None of these

 N  O  N  E       of        T  H  E  S  E

Enough time at home 

Is vacation 

Enough time at home 

Is sustenance 

Enough time at home 

Is hygiene 

Enough time at home

Is rest

Perhaps peace.

Capitalism is none of these things.

Disquiet on soon-dead leaves

Hums of a

94 and Gratiot upset

Floating under knocking hammers

Belting dogs barking

Restless Battlestation in

Late summer soft rain

Disquiet on

soon-dead leaves

==================

Smoked a hid cigarette

Worried about my heart

Ate less salt

Drank more wine

Still felt like vapor

Cornered under overpass

Near loosely-heldtogether

Seminole street

I, shrapnel in the drive thru

I, shrapnel

, --

(puts her hand on his thigh and I think of you)

-- ,

Couples kissing in the kitchen as I walk in and

think of you

In a bar

or in bed thinking of you.

I'm bored so I think of you.

I can't stand, or think, about me

and you.

I pretend I don't have tears in my eyes, but I-eeeeee

t's shrapnel.

I lie.

‘I'm not thinking of you.’

Crying myself into a salad,

thinking about your death.

Unfortunately into Oreos with water

wondering

why

we

Didn't die together. But swimming

deep in you.

I dive, turn away,

sleep on a floor more than feet,

or seat, I drive

Miles, Curtis, mostly Prince,

(And sometimes Meat Puppets)

crying, tears still drying

on my cheeks

-in the drive thru-

And you finished

-or-

Skipping therapy to think about old loads of laundry.

The woman asked and walked too

close

about an earring she lost.

I was choking down salad

into tears

(they always have salad here

and coffee.)

~

I tried to

be and was mad at

my friends.

I stayed in my car, left early

though I had drawing, still

no coffee.

~

Tasting. dressing

(the laundromat near the hospital).

Watching jays,

hearing a bird I wonder about

Shallow breathtaking and the sound of lawnmower in Polish Hollywood.

~

The smell of snot-much

I thought of a photo you took

   -An idea we had.

And you finished.

~

And for us

I had a dream about Becky

And she was smiling and giving me shit

Like cousins will do

And I told you when you asked why

I was laughing

And you didn't understand

And I was confused

‘Because she is gone’

You reminded me, but

She wasn't then

And I was happy

And woke to cry

And remembered your year

And strength

In a hospital bed

You

Never cared much for poetry

And I

Care

For it and read

To sleeping you

All asleep in a hospital bed

Hoping my soft recitation

Seeps in, holds you like cloth,

Like I can not, have not

For a month

In a hospital bed

Greektown17

On Saturday nights it's all

Sirens and calamity

Two dead birds

Again

.

.

Pushing

Remnants of a house on VanDyke Street

Seasons first snow on new coal-

burned boards.

Sure, the winds blew in before

Now what's left assumes the other.

Collecting white in the carcass ribs

And on steps that don't go nowhere,

They go up two feet

To the remnants of a house on Van Dyke Street.

Oct.17

‘It's ok to go through droughts,

You tell yourself,

While getting older.’

-He tells himself

And feeling younger than he should.

Lermp Rompy

:A forest without trees

You without me

When life makes more sense than

It makes more sense backwards:

A Line Drawing Of A Thin Man

It's weird, walking around
a combination of acquisitions
tucked in shallow breaths
next to the swollen mid-century
      - modern in the past -
         - tense in the gut -
           blue in the face.

stolen from a vat of ephemeral sound
echoing off candy wrappers,
          stuck in cobwebs,
 gaskets and cork-brick bubbles.

They are the things I had to save!
I am here to serve nostalgic clothing
from another life, VHS tapes and
    the water stained-and-nailed
Farrah all teeth, in red tits
to a new nose and different pallets

scary in transition,
                faults and relief
 I bend to bring the box to the car,
    a line drawing of a thin man

Twice, Two Dead Birds Now

Twice, two dead birds now
found fallen
outside two homes I carry
the older pair to a shrine
shoe the chicks to the yard
alongside three live bullets George found
in the Detroit diamond mines.

"... clear omens" I ponder
rolling pennies from a jar in an early June
calico wind questioning
the answer being something hard for a child to understand.
"... no, you can't come with me."





Children are future
kids are the worst, gimmie the birds and their wings
... shrieking on and on and ...
onto blighted neighborhoods
out to
succumbed silence
and drawn down power lines

"... and the way they smell!"
Hot.
unrefined, like
the hour before the golden hour.
In a flat land comin from the Valley City





house haunting in Detroit
passing a cemetery
pressing two dead baby birds
 - hair not yet feathered -
"just what the hell you think you're doing near a foreign river?!"

bowing to new horizons,
or trying to.

Acidmind; un céleri

craned unnaturally, finally
relaxing my neck
now understanding,
the spread like black-brown blotches
of last week's spent coffee grounds
staring the snowmelt,

I'll probably always chop celery wrong.

