sky-set symbols

caught in between a valley of concrete one forgets where the borders are
where the pavement fades to earth

but in the web of streets and tires
rooftops and commercial lots
and coils of rusted train-tracks twisting like unbent paperclips across the messier side of the blue ridge mountains
a glow of pink evening light fixes it's subtle gaze through the clutter

and finds me

lingering like a hand that puts gentle pressure on muscles i've overused


and at night time when the pink has dissolved into thick, inky black
the moon still finds a way to haunt me with presence
like the brother you fear and love
paranoid in the stark light of something beautifully and terrifyingly observant


the sun trumps them all
but words can't describe what my eyes cannot look at
words can't paint the picture of pure light


in the crevices between the wild walls
to find these things
these heavenward symbols
sky and moon
and sun
i need only lift my eyes

spared

i paused for a moment to hear the rain fall on the car roof
every split-second thud is a marble on the brain
a match to the wick
not the warmth of it, but the brief synapse of sound and sight as
dark becomes spark

tiny but awful

nothing a fine point sharpee can't fix...
or the wordless song of rain on a car roof

lonesome whipperwhil

the sounds of the stage are too loud for the quietness of what you have to say
the whipper-whil has no such platform for it's lonesome call
only a crooked branch rising and falling in the breeze
like a ship on the brooding sea
like the upturned slant of burdened eyes
heavy moods
dark and sleepless submersion into
dark and hap-less bottles

you have sobbing hymns
songs that gray the colors of night
or rather deepen the blues

and nourish the seed of some
weepish
willow



"Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low:
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

I've never seen a night so long,
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud,
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a Robin weep,
When leaves begin to die?
That means he's lost his will to live.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star,
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I'm so lonesome I could cry. "

-Hank Williams Sr.

never

i stare at open windows and say
"someday"
unattended ladders too
watching shadows of me perching on public rooftops and running down alley-ways in the dead of night

but someday was last year
or yesterday
last week

it was when no one knew me and I hid behind the people who knew their shortcuts home and their long ways to the mountain

when i hopped in a car and the mocha i grabbed on my way was my only certainty
my clothes stuffed in some bread-rack

i am a stranger
so very never

i wear you all like a string

and i'm only lonely in the back of my mind

almost so very never

I have seen ugliness today...

but i love the sound of rock on rock
hand on limb
heel on ledge
slip of stone to curve the step
toes in dust
palm to earth
slide of skin and denim on edge

nothing to speak of the ugliness
or that dark that found a way in

but i love the green of the traffic light
a backdrop blink
two stories up
to color the brick
behind your stage
remove me as i watch you sing
and dull my panic's sting

nothing to speak of the lonely ache
or that dark that broke it's way in

i love the glisten of frost on grass
5 am
new spring warm
arch of the neck to meet the sky
before i let myself in
cold and empty
but free of guilt
and free of tangled strings

nothing to speak of the ugliness
bitter tongues
struggling smiles
prelude to end
vagabond style
or the darkness that nestled in

all i want is rock on rock
soul of the shoe
where water creeps
cold as ice
brief as spring
rock on rock
grip to limb
heel to the air
where winter has been

gonzo

sometimes my search for peace
is like Hunter S. Thompson's search for the so called American Dream
a vulture's eye to mark the death of something only skeptically believed in

and in the spinning heat of some blind-eyed vision
Gonzo's crazed barrage of type-writer clicks becomes the score to my frantic animation
the stumbling of my feet
the grasping of my fists
no less fitted an art than Sergei Prokofiev's illumination of Peter and the Wolf

hardly making sense and far from vapid

but peace has no lasting home in a turbid dust cloud
and it makes only brief company with the flailing of things

this i know
because heavy it rests on my silent stillness
throbbing in a room where nothing moves
until the invisible parts of my mind spin like water down the drain
or the spinning spokes of a Hell's Angels wheel

it strikes me odd how wildly active
a motionless room can be
and how sought-less findings
humble the cynic in me

and i find myself chasing vultures away