The Night John Tart Fell From the Roof

John Tart held with his fingers the crippled crumbling brick
The orange dust valleys and dells of his fingerprints
Cum-colored sweat and brillow bush head hair
Ferry the dingos
And chase the kangas off the golf course, lad

We climbed on top of tubas
And round bass drums white paper stretched tight
And snares
And dented trombones
And strings for wood delicate and finger prone
And the chalkboard with the dick chalk drawing
And the air conditioner hanging half way in and half way out
And the rows and the columns
And seats where sat asses cotton and pleats and the militant young bones of our boys and girls
We climbed to the roof
And we defiled an institution by dancing to the enemy’s anthem overlooking her shoulders and the stars

John Tart’s thighs worked like pistons buckled to his baseball catcher’s cup knees
A smoker’s heart
A tub of guts
Spider webs in his lungs
The lips of an eagle
A brain paralyzed by fear
Were the engines that drove those pistons through a dimly lit tunnel under the city
Dead men and ghosts called like cats through the steam pipes
Haunted sirens sounded in the black expanse behind my flash light
Whisper press on press forward ping sonar bats in flight

Ever’time I talk, you cry, he said
I don’t rodeo no more, I said

Too dangerous, he asked
I jus’ don’t love it no more, I said

He let go
And the bricks that fell after him
To land heavy on his empty chest
Were like the words I kept inside, always wanting to be said
Hurling themselves from my heart
After him
Because after all
They were his anyway.

9.2013

.

Thoughts Born In a Dark Cafe Booth

There is madness afoot,
In and around the corners you always seem to fail to look,
Where nothing is stirring but life still exists,
Perpetuation,
A continuation of things that passed before,
So someone screams and you think you hear a passing wind,
Some detail of your story has been corrupted,
Mismanaged,
And you’ve deviated from our society’s heathen systems of corruption,
Perhaps finding what matters,
Perhaps dabbling in love even,
From whence you were born,
Swimming unevenly in the soup of your parents’ bygone ideas,
Love that demands a satisfaction,
Grounded on the inevitable truths of selfish malevolence,
Hardcore violence,
Insatiable sexual satisfaction,

Does any of this make sense?
Make for you a veritable timeline with which to judge your own,
A sample of the perfect imperfections in your ghost,
The marriage of haiku and iambic pentameter,
In which King Henry’s insanity is overpowered by the notion of his mortality,
A simple three-line thought served lukewarm,
Spat from the crimson mouth of the prophet himself,

There is madness afoot,
Up under the blankets where your toes meet and your skin tingles,
Where life sizzles and seems to have meaning,
Infatuation,
The misinterpretation of historical proof,
You can’t help but claw his skin and beg mercy for more,
Some aspect of your vision failed to pass,
Beyond salvage,
And you’re left – lonely flesh and bones in a graveyard of perspiration,
Maybe even calling home,
Maybe even the words “I love”,
So it is given the time you’ll die,
Following in the footsteps of your faithful parents beforehand,
Love that merits every pain,
Founded in some kit fox lie of a black man’s card trick,
Following his hands,
Everyone needs a little magic in their lives.

7.2010

The Road's Conclusion

For one final time, I closed Jack's book on

the auditorium floor next to the stage
     where we were waiting for Dylan.

I fled New York for Denver following the footsteps of Paradise,

not knowing the road beneath me was the original beat home.

And there I was alone in my fascination of

a newly discovered musical consciousness around me,

opened to me by my lonely quest for miles

that led me to sit at the feet of a rock and roll legend.

What was this need to be impressed?

I was caught in the illusion,

swaying to the rhythmical current of the crowd all

lost in the sounds that were alive to me for the first time,

out on those same streets,

the inner workings of a magnet that Jack surely felt too,

finding Denver a stop-over that could not be avoided in

the long list of American wonder.

We all wanted to dig this place, yet up until now,

the only digging I had known was Seamus Heaney's.

Jack taught me the confinement of that dream.

I finished his book and woke up realizing

that Bob Dylan was a real human.

4.12.05

The Lamp Shatters

You asked me to spend time in your red hair
With our joints clacking like the piano in your mother’s bedroom
We collapsed
Aging
Reminding our tired hearts that we are still beautiful and still young
     and GOTdamnit there is so much left to learn

She must be cooking chicken tonight
     while we fuck on the maroon carpet in the foyer
The kitchen
Through the wall
Smells like dinner time in October
Her kid always running somewhere
     probably made three years ago in a similar position to
          the one we find ourselves in

Knees on the hardwood
Bones in the empty television screen
She holds me like a cigarette and breathes me deep
Deep
Into her lungs
We weep together like tortured children enslaved
     to the masters of Future and Time

Who could find us sleeping when the moon is full?

You are my breath and the length of my spinal column
You are electricity and you dance like a devil along my fingertips
You are madness and thirsty
     and we survive the night by feeding to one another poison
          from the tips of our tongues
Blind love
The wild rage that made you bite your lip
The lamp shatters to orgasm

09.2013

.

Almost Home

Lay her down in the river’s weeds
And let the warm water carry her home
Close your eyes
Let not the unbound tears escape
Her home, you see, is around the bend
And we must forge on upstream
You and I

Leopard’s eyes and Cajun lips
Your song is spread with the high fiddle
A dissolve in my throat
That proud moon wanking in the night sky
I pin a kiss to your lapel but find
     only skin beneath my lips
She drifts away from our fingers
A slow torn apart
Young and as beautiful as the stars
Home in a very short time
Her mane spread like discarded oil on
     the mirror’s surface
That shimmering flesh

We ate
Tore her to the pieces that mattered
The broken heart and mashed
     potato plate lunch on Saturdays
Bleed the black blood
Bleed the red blood
And leave me alone
My dry tongue sticking to the
     cigarette through which my words pass
Tobacco stains under your eyes
She swims with otters and ghosts tonight
With her eyes closed
And Neptune pointing the way

When you find yourself spinning
     dizzy mistakes and choices you could not smother
Warm summer breeze of her voice in
     the flesh and wheat
Those lonely secrets you cannot tell
Remember that snake the river
And know she is almost home

6.2013