two views of the Bucklaw Garage

cedar and blood

i go outside
with changing thoughts
of the last cedar leaf
in my vest pocket
that does not breathe any more
the aroma still as fresh
as the day you picked it

i am cold
my eye gets stuck
then rotates
one hundred and eighty degrees
i look in


tucking our disease
into a temporary experience
as is the life of fleece-lined hearts
i walk the moon road
beside a coyote’s confronting cry with ease
i feed from the immediate flesh of now
bathe in yesterday’s blood
kiss a night’s dream goodbye

drawing lines

I have tried at times
To draw within the lines
Walk the straight line
That is how they taught it
I have never been able to do either
And have felt the acute criticism and shame
So here I am playing with lines again
Stepping over ever so slightly
In my ignorant ways
To see outside those lines
Of moral infringement
That is not mine

Allegiances and betrayals of fathers and sons

Concentrate it
This culmination of events
Hanging a lantern in the spotlight
Often has a greater life to it
Was he real
Talking to god
Maybe I’ve just been talking to myself all this time
So I lit out to the territories with Huck Finn
We had history mining coal together in the sixties
There was no need for further explanation
The forced uneasy alliance
In a Butch Cassidy pivotal moment
With the civility of guns and handshakes
And long hard times

these great moments of significance
lost in cloth and rain
leaving only a breath to remember

Cover Letter

starting from the womb when the seed was planted

and some fifty six years later they say,

"It’s a good start."

you have begun is what they mean

the notion of success and failure

where normal is this great body of water

we swallow whole

choking us from any new discovery

safe as we die on the couch

wrapped in red ribbon

a gift to god

we start

again and again

these lives we live

so many through each moment

stuffed hap-hazard into a duffel bag and carried

from door to door

selling who we are

who we refuse to be

it’s a good start

understanding that in between

our start and stop

there are lives

many lives

　

[I did a so called commercial job recently. The responses I received

resulted in this poem.]