POETRY

Amarillo

Highway sorrow cups my heart as

semi trucks whoosh past, blowing my body

into Texas on amphetamine wings.

I soar between the midnight thighs of Amarillo,

another place I don't belong,

stroking her asphalt belly as I pass,

kissing her prairie cowgirl breasts.

This loneliness, these mad, grinning nights.

I am no one's lover, no one's child.

I crash off billboards, loop around street lamps,

breathe fire, commune with bats.

I am lost, Ma,

but this is somehow what I wanted:

This weightlessness, to be a slave to the air

where anything can happen -- pow!

Careening the chrome archways of imprecise

longing, through tunnels of wordless despair;

swooping low, diving, spying on

strange diners, scaring cats.

I am on the lam from gravity,

from the lying sun, outdistancing my losses.

I'm so far gone even God can't find me now.

I spread myself out against the cowhide sky

and no one sees me, no one sees me

silhouetted by the moon, walking with

my back turned against whatever's east,

with my cardboard suitcase, my thumb up,

bent and pointed west

toward a shimmering land of dreams.

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A Hole in the Sky

There's a black hole in the sky tonight,
so shield your eyes, Rosa, look away
to the skyline where the lawless moon has fallen
or to the perfect city burning down below.
A hole in the sky, no larger than your fist.
But look away, my love, come here
and tell me how this thing exists.

Shall we walk tonight down by the old canal
where the air is thick and spectral faces
shimmer just beneath the water? A haunted place,
I sometimes slept there as a boy
and dreamed odd dreams. I was brave then:
bravery closed my eyes and ears.
I slept on stones and dreamed of ancient times,
of gods who crawled through dust
in search of graves in which to hide,
and sightless creatures waiting to be born.
I saw myself among them, my eyes, blind and glaring,
stared back at me,
my mouth a random circle
screaming.

But now, you see, I'm not a dreamer.
I see things clearly: a hole in the sky
growing larger; and eyes that watch
from behind the rocks, forever burning.
We speak tonight of ghosts and gods
while above us the blackness breaks, the sky untangles.
The emptiness surrounds us.
Two seekers bent beneath this strangeness.
We should go now
before we disappear

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God

I've built a house from the bones of the earth
and live inside, alone.
I have no voice now, can't recall the sound of it.
And when I go out at night, the stars burn my body.
So I seldom go out.

I am God,
or at least I was.
But now I'm retired.
I grew old and started forgetting things,
and I swore to myself that if that ever happened
I'd quit and move to Canada.
Well, here I am, living in Saskatchewan
in a house I've built from the bones of the earth.
Or did I mention that already?

I have an old Zenith television set
that I bought in a secondhand shop in Saskatoon.
But out here all you can pick up is channel 9,
which is mostly Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith reruns.
Jimmy Swaggart in the mornings,
cartoons afterwards, Julia Childs at noon.
I miss my old apartment in New York.
I had cable there.
And there was this nice old lady across the hall,
Miriam Perlstein, who would visit, bring me pot pies
and talk about her son the lawyer
and her two daughters -- the married one
and the one who was a tramp.
But Miriam Perlstein died -- everyone dies.
I can't remember why.
So I moved to Canada
where I live alone and watch tv.
Morey Amsterdam and Huckleberry Hound.

I am the Almighty, the Great I Am.
But all I can pick up is channel 9,
and the stars burn my body.

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Wilderness

It's all wilderness, he whispered
to the syringe now empty
to the blood congealing
the skin pale on bone
and outside was snow
outside was the song of winter
played once more
and then again
where wilderness meets
the end of sleep

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I Will Continue

I have looked into the eyes
of madness and of hope
I have heard the speech of prophets
Have walked with saints
have seen hearts risen from the dead
And once I felt the wondrous rhythm of the earth
as I stood naked beneath a glaring God
and lived

I once watched a Buddhist monk
lay down a herd of buffalo
with just the power of his chi
And once I saw the pulsing Arizona sky
threaten to explode

I have seen ghosts in the night
have almost touched their fingers
I have traveled long
have felt the winds of time
have gripped the reins of fearlessness
and traveled even there
to the mount of the immortals

And because of this and so much more
I will continue

All I ask
even now when hope is stained
is that you'll walk with me a time
hear me for a time
trust me for a time
One should never walk alone
in such a world as this

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She Kissed Me Once

She kissed me once near old San Juan
in the burning fire of open blindness as
a wolf howled somewhere in the desert,
as a snake crawled through perdition,
pushing forward toward the despair,
toward the place I stood, toward this
bloodstone diamond light.

There is a cost, she said, and smiled.
And what is this? I asked.
A silver coin for absolution?
What is this price for the hieroglyphics
that will now stain my bones?
The stone that cannot be rolled away?
What payment? What sacrifice?

There is a cost, she said.
And that was all.

Tonight in these last years,
in these ragman's clothes I hear
the frost crack like the skin of Eden,
the crust of ancient hope and sin.
She is nowhere to be found.
I have questioned every star. They say:
She is gone, and gone once more
past this and everything you know.

Sometimes I look right through my hands
see the dirt and leaves and forming ice.
I have only loved the one time
and now I see the land through my flesh.
I watch the river rushing.
I see the grinning moon.

How many more miles?
You can't know me now.
How many more steps and words
and promises cut deep into sand?
The cost then was this and not the other.
A madness inside the blood.

She kissed me once near old San Juan
and once before in roses.
And now there is only this
and fire.

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Hush

Your ghost whispers

through the bars:

Hush

as I contemplate

the mortality of stars,

compare it to my own.

Hush, yes, child,

I agree.

Demand the end

of speculation

better left alone.

These flights of semblance

steal breath and dreaming

while slipping past

this prison stone.

The clever thieves,

I could give chase.

But you say:

Hush, my father.

Let them go.

Yes, child, ghost,

The night is partisan, I know.

Let the stars weep for themselves

and I will hush.

Better I should let them go.

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