Guy Fawkes Mask

monstrosities commonplace now

& maybe always while

we are sold our fear,

dear the cost of

assimilated nonsense and mostly

I feel emptied out except for a rage

that runs cold and hard like concrete

tony sez righteous indignation is the cheapest of emotions

            and it circulates like pennies

            clattering into gutters

& held in bottomless jars on dressers

which are taken and cashed in for outrage

imported from countries

who pay their workers

but pennies a day

outrage inrage

it’s all exchange

‘cause it’s no use

so, yeah, fuck it

pull on your Che t-shirt & blast The Clash

pull revolution over you like a rhinestone cape

you can always lay down irony like the right bower

if anyone deeper in the game

calls you on it

Fucked

pulling on a Tecate 24

running up Preston

dank night
up about where

Indian Trail slashes across

oily dark swimming

across broken asphalt

dirt you feel as much as see

Preston is a hard, hard shithole

breathing chunked petroleum

sloughing off strip malls

dark

perhaps not dark

so much as light

at crazed angles

coming in as negative light

always people crossing the street

in the dark, you don’t see

them just sort of hanging out

there in the double turn lane

Mexicans Africans Koreans Whites

about half dragging strollers

the lumpenprole defying death

hanging on the edge

of the broken asphalt river

all it is is

you wake up in

the morning

and find yourself

back out on Preston

fucked, like always

Wallpaper

a line runs down the side of the face
arcing just inside the cheekbone
down to the lever of the jaw
a fine point line traced by the most delicate
of stilettos, set in the faintest relief by pebbled light

fires are lit & graves are filled by
the kaleidoscopic moods of old white men
staring into mirrors

*

he’s never paid attention to flower arrangements
before; there are, perhaps,
books written

that open up a world of flower arrangement
a semiotic of rose and baby’s breath
a window

into this thing he didn’t reckon
this thing, this world
is there a world

beyond this face, beyond this mirror
in abstract, what even is a world
what even is this question

and how can that thing be called into question
by the language of flowers
the voice of lilac

the world on a tree lined street
buttercups, cabbage, and hollyhock
elms oaks and maples, a boulevard

*
and what is this thing language that
the eskimos have 42 words for snow
and snow isn’t one of them

and snow is still only snow
and war is always war
blood rivulets sprayed like

rose petals sprinkled
in inexplicable patterns
falling across polished pergo floors

so many gerrymandered allegiances
wildflowers flowing in comically illogical
washes

Man Who Loves Scenery

drove a truck
between Indy & Etown
was thrilled when
I tipped him off
to the wonders
of the Joe Prather

mountains, he calls these knobs
tells his son he
drives through the
mountains of Kentucky

Sunrise Up Front, Falling Back to Sleep to Shostakovich 14

now on the bed a body lays

side, three quarters,

legs akimbo, bent at knees,

arms stretched to adjacent pillow

body a swastika

morning seeps through louvered window

bones reveal

time passes

body whole deteriorates

flesh pulls away

fat and muscle groups their own republics

the flower doesn’t die as much as shift

Dimitri channels Mussorgsky, &

Lorca, Rilke, Apollinaire as chorus

no consolation of regal twilight . . .

falling back to sleep with the sun pouring in up front

reaching for the window, projecting to the other side,

waiting for the sun to declare mid-day,

the body breaks, not into shards

but into devolved, ungovernable cells

the lost promise of youth and laminar flow

to a bright communist future . . .

sleep doesn’t always arrive in twilight

“when we believe ourselves to be in the midst of our lives,

she dares to cry

inside us.”

edges reveal

no mercy, only relief

relief is temporary

Industrial Lunch No. 1 is Out . . .

 . . . and I'm in it!  It's stuff you've seen here before, but never mind that; this is a really great collection.  The best I've been associated with, I would have to say.

  Do yourself a favor & check it out.

