Kennesaw Mountain

I went there.

I saw winding roads

and ridge backed hills

the locals call mountains.

The ground was all red clay

and the creeks and rivers churned

like bloodstreams of coffee and cream.

It rained a constant drum roll of rain.

There were minnie balls and artillery canister

bored into the wood of the trees

and once there were fields 

littered with bloody butternut

and splintered Illinois bones.

The land is a battery

holding the charge of marching boots

and railroad currents of human electricity.

There was human bondage 

and internecine defiance 

terminally opposed at dead angles.

It rained a constant drum roll of rain

that sprouted Easter threads of Jonquil

in the scrimshaws of the eroded earthworks.

I saw the will to union 

blossom at the bottom 

of shallow scratches in the earth

meandering in lines,

receding from the Snake Creek Gap

past Kennesaw and Peachtree, 

south to Atlanta.

Man of Many Visions

Here's the thing.

I'm in the Philadelphia airport.

Somebody has smeared shit

all over the stall where I'm pissing.

Real class.

My piss is gold and smells like Bushmills.

I am finally whole.

I am finally strong.

I am a man of many visions.

I am a man of many visions 

you don't want to know about.

No matter what you think.

No matter what you say or try,

it won't work out the way it was planned.

It's okay, though,

most of the time.

Birdfeeder

Manhole buttons on an asphalt sleeve.

Big leaf maple doublet and gold leaf breeches.

Green lichen ruff round the neck.

Rosebush brocade 

draped over garbage can hounskull,

the dented sides muzzle holed with rust.

Telegraph bird flicker awaits the filling of the feeder.

Thistle seed dot and black sunflower seed dash.

Send out the message.

Return. 

     

Two Gold Rings

I see a pair

of gold rimmed 

black panther's eyes

in the permanent darkness

of my head.

Watching and ambivalent 

when I come.

Skull Frequencies

It's Molly 

talking to me

from the deepest gash

in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The a. m. radio station static

and muted trombone hum

make the words opaque

to my tired ears.

What are you saying?

It has to be you 

because I'm afraid of everyone else

in my skull.

I saw the diagram 

of the severed dog's head

and your distant cycle

deep in the earth's magnet

bobbed on the surface 

of my lake's memory.

What are you saying?

Onesome, twosome, threesome.

I've got the severed dog's head blues

I've got the voice of Philp Gregory in open G.

I've got Julie and Brent dry humping in the corner booth.

I've got an invitation to threesome.

I've got to stay home next St. Patrick's Day.

It's In The Post Intelligencer

Newspaper boy says 

he's not coming around anymore.

He said that they can't afford 

to print the daily news

just so I can do the junior jumble

and check the sports page daily line.

Apparently nobody wants hire an escort

or sell a rusty lawnmower 

or print an obituary 

enough to keep the lights on nowadays.

The newspaper boy didn't say

he's not going to come around

because it's not true.

There is no newspaper boy

He didn't come around

and

he never told me 

what I told you he said.

There is however,

no more newspaper 

for the reasons I said

but,

there was no newspaper boy

and he didn't come around.

I do like junior jumble 

and the sports page daily line, though. 

Eat At Home

We few
we little band
of brothers
from different mothers
sing into the microphone
of the rain and the wind.
We fans
of the fan club
with no fans
trip the lie fantastic
on a microwave stage
covered with ants.
This one
likes to stay home
and watch the sun
turn to snow and ice
eating tuna salad sandwiches
while the guitars grow dust
and the skin of the drums
dries up and cracks.

The Walrus Was Paul?

Twelve Bar Hustle

They all liked him

in my time.

They all liked him.

The girls liked him.

The guys liked him

and they didn't understand

but the guys liked him.

They liked to watch him slide.

He could never spike a person

but he could always bang the whole gang.

Oh yeah.

It seems to me

I'm getting older

and I'm getting on,

and my ex wives got all the records

but I know all the songs.

But after all, could it be

you're gonna bring my baby to me?

Is it you?  

Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?

I've been down

and he's been down 

but he just sings,

"everyone, rock on.

Oh baby, rock on."

In my time

we were electric children

underneath the bebop moon 

and the mambo sun.

Even though it was all

a twelve bar hustle

and with your Les Paul

you were corkscrew and small,

life's a gas even though it doesn't last.

Red Beans

Simmering beans in a pot

do the slow boil shuffle.

The kitchen is so quiet

you can hear the biscuits grow.

Become the hum 

of the basement furnace 

in the warped tile

under your feet.

Stop running.

Necessary and Proper

The moon's lamp is on.
In the shadows of the parked cars
Frankie the cat is eating a mouse
in a few quick swallows.
Why am I thinking about
the Commerce Clause
of the U.S. Constitution?
It gets its power from
the Necessary and Proper Clause
also known as the Elastic Clause
"The Congress shall have Power
To Make all Laws
Which shall be necessary and proper
for carrying into Execution
the foregoing Powers,
and all other Powers
vested by this Constitution
in the Government of the United States..."
Necessary and Proper.
John Marshall stretched it way out there.
All the way from
McColloch v. Maryland
to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Necessary and Proper
implies a lot of things,
like regulating commerce.
"...with foreign nations,
and among the several states,
and with the Indian Tribes."
Necessary and Proper
turns up the volume
on the Commerce Clause.
Gibbons v. Ogden
sunk Robert Fulton's
steamboat monopoly.
Don't ever antagonize
the Commerce Clause.
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
smashed Jim Crow flat
on the interstate.
The Commerce Clause.
Necessary and Proper.
These words expand and contract
with the passage of time.
United States v. Morrison
slapped down the Violence Against Women Act.
That's Rehnquist for you.
Why am I going on about this?
It's Necessary and Proper, I suppose
and words do live and breathe
and words are the soul of meaning.

