-curl;

While nearby, drowning his life, sits a shot-glass Glenn,

Everything he ever had glugged down to have been.

Two I have known from another town.

Don’t look around.

They can’t be found.

Today, one of these twain has toked-up adrift,

Leaving the other aswim in whiskeys and ryes.

One is always chasing rainbows behind the clouds;

The other’s always hoisting toasts to dimming skies.

Railroad Blues

Railroad blues

Chuggin’ ‘round my mind,

All because

My switchyard baby

Left her engineer behind.

This engine’s been cut loose,

Left to smoke and pine,

While his rolling stock

Has rolled to another line.

Railroad blues

Got me down and out.

Railroad blues,

What the cryin’s ‘bout.

Railroad blues,

Station’s closed tonight,

All because

My switchyard baby

Has got herself ‘nother man.

This conductor got no punch,

Left alone to pine,

While his railroad’s struck

By the lover union line.

Railroad blues

Got me down and out.

Railroad blues,

What the cryin’s ‘bout.

A Large White Canvas With A Centered Black Splotch The Size Of A Quarter Which Sold At The Rittenhouse Square Clothesline Art Show In The City Of Philadelphia For The Sum Of Fifty Dollars In 1967

Only a dot

Until it got

A fifty spot.

Dat dot’s a lot!

Portrait of a Girl

The wall before

The girl is black.

The path in front is wet

As she tries

Another block.

Is the girl lonely?

Yet, she sits

Fingering a name,

Breath drawn taut.

One day too long.

The name is there she sought.

Illustration:source unknown

Tale of Two People

A cigarette still smokes in the ashtray on the table by the bed

And a lingering ring around the white tells me that her lips were red,

As is the dawn

When she is gone.

Her eyes had held the shine of a candle dripped with golden wax standing

In a post that was the only light to show the way to my landing.

Here is the sun

To help her run.

Her hair spilled its silk over my pillow like clouds do after a storm.

Then I took her hand and we locked with our faces and our breath was warm.

The pillow’s empty.

There’s only me.

And we never knew the night

Until the sun had risen

To show it is just a room

Shrouded in our myths and dreams

For only a few whiles when

Our masks hid our eyes of gloom.

When night comes sneaking back I will seek new beds, but be thinking only

Of the lost girl I loved last night, wondering who is the more lonely.

I am here with me,

But where is she?

Writer

Purple garret in the dawn,

Cherry pits and apple cores,

The smell of dying smoke,

Sound of closing doors.

Typewriter, a wounded beast;

Blood ribbon-black and paper-gray.

Against the walls the tapping

Greets the beginning day,

And the closing doors.

Purple garret in the morn,

Birds huddle for some heat.

Clouds coughing, raining dust

And traffic crawls the street.

Sliding carriage, a pecking cry,

Twisted carbon on the floor,

And listening hard and lean

To the closing door,

And the closing doors.

Purple garret in the day,

Paragraph, sentence, words.

The windows stretch and yawn

With a creaking in their boards.

The mail slot yells a curse.

The Postman’s footsteps fade.

The puddles of black and white

On the floor are laid

Behind the closing doors.

Purple garret in the eve,

Dying in pain from the cold.

Almost insane, tearing glue, finding

The same mocking scold.

Still creation ticks,

The keys are pounding hard,

While in the mantle dust

Sits a ghostly bard

Hearing closing doors.

Occupational Disease

And there are your great books.

Fitzgerald, he cracked-up and he fell.

Socrates, who never held pen,

Was by hemlock quelled.

Yet there are your great words.

Fathers and Sons, like Papa,

Like his father, like his men,

A shotgun has tolled.

But there are your great works.

A Poet with Lysol swallowed, burning pains and moans.

The fallen Nobel writer lying broken near Rome.

A lonely mind, dies of Bright’s, fallen amid book-bones.

The Call of the Wild lost to the soul that was alone.

On the drowning shore, a heart is snatched where fore it shown.

All who have died like that, may we say accident-prone?

Yes, the occupational hazards are well known

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At the Age of 8 or 9

I remember a time

when I was a lad

and all of my life

was wonderfully sad.

I had no friends,

all I knew were some ghosts

who would haunt my night.

I waited upon them

during the twilight.

I remember a time

when I was a lad

and all of my life

was excitingly sad.

Despite no friends

there were baseball cards

and motion picture shows,

while at home I had

records and radios.

I had some friends.

Childish Games

Where do we begin,

            child?

Where do we begin?

Here we go again,

            child.

Here we go again.

We’ll fight like cowboys,

            child.

We’ll fight like cowboys.

Yes, and we have toys,

            child.

Yes, we have toys.

Rubber knives and plastic guns.

Has the war begun,

            child?

Has the war begun?

Fifty Miles Away

These winds howl around.

Make snowflakes swirl by.

Its lash stings my cheek

And puts water in my eye.

Oh, what a night time.

Oh, what a day.

Knee deep in snow

And fifty miles away.

Drifts form where I must walk.

My feet grow numb and cold.

How I fear this dampness

The night wind has called.

My ears are hurt and sore

And I’m no further than I’ve been.

I cannot climb the hills

Where ice slides me down, and then...

Ahead I see a growing light.

I’ll soon feel a fire’s warm glow

And I swear, come another storm,

I’ll not travel into the blow.

Oh, what a night time.

Oh, what a day.

Snow upon the window

And I’m home to stay.

July

I pluck a daisy

Blooming full of summer sunshine.

Thus I save July.

Illustration from modernmommyblog.com

Afterbirth

Arms slippery writhing waving reeds.

Breathless voices. Drowning sounds in auto-cars.

Through the night muffled moans.

Neon heartbeats of old corner bars.

Weary glasses

Drained by the juke’s blurry beat.

Dancers dance in darkened corners

With a hunger.

Seconds tick, tiny island of time

Trapped on dry ridges of rotting wood.

Passion breathes fire slowly dying

in whispers.

And afterbirth it just sighs and calls,

Was it worth the take and give?

Knowing from birth forward

It’s living to die, but dying to live.

Rain Lashed by the Wind

Walking along rain-lashed by the wind.

No need telling me that she’s gone again.

I stand like a saint, stoic to my soul.

Not like an angel getting ready to fall.

I’m going to stand if I must stand alone.

I’m not going to miss her because she’s gone.

She’s like the cloud lashed by the wind.

When she feels sunny she’ll float back again.

She always drifts home when not feeling blue,

Sticking around until more rainfall is due.

But I’m standing strong much like a tree.

She’s not going to worry sturdy oak me.

But rooted alone, lashed by the wind,

Keeps reminding she’s turned to storm again.

Chain Gang

This chain,

This chain

Around my ankle

Is much too tight

And it rubs the skin raw.

My bed,

My bed

Is the grass at night,

The rocks and all.

The Captain drives us on.

A road,

A road,

To build him a road,

To build the road

In payment for our sin.

My sin,

My sin

Was only to eat,

Only to live.

So my sin was to strike.

Illustration: South Carolina Chain Gang, source unknown

Love Song

Same time

Same place

Same order

Same face

Same kiss

Same embrace

Same world

Same space

Same trail

Same race

Same trial

Same case

Same powder

Same lace

Same dream

Same taste

Same love

Same name

Same words

Same same

Highways

Highway white

Highway gray

Road across the county line

Black

Broken             line             white

Broken             line             yellow

Broken             line             going

Solidlineback

Hate to travel roads I never really know but the ones I know are                        gone

Hate to travel them then to find the end

Is

another

road

again

Highway here

Highway there

Roads across my lifeline

Long

Broken toe

nail

Broken shoe

heel

Broken voice singing

A broken song