Untitled

the detritus of the day

rubs into the brain

dirt ground into a wound

you rise through

  swimming to a surface, yet 

another surface

coming back

shed one skin, reach out, one hand

second hand, pull up, breathe

struggle against cramping

atrophied muscle, again and again

around each corner another street

rising to each surface, washed down

by yet another wave

it is what it is

the return –

everything both the same and different

you get up to fall

but you always fall forward 

Eileen Myles (REVISED)

There might be one or two of you out there who give a shit about how I edit.  "Eileen Myles" was originally written in a notebook, then shaped from the notes into the poem that I posted.  After letting it rest for a day or two, I decided it wasn't too bad, but needed just a little help.  The form/style of the poem is pretty loose, so I didn't get as obsessive about editing as usual.  Here is the poem, and I imagine that it will remain in this form, with maybe very minor changes, since this pretty much gets to the core of the idea.  There's nothing here that would lead me to the obsessive fussing I used to do over some poems.

for DWP

Turns out they were wrong, all those years ago.
It's space I need, not a voice. Eileen Myles
hacking through underbrush, and how does one
wield a machete at once casually and with
resolution?

Wait. I, in fact, have been granted space, as has 
Eileen Myles. It is the space itself that is the problem, 
in both our cases. Seems I'm king of the whole 
goddamn world, thank you very much, 
while Eileen is . . . something else. At least, 
they all told her that, and she sez we're
all, Kennedys, we're all normal, I'm the most
beautiful poet in the universe, I'm the only
one in the room with bleeding gums tonight,
I'm the only homosexual in the room tonight,
I'm really stepping off the flag now. Eileen Myles
Betsy Rossed the whole fucking thing. The flag is
hers now. The space is hers now.

I am no more interested in literary tourism now
than when I had Bukowski foisted upon me. Even
more, I have no fucks to give for New York, and
one fuck less to give for Boston. I'm drinking cheap
scotch, and it's a piss poor replacement for decent
bourbon. This Ravel is on my last nerve. I'm
jumping around - Wagner, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky,
Shostakovich, even Tim Hecker - and nothing
can quiet the vibrations in my head. Nothing
can quiet the stabbing displacement behind my
eyes. Nothing can still the disgust that convulses
my hand. This private fiasco is looking for a center,
looking for a steadying hand, looking for a glass of
good bourbon.

In the meantime, Eileen Myles has given up
writing a great poem, given up birthing an art
bigger than everybody else's, an art that makes
everybody feel alone. I, on the other hand, am
a fucking idiot. I will try to destroy humanity,
I will try to write a great poem. Resting safe
in the knowledge, imparted to me by Eileen Myles,
that I never will. To be left with one final task,
to draw nobility onto failure. To take failure back,
to make it something else, to send it along 
another path.

* * * * *

There is defiance in the machete work. That is easy
to latch onto. THIS IS THE GROUND UPON WHICH
WE MEET. The ground is hers, the battles are won
and lost, it's the fight that counts.

Eileen Myles has her shit to deal with. I have mine.
She's a lesbian and her teeth are falling out. I have
cheap shitty scotch, and Ravel is pissing me off.
"It's all in the struggle" they say, and it is, but
what the fuck does that mean anyway?

Eileen Myles finds love. I find soda water for the scotch.
Eileen Myles sees a dentist, Debussy follows Ravel.
Love is immanent. Cheap scotch with soda still makes
a decent drink.

Eileen Myles never wrote a poem so big
that everyone felt alone. She's tried, but she failed.
I've tried, but I've failed. Time to celebrate.

Eileen Myles

          for DWP

Turns out they were wrong, all those years ago.

It's space I need, not a voice. Eileen Myles

hacking through underbrush, and how does one

wield a machete at once casually and with

resolution?

Wait. Back up just a minute. I, in fact, have been

granted space, as has Eileen Myles. It is the space

itself that is the problem, in both our cases. Seems

I'm king of the whole goddamn world, thank you

very much, while Eileen is . . . something else.

At least, they all told her that, and she sez we're

all, Kennedys, we're all normal, I'm the most

beautiful poet in the universe, I'm the only

one in the room with bleeding gums tonight,

I'm the only homosexual in the room tonight,

I'm really stepping off the flag now. Eileen Myles

Betsy Rossed the whole fucking thing. The flag is

hers now. The space is hers now. She fought

for it, she won it.

    *the space, btw, is not political . . .

     the action - the attainment of the space,

     what happens within the space, the

     continuing saga of the space (its

     definition, its day-to-day life) is

     the political . . .

