FROM THE LINTEL

Let me on through, Janus.

I’m standing at your door,

rapping my knuckles sore;

standing on your floor

is degrading,

evermore.

Let me on through, it is

my time---I hunkered down

a decade, carrying the world on

my back, pulled myself up

by the bootstraps:

work---forevermore.

Let me on through, two-face:

you see ahead and behind

but not what’s standing,

starring you in the eye:

let me on through,

or....

I’ll knock you from the lintel.

I’ll knock you

from the lintel.

***

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Timber from the keystone! Rise

of the unsung Titans, the grunts

in the trenches; if I’m knocked

down to carry the world on

my shoulders---no matter, I

do it anyway. Tax, tax, tax,

take what you will; ax, ax, ax,

live by what you will

---no more.

INDUSTRIAL PARK

Young black spruces, ten

feet apart, frosted by

warm (late) March snow, line

along a demised rail-

road (now overtaken by

grey brush, thickets and trash

trees); the path a snow floor

Black turning tractor tire

marks swoosh through white

parking lines---by the

     hundreds

Light posts overlook

the adjoining parking lot,

(wet black)---two four-storey

blue fluid tanks

loom

                titanic behind

THE ENGINEER

I’ll be a train

on the brink of derail---

but I’ll be a train.

My pores hiss

steam out of coal-fire,

furnaced deep and hot

white: entropy: its got

to go out, somewhere.

The time is now

and the place is you.

ALIEN HEADS

Details---

I get chewed

at least once

a day at work

about details---

they change

are forgotten

or disappear

daily. I am

criticized

about details

manifested

in

implemented

by

corporate heads

---alien to

my own.

CITY HAWK

I

A hawk hunts the grass between east- and westbound lanes of I-480. It walks stiffly, swinging brown and white tail feathers, lowering its hooked beak, looking for carrion.

The speeding traffic should scare’em. Yeah, it should. But he ambles along like an old man field-searching for flint arrowheads, or, like an old woman picking berries from a thicket.

To the hawk, the city hawk, the verge is a bank---the light pole a tree---the pavement a river---the cars a current with a rubber-asphalt roar---rushing water. It should scare’em. Yeah, it should scare’em.

II

A hawk perches

the arm of

a streetlamp

one of many

lamps lining

the highway

(two-way river)

He sits

and watches

for something

moving and small,

he sits---for he

has nothing else

but to do

He sees a jittering

black dot, hunger

aches hollow bones

and he dives, tall

buildings, traffic about him

FIRE CHEIF

Cruises along

wide black street

in a red

and black Crown

Victoria, smoking

a stubbed cigar,

window cracked

smoke serpents

out above

the guilded

yellow lettering:

City of Brookpark

FACE OF DISGUST

A haggard old man

rifles and digs

the public trash

can---black steel

bands bound---next

the red, white, blue

and black bus stop

sign.

He finds a piece

bits and eats it.

A man waiting for

the bus watches on

with two six-inch sub

sandwiches hanging in

a sack from his

hand.

He sees the old

man search diligently

eat shamelessly out

of need and is over-

come by profound

disgust, so that his

face twists, lips

turn down, eyebrows

slant, nose crinkles

wrinkles black lines

like a crumbled news-

paper, pity pangs

his thoughts to a uni-

verse of sorrow, eternal

pity.

He reaches in-

to the sack and hands

the old man a sand-

which before getting

on the bus and riding

away.

GO TO HELL

Love is black

discs in the eyes

inlets to a

deep abyss in-

side is where

I fall, weightless

head first, eyes

black beckon me

They implore

adore, attract

What is love?

A whim,

an exception?

I’ll do this

for you but

everyone else

can go to hell.

SITTING ON TOP OF THE HILL

Looking conversely down

porch-perched along an asphalt ribbon

wrapping down to windowless

bricked factories and particle-

boarded store fronts, where 
I used to be.

A brown grey black sparrow

hops to and fro the spotted grass

and cracked sidewalk

looking for his daily sustenance 
only then his flight. Where 
and how far?

Looking conversely up

Midwest-grounded and terra-
cotta obstructed, an impulse 
manifests from the back

black and urges him

forward and up---

Why him? Why now?

Nothing to do but

act upon it---lost

friends and family

the unknown and new

faces.

THE ANTIDEPRESSIONIST

[recto]I

[verso] know [recto] everything

[verso] is [recto] going

[verso] to [recto] be

[verso] O. [recto] K.

THE CLOUDS

Rolling in,

bringing change---

the ever constant---

your reaction? Turn

and face the wind.

SHE WAIT

I picked her up at the front of the high school Saturday night. Plastic gold, white and grey swirled granite and glass, a bastion of school pride, stood behind her. She sat upon a folding table, waiting for me, kicking her feet in a walking airborne rhythym. Long, curled strands of mahogany clasped a naive face. We were to go out and see, each by their own, if anything fond could strike. She was pretentiously captivated in me by sight, by cherry-picking me from a crowd the week before. She was already all in.

She looked at me like I was a god. And to her perhaps I was---the one to deliver her from parental constraints to my constraints in a new domestic world. It was in her smile; that smile. A happiness that shadowed judgement. Judgement that lived in moment and young aesthetic which existed in a world turned by hindsight/foresight and old, old logic. She was lost and hardly knew it.

It was in her eyes. Glass and sparks like a bottle rocket fixed at target not knowing that it would eventually explode, finishing in spectacular burst of spark, fire, red paper and heaped disenchantment. To her nothing could end like this.

The limestone lane met the lawn. Dusk rose, infused its rusty sky into an evening black. Only the equinox could cast a harvest shadow to make the blackest silhouettes of corn tassels, like an army of dead, dry soldiers waiting to be cut down. I was eighteen. It was the last semester. She wait like the rest of the world, stopped dead and black with yellow and violet dots swarming like fireflies off in a void.