Reoccurring

Several species of reoccurring dreams

have been visited upon me.

I am receiving installments 

where I am on the Korean peninsula

riding a train and looking out the window at the countryside.

"Parts of Spain look like this," I think to myself.

One installment awhile back turned out not to be a train 

but a series of screens and projectors 

set up to make me think I was on a train.

I don't talk to anybody, just walk around.

In the last one I was standing in the DMZ.  

How did that happen?  

I think I'm waiting for instructions from somebody.  

Then I wake up.

There's this other dream I keep having 

where I drown in a tsunami.

It happens just outside of Nahcotta, Washington, 

on the Long Beach peninsula.

Another peninsula.  There you go.  

I see water just coming along up the road 

like it has somewhere on land to go.

It gradually pours in everywhere 

and starts washing everything in it's path away.

I'm swept off my feet and pulled under, 

all the while thinking, 

"Wow, so this is what it's like to die." 

Each time this dream happens, 

somebody different from my life is there.  

It could be anybody.  

There's no discernible reasoning 

behind who shows up.  

Friends, enemies, 

people I've seen and never spoke to, 

are all just as likely to show up. 

Whoever shows up 

is always consumed with panic and distress.  

I spend my last moments trying to be calm

so whoever is with me will stop being hysterical.  

While this is going on, 

I think about what kind of selfish bastard I am

to fake being at peace and calm 

with what's about to happen to us 

only so they won't upset me.

Then I wake up.

It's Like That For Me Too

The Great Collapse

Lee and Jay

found a bench seat

from a Volkswagen van

in the marsh

between our subdivisions.

Lee and Jay

came from Oakwood

where the houses

and the cars

were much bigger.

Lee and Jay

worked very hard,

they lifted the bench seat

from a Volkswagen van

into a tree.

Lee and Jay

worked for days

to put the seat

high up in a tree

so they could look down

at the rest of us

and spit.

Lee and Jay

sat in the tree

drinking Old Milwaukee,

gobbing at us

when the Great Collapse happened.

The bough broke

and strapped in

to the bench seat from a Volkswagen van,

Lee and Jay

fell out of the tree.

We saw it all.

We came from

Pioneer Heights

where the houses

and the cars

were much smaller.

We saw it all.

because we just watched.

We just watched

Lee and Jay

from Oakwood

work very hard

because we're from Pioneer Heights

and we don't like to work very hard.

What About Bill Evans?

Hard bop is no kidsgame

and it will lead to stronger stuff.

What about Bill Evans?

He had to climb so high to hit those chords he died.

Lefties will do that, I'm told.

They do however make interesting transitions

on the low end.

He was a ghost in his own lifetime,

moving among rhythms darker than blue.

Bill Evans could cook up so much color 

out of shiny black vinyl

at the other end 

of the needle.

Block chord road block

on the scalar approach 

to the summit of mainline zen.

They say Bill's habit was a problem.

Maybe it was 

but he had to, 

because you can't 

pull true harmony from nowhere

unless you're almost there yourself.

The piano is nodding in the corner.

It's no kidsgame, people.

Everybody Digs Bill Evans.

I do, 

Don't you?

Is So Meta

I grew up wireless radio

in the age of television.

Little sister and I listened 

in our beds on summer vacation nights. 

"Does it sound like he's saying,

Lucy and The Garbage Guys?"

The a.m. dial on the clock radio

and the file o fax flap of the minute digits

was enough.

Hit parade 45s were lessons 

in correctly noting the passage of time.

"Listen sister, 

the beginning of California Girls

is the flight of stairs 

leading to the start of the song."

I grew old wireless in the digital age,

drinking whiskey in basement rooms

lit with glowing vacuum tubes

chasing after the sound of car radio drums.

The radio has always been with me.

It never turns me down.

And we just drive around 

and around and around. 

I Don't Sleep

There are spans of hours now

that I spend awake at night

crowded out of my own mind

by decades of trouble.

If I do manage to fall asleep

I find myself at the bottom

running right out of my shoes

from the hurt and the vengeful.

I see the log chains breaking

on timber cars crossing the trestle,

and log trucks smashed like soda cans

from steam frosted, school bus windows.

I hear the sobbing curses 

of the tired and emotional

ranting behind the bedroom curtains,

growing in volumes of complaint

and libraries of bitter invective.

The night becomes an impenetrable singularity of regret

localized in my aching head

and I don't sleep. 

Re-Make, Re-Model

Among The Tens

Got that early morning Lucy Show glow.

We're basking in the warmth of the monthly heat bill.

Got the Treniers Go! Go! Go!

We're champing on Girl Scout cookies striped like tigers.

Got the nuthatches aruging in the hedge outside the window.

We're listening to Flash, Luke and Shawnie.

Got the radio on if you simply must know.

We're Too Beautiful Too Live.

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