Jolly Roger

Cogito, and thus I am damned, and thus I suffer,eclipsed like a moon in a sandstorm of light. Thinking is the beginning of my Fall,when I took up the hammer, and the anvil,like Tubal, and built a tomb with words. Words, words, words, the sum of my labors,my being the dust that is blown. When […]

The Wandering Prophet

The Wandering Prophet why do you love like a child, or a dog,with your mysterious sixth senserunning like a horse in an open field why do you skip with a delicate random,as if you didn’t want to soil your soulwith the predictable why do they go blind in a room full of light,or cripple up […]

Black Hills Evening

We await another trigger dayanother rope tighteninganother bone shakingwith the old man reading deathin the scattering Crazy Horse on his horseagainst the stone mountains the sun was shining todaythe ducks were happythe water clearthe ponies grazing we must movebut we want to staynear the crystal riverthe trout breaking why did you whisper to mefrom the […]

Madre De Los Dolores

She made my life a living hellbut oddly I somehow loved her. She was like a noxious weedthat breaks through the cementand keeps coming upwith belated “fuck yous”to the weed killer. She had her roots deep into my earth,my wife, not my mother(who hated her) and her gin bottles were tied tothe car when I wed herdaughter (which gave […]

The Closers

They get whatever they want.Sometimes they want to talk of justice,or they deign to talk of justicewhen what they want requires justiceto be spoken of. They want power. One time I sat in a jazz club,and the spider web spunfrom my cigaretteshowed no traceof any victimbefore making itselfinto a smile,merging into theartificiallight. Outside the clubthey […]

Rimbaud, “Dawn” (A Reading)

I embraced the summer dawn. Nothing was stirring yet on the fronts of the palaces. The water was dead. The crowds of shadows had not yet left the woodland road. I walked, waking vivid warm breaths, and the precious stones looked up, and wings rose without sound. The first adventure, on the path already full […]