I am no more interested in literary tourism now

than when I had Bukowski foisted upon me. Even

more, I have no fucks to give for New York, and

one fuck less to give for Boston. I'm drinking cheap

scotch, and it's a piss poor replacement for decent

bourbon. This Ravel is on my last nerve. I'm

jumping around - Wagner, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky,

Shostakovich, even Tim Hecker - and nothing

can quiet the vibrations in my head. Nothing

can quiet the stabbing displacement behind my

eyes. Nothing can still the disgust that convulses

my hand. This private fiasco is looking for a center,

looking for a steadying hand, looking for a glass of

good bourbon.

In the meantime, Eileen Myles has given up

writing a great poem, given up birthing an art

bigger than everybody else's, an art that makes

everybody feel alone. I, on the other hand, am

a fucking idiot. I will try to destroy humanity,

I will try to write a great poem. Resting safe

in the knowledge, imparted to me by Eileen Myles,

that I never will. To be left with one final task,

to draw nobility onto failure. To take failure back,

to make it something else, to send it along another

path.

* * * * *

I love Eileen Myles, even if not in the specific.

I love Eileen Myles, without qualification, without

reservation. Not that she needs it, but she's

got it.

There is defiance in the machete work. That is easy

to latch onto. THIS IS THE GROUND UPON WHICH

WE MEET. The ground is hers, the battles are won

and lost, it's the fight that counts.

    *and it is the struggle that is political

     (obviously), the public struggle for public

     space . . . well, that's the political matter,

     what? haven't you been paying attention . . .

Eileen Myles has her shit to deal with. I have mine.

She's a lesbian and her teeth are falling out. I have

cheap shitty scotch, and Ravel is pissing me off.

"It's all in the struggle" they say, and it is, but they

wouldn't fucking know. Sometimes I don't fucking

know.

Eileen Myles finds love. I find soda water for the scotch.

Eileen Myles sees a dentist, Debussy follows Ravel.

Love is immanent. Cheap scotch with soda still makes

a decent drink.

Eileen Myles never wrote a poem so big

that everyone felt alone. She's tried, but she failed.

I've tried, but I've failed. Time to celebrate
that failure.

Lake Leelanau 8/20/2013

The King of Fashion

Against judgement

he proposed electricity

lightning

cruelty

brutal insomnia

and combat.

Against the judges

he proposed judgement –

   That he judged himself          

   was his zenith.

The pale criminal

equal to the thing

once done

shrinks in horror

from the image of the thing . . .

always running,

one step ahead,

chasing ghosts

He is given a name, and that name is judgement

“It is you who say I am . . .”

(flash and madness

dreams ricochet through darkness)

I AM THE WIND THAT BLOWS ILL

I AM EVOLUTION ACCELERATED

I AM REVOLUTION

I AM THE KING OF FASHION

(the king pronounces:)

“You dreamers, you jailers,

you cartographers, you debtors . . .

I owe you less than nothing.

Your maps mean nothing to me.

Your truth

means nothing to me.

If there are truths, they are negotiated.

If there are truths, they are earned.

Can you face

the falsity of your dreams

in the darkness of your night?

Can you be done with unicorns & Jung

& fascist bastards

who slice your body

into meek organs of reprisal

and dancing gods of debt?

Can you face me,

the surface of your nightmares,

knowing that your resolve is meaningless

because, tomorrow,

I become other?

Because yesterday,

today,

tomorrow,

I will always be other?

Can you live with me

knowing that

as surely as I can destroy myself

You can never harm me?

Can you understand

that you will never hold me?

Schizophrenia

you are building your own cosmology

out of broken tinker toys

assassinated meanings and logics

shells assembled from broken words

meaning for you is private

and that is a problem

you are a self disappearing

            behind a kabuki mask of anguish

defiant in your personal finitude

waiting

there is the gravel shore of a grey lake

with no horizon

the water blends to the sky

and you’re out there in a rowboat

screaming

but there is no sound

no movement

and we’re waiting here for you

to come back in

from The Original Text of The Ethics (2)

The original texts of The Ethics.

The Ethics, Continued

[1] [2]

the essence of things

that cracks open under the weight of a thousand questions

like daggers in the dark[3]-

bright blue day of confidence

turns out

to be a shadow of something else . . .

that something else is behind a screen,

and we’ve created the blue, or the screen,

or both

or everything

or[4] nothing

“There is a proof for that”

sez Spinoza

“and it goes like this[5]:

Jesus died for your sins;

but there are no sins,

no death,

and no Jesus.