Blades of Glass

Contemplating the blade of grass
grown and growing,
sssSprouted neatly        
-pressed as
glass through uncareful fingertips-
into last years nerves
with patient indifference, endurance
beyond determination, a walnut left unturned
among clumps of green and growing bound
             ... and kissed, she tells me,
by that same strange-perfumed air blown from some great place
that now leaves something of herself on me.

And in this way we've given ourselves to eachother,
& also to the murmuration of starling
grazing mad anarchy, through blades of grass
     ... and something as aimless as
linear time, or,
the spring-fit giggles of,
teenage girls-     still bound
memories flooding and swelling at the scent of those.
first. few. puffs,
acrid.
(or soggy winter acorns seen as such)

to be in it... and to know it,

at the first sight of hyacinths, daffodils
... a man, woman and dog
- all distinctly American,
but the dog-
binging on sun like everything else,
unaware or distracted
- the birds punctuate invisible through all -
and her heat needs me to feel it.

in spring, we are.

Something About Soul (for Alice Coltrane)

It hangs^
The way they spoke of her hair
some 20 odd years long,
still not yet stale.

I heard she was a mad woman
in that cool, blue-thang kinda way.

I've heard of her husband...
She does not care

Or would not, I don't know her.

Oh, and I heard she was from Detroit.
Now that I believe

... Woodward in the low, fickle winter sun
Not ash,
Or burgundy,
smoke from burning houses where the help don't come
or chartreuse-

In harmony with all that jive,
but funny She don't sound like It.

They told me she played church music,
Reel religiouslike
simple understanding,
"grace"

Tran(sc)e-ndence

But the explanation,
where words fail to
form tones of celestial divinity
bound by cycle-
hangs.

I heard
She was gifted in her own right.
Found a way to-
give off light,
I cried to myself
choking down coffee and cold hashbrowns.

... And believed again,
the idea that

the Prodigal son had a mother.

And of-
warm blacktop daze
in our cars
in church parkinglots-

... And not quite 20 years ago I was put back into that cold water.
And didn't they know that I thought that was weird?!

.

..

....
..........
..................

-... .- .--. - .. ... -- / .. ... / .-- . .. .-. -..


 ...?

.

They don't really care what I think either.
~ That's what they tell me anyway,

I heard she was crazy.

911 Wealthy

The taste of water,
or,
the color behind
when eyes closed

The scent of a
cluttered home
A place we rent quiet

Emotional traumas,
or,
lived-in fabrications of
Love

A locked box
with contents known
of angles and tones

Slap back ping pong,
or,
earth life indoors
tended as a ruler

Burned as sage
in the ceremony
in vulgar pottery

Drunk; 31 + 1 (Handwriting is important)

I know you won't come to the door
-when
-when I'm frum
-when I'm fumbl for my keys
                fumbelin
               (fumbeling)
            (losing sight of)

If you're hung over

("Be my little Baby")
              -the Ronettes













I don't mind.
Sleep n as long as you like

I
   will make you mashed potateoes

And not think too much about it

And cry because I'm happy


-and the snow plow outside
grinding deep


The investments I made in myself
-payin' off

It's embarrassingly hard to cope with
   Knowing you with


Tears on my Grandfather's shirt                
                                           shirt
                                       sweater

Intune with the Bar

The godless find Salvation
     in community outside of dogma
In things they put faith in
and take for granted
-find time to leave
create New Years Resolutions 'round
and borrow pens and napkins for
Intimate books in a tome
understood the same way
as Holy.

Summer Dust #2

Slow glow-ed, Summer dust, heavy loads
on the horizon;
Shaky
I sat in tall field grass, dry dry heat in blades,
in a season-worn, stomp-flattened church park;
Lutheran.
Thinking on heat and sin, sub-suburban housing developments where sad girls play ugly music and wonder about sex.

Golden, Black, Blue-green and iridescent insects hum,
zzzzzseeeether and ClicK in open cycle- harmony, dis, and back-
eat and fuck and don't think too much about either.

Smelling phantom spring, long'go baked- Slow
cooked with potatoes, cabbage, garlic, rosemary and petrichor.

"... and how distant the past feels," I felt.
".... how mythical the inventions,"
"..... how unrivaled the events, how beautiful the snow flake formations," fleeting.


and I sat, Shaking, ready to vomit,
in the church park.
Feeling cheated and grateful,
feeling like a child.
Breathing hot air, I Threw my shoes as far as I could
and thought of the worse word I could speak,
Then I grew up.

Seney

The ____ ____ is coming!
(buzz)-(buzz)-(buzz)-ing-
in a lane, off the highway-
a shotgun blast,
slowed down and stretched out.
Bone-shaking, death rattle,
making Big Gus proud.
Slicing through timber (
with the timbre of the
twentieth century)
in one long,
slow,
moan...
sending its howl to the sky,
circling the vultures;
a pale horse,
on a pale horizon
whose sword is
the after-thought of fire...
sending its growl
mind-bending distances.
Never stopping, never stopping (
growing thin, but still persisting)
, dispersing like smoke from a joint
in a grey/white landscape
now stained with red.