Bark

I don't remember if it was a wedding or a funeral, only the flowers... seemed like millions of them Soft, sorrowful, white flowers... roses or orchids? I don't remember now, maybe magnolias... You smiled a thin smile, your face pale, washed out. If it was a wedding, I wasn't the groom. A funeral, I wasn't the guest of honor. I never could get things straight, somehow.

Sepia world, barnstorming, brainstorming, building up, looking out Of dusty cracked windows to see it all happen, now, again, bold Into the empty yellowed skulls piled up around the old church Only on morphine days, though, when we fall out of grace God, look at the crows, how many pilot their way across the sky Obscene noises through the dust, shitting on old rusted machinery Abandoned throughout dried-up, smashed-down stalks of corn Here, to the left, the foundation of a house that no longer exists There were good days here, once, weren’t there? Maybe not…

There were ninety-nine drums in the line, speaking loudly about thin white blankets, bedsores, red Jell-O, disease About the sky cracking and falling to earth in sharp pieces About the old nodding out more frequently now, their bodies shutting down for the last time, faint groans and sighs The buttons have been pushed in sequence, no return now Crossword puzzle books and Uno cards abandoned, TV unwatched, drums drop out one by one until at last only silence Not even shouting down the halls, but whispers I remember the trees were just beginning to turn when you left And how a hard driving rain swept across the grounds The sky cried all night

Iron thorns push through skin, I’m part of an installation piece Flesh and bone, metal and stone, electronics Wheeled in on a cot, phones for eyes That never ring But I see how they look at me; (they’re thinking) How lonely it must be to slowly die alone They smile anyway, good at faking it After all, it’s their job One day the artist will be able to push a button, and I’ll spin My speaker-mouth will sing about snow Only one more push allowed And I’ll spin into space My last human thought will not be of you, but of us, together Sitting in the cold morning, coffee and cigarettes Back before they began assemblin

My brain needs food, maybe peanut butter flavored Something to jolt it into gear, into inspiration An old 45 on the Invictus label, or lemonade stand sun Maybe the Necronomicon, maybe crow-dancing Something to awaken me and start a fire downtown Could be you, your hand grazing my cheek gently But more likely something old and iron found in dreams Something besides the wavering headlights in the fog (Where the fourth line of this stanza just disappeared) Maybe a ghost owl and a near-dead crow in a duet?

An oil-painted robust cowboy riding beneath epic Western skies But a dark cloud passed, a tumor grew, dreams rotted and festered; yippi-ki-yi-yay, Goodbye. A dark court of one-story apartment buildings, hazardous, broken Decorated by a rusty tricycle, mops on back porches, dead dolls Fear of the one-armed man; Goodbye, goodbye. An old man with the smell of disease about him lies in thin blankets A faucet is dripping, a clock ticking, a dog howls mournfully outside Empty bottle of pills; Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Three pears on a wooden table, light and shadow Texture, composition, color; who cares? A black cat looks on, curious but lazy Pick up your brush and paint

Spools, large and wooden, empty now The kind that used to hold industrial cable The rhythm of the trucks have left their song Imprinted upon them, all down the borderlands Cryptic drawings and messages scrawled with knives Ola, T’kia, Celestial Dawn, all have danced there Beneath the moonlight’s unerring eye, (I was up above it) Redemption for a dollar, smooth-skinned, (Now I’m down in it) Stranglewood, gangrenous, limbs protruding Jungle drums mixed with a wealth of tangled wire Ghostly incantations, chanting, fires burning All in Ohio’s darkest regions, like hell, like chainsaws Unkempt and unclean, Guinevere dr

Twenty-four black clowns getting out of a hearse Throwing moon pies at the doors of the unsuspecting Dancing in the dark streets, singing woeful tunes Brenda, where are you? Come to the window Twenty-four crows baked into a crusty moon pie Still alive, cawing “Stop the madness!” with vigor We all forgot where we were for a moment Until Connie appeared at the window and sang Twenty-four women sang my water-dripping song Christiane leading, lilting, trickling in the night The black clowns played on, yesterday’s dark jazz But they never lifted their voices in song again Twenty-four open windows, chorus in black robes Evenly

The way of the world, dancing, bright colored dreams, biting into life like a plump orange. Soul to soul, the sound of crowds and music reverberate, singing “Summer! Summer! Summer!” When the day lasts as long as it wants before retiring into smooth starlit night, we pair off and head down to the lake, the holiest of holies. Beads braided into our hair, faces painted, we sing the songs of our ancestors. We make love, ignoring all those things which would make these days unreal. These are the best days and nights, tattooed upon our hearts. This is where we awaken and dream. This is where we learned the Fire Dance so long ago.