Highway of Tears

One prince left, another never reached, still

Pines along the shoulder, where daughters cease

To walk and breathe, uncertain litanies

Disturb the provinces and turn the leaves.

For D.

You are
what you imbibe.

Liquid clear and roasted
til it speaks

A mother's suspension
of disbelief
pailed and skimmed

A bag of last year's
hillside leaves

The candied sex of flowers
passed in a fussy
mouth to mouth

Precise and ritual
held in friended cups
and mixed with the clapper of a bell

The antidote for each
morning's poisoned kiss.

Stamboul Train

Sweeney

A bell rang over Hourland,
The cupboard-keeper's flare;
I blew upon his papers
and my fury left me bare.

Here We Are

In the mansion of a dream
I would rescue furniture from the fire
that lived in every room

Trembling in the curtains
and along the boards
quiet and content

But here we are

My courage is real
you are wise and beautiful
we talk between kisses

We do not dissolve into some chemical
we hold our shapes
beneath the coffered ceiling.

The Demi-Urge of Uxkull

Pulled from my horse
I could not find the ground
A litter for my self was made
Each hand becoming cup and blade
Tight to my throat
a berried bramble wound.

Minute 2.48

Brought down in the devil’s hour, out of dreams

And pigeon-pressed, no figment in the screams;

The lives behind their mirrors hesitate,

In times become the silent thirty-eight.

The Death Ship by B. Traven

Minute 4.50

Peter to Paul, run robes of dark matter,

Tie off a passage on the ferry boat;
On his chest a weight of bricks and mitre,
Beneath a finger on the river’s throat.

Stephen Crane: stories and tales

Danger Planet

Mansion

Minute 4.44

Raised by the gate, but from the table fed,

In coats of ash they roam the palace road
To stalk the weak now for the banner bled
Their blades are sharpened to a Roman edge.

Thousand Oaks

Minute 3.28

Identity mistaken, mother’s form,

A climber strikes the marble mountain head;

The cradle and the fountain bear the storm,
Awakening the living and the dead.

Minute 4.53

In ductwork of the mind, a jacket blue
Finesse a syndrome that the ancients knew
What’s troubling, the systems’s blowing hue
Adjusted with a chemical or two.



Stalingrad by Theodor Plievier

The Racetrack, Albert Pinkham Ryder

St. Elmo's Fire

Minute 6.55

Glory formed in mud, distant lights for all
But rude austerity, boards and pages,
Fragile curiosity of sages
On donkey-back, while fools pull down a wall.