Because (After Reading Cynthia Atkins)

Having changed meds
and left the
hands that lifted me
from the gutter,


and screwing that up
too.
Having left the girl
who said she
wanted a child,
my child,



who said she
loved me when
all I wanted was
to be fucked and
sucked
by my fantasy mistress



death.
Drive-by
check-ins
of preachers and friends

so very broken
by a Christ church
woman with a
full sleeve tattoo.
Scooters girl
had ruined my

world.
A daughters attack

mortal wounds
a thousands paper cuts
then one hundred
thousand
again.

Having fallen in love


with a Goddess, a queen,
a pulsing bright light,
celestial star.
Laying awake
and knowing
never could I live

up to her imaginings
then sleep
and running to her
like one hundred lives
before,

and knowing
she had always been the one.

I searched
for the solace of words
that would connect
me with
another,

for some teather
that would
connect me to



humanity

in some spiritual way.
I needed a salve for my soul.


Having checked the post
on Friday, then putting it off
I opened the
book

that
opened
my
heart.

I read her words the words
of a Jewish Yankee
Colombia MFA
and she answered.

Why
I asked
and she replied

Because.

Down Days

Like the antenna
of my childhood
home,
wind blown and
not quite
pointed at Memphis
across the
cotton crop
blooming white,

and the good
stations all fuzzy,
the sound not quite
right;

like the hustler
that fucked Jesus
pocket full of silver  
guts ready to burst
straining against

his own
hangman's noose
in a friendly
field of blood,

like standing
too close
to impressionist
paintings
on cold slick
museum floors

the beauty
lost according
to perspective-
unable to
back up,

these are
pieces of
my burden

this is what
it is

on the down
days.

Mason Dixon Lines

If I am a poet,
I owe it
to the air
of Arkansas.


I owe it
to flour-battered
pan-fried
main courses
on Mama's
Sunday table,
to bacon grease
seasoned vegetables
from her garden.


If I have
stories to tell,
they are stories
shared with me
by deep-lined
tan-faced
old men who
meet and talk
daily
at small town
Post Offices;
who tamed the
Sunken Lands,
who cut
and floated timber
in Ozarks youth.


I owe it to
my Big Smith
pinstriped overalls
everyday of his life
Grandfather who
worked the soil
of Milligan Ridge
from the steel saddle
of a chugging,
spitting
Farmall tractor
and sometimes
busted redball
Snooker racks
in town for fun.


If I am a poet
with anything
to say at all
it is because
I have known
complex country girls
who read Faulkner,
and clip coupons
and fight
tooth and nail,
for family
and friends in need.


Maybe I am a poet
because I shot
guns with my father,
bourbon with my brothers,
and much worse
with a girl
from Alabama
I met in
a Christian Rehab.


If I am a poet
it is only because
I dream dreams of
the first love
I lost and
live with regret
still
of a thousand
other choices
I have made.


I am a poet
because of
Dixie ragtime
and barbed wire
prison blues;
Fourth of July
family reunions
and south of
Mason Dixon
moonlit nights.

Bad Breakfast at IHOP and Falling in Love

"Could be
one of them
Catfish"
slurping coffee
with an
accusing flair.

I looked for
the polyester
betty who had
taken our order
and faded away
into IHOP
hell.

"You know like
that ball player-
the Samoan
kid and the
queer"

I screwed up
my face,
"First of all
you're a dick,
and second-
the fuck are
you talking
about"

"You say this
chick did T.V.,
she's a singer
and such.
Jesus just look
at that picture-
so outta your
league"

"Her dads
some famous
beatnik dude
that kicked it
with Frank"

The hard edged
waitress
whose mouth
remained twisted
into a speed-fueled
grimace
fairly threw
plates with
bacon and eggs,
burnt hash browns
and tweaked
out of sight
before I could
ask for
Tabasco.

"Have you ever
seen this broad,
you know
face to face?"

My head ached
and my stomach
did back flips
at the sight
of egg yolks.

"Does she know
you got nothing,
she know you
did time?"

Not for the first
time I thought
that booze made
for strange
company, and
leaned back
and belched.

"There's no way
to tell you,
that you'd
understand-

first you're
a dick,
and second
she writes me
these love poems-

she's
shown me her
soul."

I bent over
the bad breakfast
and ignored
the look
he gave-

it sounded dumb
even to me
but I loved
falling in love-

and do not poke bears.

Heart and soul

My words,
yes,
that is what
drew you,

that sparked
a rememberence
of connections
long ago.

A dream,
since,
that is what
made you

yearn for
a love shelved
 a moment
'til destiny's
deja vu.

Your poems,
love,
 they are
treasured

they are
written in
ancient ink
onto my
heart and soul.

The Moon Knew

Only the moon
knew

of their love.

An ethereal
passion that was
not bound 
by time
or geography.

Only the sun
and the rains
could understand it.

In dreams 
and verse
they danced
with his 
calloused
working man
hands clasping
her silken waist.