There’s a red wheelbarrow,

and maybe Billie the Kid

but fuck that taxonomy, anyway

more or less depends on them

than you’ve been led to believe.[6] [7]”

I awake to a cold bright day

and understand that I am alone[8]

and what is left

is to breathe deep the air

and begin again,

always again[9]

There is another way,

there is always another way.[10]

*           *           *           *           *

Spinoza clears his throat:[11]

“What the masses learned to accept without reason

reason cannot refute.

And pretty baubles and grand gestures

trip the light and sell the rabble[12] [13]

while logic becomes dressed as witchcraft

and is danced

from fear

to shame,

and returns,

hollowed out,

as sham and excuse.[14]

My beautiful mathematics require commitment most find beyond the pale:

Fascists bully words to their own purpose,

while Capitalists simply purchase meaning.

The rest lack all vision.[15]

I sit here in the corpse-colored twilight,

tallow candle a-sputter,

and commit truth to the page

against all odds.”

(Spinoza doesn’t write poetry by the light of day.)

*          *           *          *          *

PART ONE[16]

“There are truths

and they are self-evident.”

Spinoza emerges into a cold dawn

candle extinguished, sheaves of parchment falling from his table,

drifting snow,

flesh snow[17]

“or, as they should be, at least.

Everything follows inexorably,[18] [19]

a calculus of the real,

a shape of what is.

Only fools question the otherwise,

for here is here.”

There is a wave and a shuffle

Spinoza turns his face to the cold sun.

“Your investments mean nothing to me.

Your lineage[20] means nothing to me.

Your rights, your culture,

that house of straw

that you defend with your dying breath?

It means nothing to me.

The essence of mankind

does not involve

the necessary existence of mankind;

this sun cares not that you caper below it.[21] [22]

You are, that’s all.” [23] [24]

Spinoza scrambles off,

rocks spraying from his feet,

then turns for a last salvo:

“The order of things

is the order of thought.

The mind is nothing not constituted by idea.

Idea is the thing,

idea is the flow

mind the machine

buckling down and locking in to the flow.[25]

The idea creates the mind

the mind delimits the idea

and its all connected,

virtually the same . . .

bodies in respect to bodies

machines in respect to machines

bodies assembled

and bodies inscrutable

machines and flows inextricable

from what wellspring?

to what ocean?”

He turned abruptly

to the stone path rising above him

and was gone in a clatter.[26]  [27]

*          *          *          *          *

A word can’t mean two things

it can mean one thing, then another

Or it can mean everything,

or the nothing at the core of everything.[28] [29]

---

[1] as to him alone does existence appertain

[2] PROP. XXV.  God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.

[3] everything

[4] intellect in function     finite      infinite     will

[5] PROP. XXXII. Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause.

[6] eternity

[7] imperfection in God

[8] concerning created things

[9] truth

[10] I assume a starting point

[11] they only look for knowledge of the final causes of events

[12] anxious

[13] reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance

[14] such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for approving and preserving their authority would vanish also.

[15] is things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome

[16] V.  We feel and perceive no particular things, save bodies and modes of thought

[17] power of God the free will

[18] knowledge of the cause

[19] effect

[20] things are said to exist

[21] PROP. XI.  The first element, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is the idea of some particular thing actually existing.

[22] modes of the attributes

[23] We thus comprehend, not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also the nature of the union between mind and body.

[24] nature of our body

[25] large superfices

[26] the human body is affected in a

[27] external body     presence

[28] one possible explanation

[29] I am very far from the truth

A Theft and Recasting of a Line by Zarathustra (Nietzsche)

What the masses learned to accept without reason

reason cannot refute

and the pretty baubles and grand gestures

trip the light and sell the rabble

while logic becomes dressed as witchcraft

and is danced from fear to shame

and returns, hollowed out,

as sham and excuse

Moving Into Lent

the wind sweeps in from out

crow’s wing brushes whisper across the forehead

they’re falling now

                                    a couple more

            funneled into sluice gates and caught

            before a finality is realized –

every so often you feel the wing brushing close

like a scythe whistling through the air

you wonder what gets harvested

            what blackness

            or searing light

            who the dark becomes

            blinding whiteout     

            and why

is it time

and is all this collateral

or is this a target

a morning is cruel, or it is not

a night is harrowing, or it is not

the world is pain, or it is not

the is and is not of wildly intersecting planes

flashing crazed like the eye blinks

Easter 2003 Revisited

This is an updated and expanded version of a post I put up recently on my tumblr.

"Easter 2003", is not a good poem, but it was an important one to me.  It was written in the desert outside Tucson that year, during our annual Easter trip out west to the Yaqui Holy Week ceremonies.

As I moved away from my Christian upbringing, the last few vestiges of spectacle that maintained any psychic hold on me resided entirely in the Easter season, from Ash Wednesday ("The Existentialist's Holiday"; also the last church service I attended completely of my own volition) to the Holy Week.  Matt, another lapsed Catholic, had encountered stories of the Yaqui Easter ceremonies out in the west; and, with Tony along for the ride, started making annual Easter pilgrimages out to Tucson.  I started tagging along occasionally not too long after.  It became a more or less annual trip for the posse.

Ten years ago, on a Tuesday, I piled into a rented Impala with Matt and Tony to drive straight through from Louisville out to Tucson with the ostensible purpose of hanging out at those Yaqui ceremonies.  After driving through the afternoon and night and ending up in Roswell, New Mexico, by the light of the rising sun, I picked up a paper to find that the US had invaded Iraq.  We had, of course, seen this coming, but things are very different when there are "boots on the ground" . . . i.e., you think that it's not real until it really happens.

At the same time, I had chosen not to attend the funeral of my cousin Theresa, which was going on the same day.  She was from southern Indiana, down by the White River, and she may as well have been from the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee, or West Virginia . . . the popular media image is the same.  Theresa had a rough life, and she was a victim of what many of us from more monied and/or educated backgrounds tend to dismiss as simple ignorance instead of the collateral damage of capitalism that it really is.  Anyway, Theresa had gotten pregnant at a very young age, but she was blessed with loving parents who not only refused to turn their backs on her, but agreed to raise Theresa's son as their own.  For her part, Theresa, after several rough years, had started to get her life together and become a "stable" person for the first time.  

The job she finally got, the job that she was able to hold onto and to some degree defined her, was as a prison guard.  She liked the job, and she held on to it for several years.  Unfortunately, old demons reared their heads: at some point, she met an inmate that she fell for.  She had reservations about this man; after all, he was in for abusing his girlfriend (actually hurting her quite seriously), and had a long history of assault and abuse, quite a bit of it against women.  But she was charmed; and he, for his part, apparently fell for her quite hard.

When he got out, they connected, but Theresa began to have reservations.  She was trying to turn around her life and live for her son, and she knew that this guy was bad news, intellectually if not emotionally.  So she tried to break it off, and what happened next was all too predictable.

They found her body in her Pontiac Sunbird, which had been lit on fire on a deserted county road in Monroe County.  It was completely torched, and her body was burned to the point that dental records were needed to identify her.  One of the complications early in the investigation was that they couldn't charge anyone with murder because they couldn't determine the cause of death.  Eventually, the man confessed, and by all accounts showed real remorse, since he deeply "loved" Theresa.

About seven years later, I was back around Bedford for the funeral of her son.  He was angry, he was always angry . . . he had been in and out of jail, and he never really got over the death of his mother, in spite of the love of his grandparents.  He died of an overdose.  The most memorable thing about the funeral was that one of my cousins had to grab me and one of my brothers to clear out the parking lot when some kids decided to act up.  It's taking everything in me not to call them rednecks or white trash . . . but they were refuse.  Capitalism's refuse.  Just like my cousin and her son.

*          *          *          *          *

After hitting Roswell at sun up, we took a detour to the Anasazi ruins in New Mexico.  Tony and Matt, who had been sleeping while I had been driving, walked the ruins and occasionally let out strains of melody on home made flutes they were carrying.  I, who had been driving for almost 20 straight hours and was of a somewhat less spiritual bent, found a nice warm rock in the morning sun and stole a short nap.  After an hour at the ruins, we grabbed some coffee and were back on the road.