They had met
a thousand times

Dublin and Dresden 
Mozambique and Marseille

and in rolling hills and deserts.

Always they loved.

She had been
a dancer,
a Queen, 
and once
on a tiny
Pacific island,
she was worshipped
as a Goddess.
His lives
mundane 
in contrast,
but always he 
found her 
and always
they laid down 
in the clouds
and floated in passion.

Just after a war
in pillaged South
they wandered
dirt roads
and she sang
to him,

he rushed to
show her his 
favorite place.

They were 
eternally destined,
but only 
the moon knew

of their love.

Having Fallen in Love

There had been women.
Some of them
said they loved me.

I guess some of them
I even loved,

but I had never
fallen in love
until I was
nearly fifty years old

She seemed perfect.

We met at a freaky
little hippy church
downtown and she was
sunshine, she was fire.

I asked her if
she would let me
write love for her,
smiling she said
yes to me and
I gave her my heart.


On Tuesdays we would
paint in plate glass light
and listen to music
and sometimes our
fingers would touch
or she would tussle
my hair and I would
be drunk from her
presence. I fell in love
with her in that way
that only the most
foolish hearts can know.

When she was through
with me I wanted to die,
and others could see it,
people waited for it to
happen in that peculiar
way that morbid racecar
fans wait for mortal crashes.

But I didn't kill myself,
there was no need,

for having known the
elation of falling deeply
in love like that then
having it snatched
away was like

not being alive

anymore. Suicide
would just be redundant.

Man to Man

A man now.

The time
has passed
so quickly.

Faster
than sunlight
the scores
of seasons
pass
and you
are no longer
tiny
and frail
and swaddled.

Neither are
you the
adventurous
young boy
on a first bicycle,
fresh unshod,
free of training
wheels just
as you were
free of the
constant
attention of
frightened
first time parents.

You are
a young man
now and not
the clever teen
so much smarter
than anyone
else he knew,
not the angry
half child,
half adult
who maybe
never understood
why your
father was
not around,
why it was
that he didn't
even call.

You are grown
now and I
wish I could
explain to
you what it
has been like
for me too.

I can't.

I mean you
know
about the dope
and the long term rehabs
and the trips to tumble lock grey prisons.

You know
I have failed
at a being a human
in the same way
that I failed you
as a father.

It cheapens
how you must
have hurt,
the feelings
you must
have known
lying alone
at night in
my sisters
home,

your home,

for me to
make excuses
of breakdowns
or to try and
explain
how I felt
the need
to wipe away
hot tears
with arm loads
of sticking pricks.

I can only
ask you

man to man

to give me
another shot
at knowing
you

at loving
you

at having
you
love me.

Gina Nemo ~ Don't Take Your Love From Me

Twilights Song

Long after
the ice had
melted
in his glass
ruining the
potency
of his drink,

he sat at the
keyboard,
staring, wishing
he could
write the
perfect poem.

Long after
the meeting
in past lives
on dusty devil
crossroads
where he had
rushed ahead
to show her,

he ached
in heart
with longing.

If he could
but put
into words
his desires
and passions,
if he could
write the perfect
poem,

he would
tell the world
of her beauty,
the beauty
of her soul.

He would
share the
laughter
that cried out
of him
in the stillness
each time
his mind went
to her,

each time
he wondered
what the
jazz mans daughter
could see
in the dirge
that was his song.

A Fathers Gift

Everything
I ever learned
about the hustle
I learned from
my father.

He never
ran game
but on Sunday
mornings he'd
hold us all
in the palm
of his hand.

In a neat line,
on stubborn
wooden pews
with Mom,
two brothers
and three
sisters
I sat
while Dad
( who was
a high school
drop-out )
taught me
unknowingly
the power
a keen vocabulary
and a clever
story has
over a man.

I learned
that speaking
softly
drew the ears
closer,
and that
meter is
the most
important tool
of all.

I was schooled
in the value
of giving
them something
to believe in.

Even if they
couldn't see it.

Everything
I ever learned
about grinding
for dope
and money,

I learned
from my father
in a small
country church

on a dusty gravel road.

A Decent Poem

My hair would be
standing out long
in all directions.

Rolling Rock
bottles like dead
men at my feet.

She would be
cleaning, organizing,
whirling in all

directions.

I'd be watching
the television
not listening,

thinking about
the things I wanted
to say eternal.

I want a house,
I want babies,
I want to make
a difference in
peoples lives,
she'd say.

I'd nod,
and scratch
and smoke a butt.

I just wanted
to write a
decent poem.

My Burden

Like a song
played on an
out of tune
guitar,

like store front
city streets
in dying
southern towns,

like green
hand picked
tattoos blurred-
distorted by time ,

the thoughts
that twist
and wrench
through my head
some nights.

Like a newborn pony
I walk uneasy
on shaking legs-

one a.m.

two a.m.

five and six.

I am a dervish,
I paint,
I write,
I cry.

This is what
it is like,

this is my
burden.