The whole way, it was paranoia and weirdness, all apocalypse culture and giddy aggression.  It is important to remember just how little opposition there was to the war when it started (or, for that matter, how shamefully little opposition there was up until almost the final withdrawal).  Every car had flags, every truck had a "My Country, Right or Wrong" sticker, every traveler in every rest stop and gas station all giddy over war.  It was a J.G. Ballard landscape come to life.

Friday was at the Yaqui compound in Tucson.  It was always an intense ceremony (the one at the Yaqui camp on the outskirts of town Saturday was pastoral by comparison), and often the ceremonies had a palpable urban edge provided by sirens and police helicopters sweeping spotlights over the neighborhood.  Sometimes the ceremonies were short and explosive, sometimes they ground on forever like a boot heel digging into bruised muscle and flesh.  This one was a long one.  The Chapayekas slogged on, all harmelodic flutes, polyrhythmic castanets, and chattering shells; many fell to be quickly surrounded and protected by a Chapayeka guard.

Everything felt like raw doom then.  It doesn't now.  The thing that sucks almost as much as death and war is getting used to death and war.

Easter 2003


morning

7 am Tucson the 
sun turns the 
tent to an oven the
sun bright over another deathtrip

in another desert 
on a gravel road in a Pontiac he

  doused her in gasoline & lit her & ran 


1.

Chillin’ in a tent in the desert
the sun barely up
biding time with Edward Albee
cowboy stories surrounded 
by flags, flags, flags
everyday is flag day everywhere these days

cross our 
star spangled land
on a patriotic, god-fearing bender
& the stars -n- stripes 
is the geometry of war

somewhere, out there,
some George Washington crosses a Delaware
he doesn't know, and
the mother of all bombs
won't douse hate
attracted to the Tikrit triangle
like metal shavings over a magnet

or
the desperation of the already dead
on a gravel lane somewhere outside Bloomington

and, this is it: Theresa’s dead.
She's blood
whistling past the graveyard . . .

the distant rumble in the background
the thunderhead on the horizon
always on the horizon
it's death, man,
among the flying flags
and burning cars.


2.

  the highway intersects
a Wednesday morning funeral
 deep in the heart of New Mexico
Tony & Matt fluting the ruins

and going back . . .  

become the darkness in Little Rock
shed your skin in the dawn of Roswell
Arkansas, Oklahoma, & Texas a howling tunnel of other

shades & delineations of nothing
Oklahoma City, Erick, Amarillo
Tikrit, Bagdad
Elletsville, Bedford, Bloomington

& how do we explain to the dead
that there was nothing there
how do we explain to the living 
that there is never anything there
and that drinking tequila in the desert won't kill it
and that drinking whiskey in Louisville Kentucky won't kill it
and that drinking Bud Light in Bedford Indiana won't kill it
and that bowing to the east won't kill it
the horror creeping like a virus
exploding into  murder  fire  jihad
& poets digging into the closets
of horrible darkness won't kill it

&

she was probably dead when he set her on fire
’cause you don’t just douse people in gasoline 
& set them on fire
& burn them up in their cars –
he's charged with arson
’cause he burned her up
but not with murder
’cause she may have been dead already

  &

we all die a little more every
hellbent day of this backward millennium . . .

guns in Baghdad
somewhere east of
the center of chaos

Southern Indiana deathtrip
swooping like a crow


3.

the dead lay where they are
the living lay where they are
the flutes & drums of the Yaqui try to raise them
sacred ash and mariachi trills try to raise them
Easter Saturday on the rez by the casino

choking dust, burning masks,
purification by fire

a Pontiac burning on a Monroe County road
chapayeka drag burning under the Easter cross
a car bomb just outside the green zone,
another minister assassinated
another body for the dust

and, the choking dust of New Pascua
celebrates the resurrection
while the dead lie where they lay
in Iraq
in Bloomington 
the funeral
goes on
without me



4.

. . . and there are flags, flags, everywhere flags
yellow ribbons, red bumperstickers
the highway awash with patriotism
every SUV with a petrol-drunk V-8
every broke-down Ford with Tennessee plates

a crazy fool with delusions grand
again deals the penultimate hand
death reigns in another foreign land

and, in the cactus-scarred slopes of Arizona
and, in the inbred back roads of Indiana

another flag waves
another innocent dies

and, I’m here, another shot of whiskey,
another


5.


morning

7 am Tucson the
sun turns the
tent to an oven the
sun bright over another deathtrip