Who shot the Alabama kid? Gunshow cock robin yields to lore. That’s not enough anymore. Chicago on the horizon. Invasions are everywhere. The mesquite trees are winning. It is time of year when the weather can’t settle – right before the assault of the histamines – painted by Nicolas Poussin. Something to look forward to at the bus stop or in the graveyard. I am told we are winning the war.

Read old poets right old poems. That’s the way of it. When I was a baby bard, I tried out Romantic phrases w/ anon and blithe & wrenched wretched syntax. Goofy shit, but no practice is wasted. Rumi is still telling us to take off the mask, ol’ Bill Billiams the doctor man must always tell us the young sycamore, on & on like famine & war, and the teams head brass and that goddamned yellow square of charlock narrowed and narrowed. Mohamad Mossadegh sleeps in his living room on the isle of Avalon. Sunday night’s blizzard is already drifts eaten away. Some of it doesn’t stay. And then it will again.

The antique shop sells
unlabeled VHS tapes.
One of them contains
a man teaching silence
to a room full of clocks.

despite evidence to the contrary

in her mouth
was a green door

ebb tide
a deep blue ocean
on the other side 

under the beach apple tree
the green-skinned saints
are all on meds

if he’s not the son of man,
who’s wearing one sneaker on the burning off-ramp

The door had given up on locks.
It wasn’t the kind of door most people pushed.
Greeted by steep stairs peeling.
Pigeonholed behind glass
he held our freedom in bejewelled hands.
Rubied beacons caught in bulb light
blinking an S.O.S. I chose to ignore
your softly spoken voice laced with danger.

It soon became apparent that there was no money in this:
The poster in the Sydney hostel read
Clean bricks in the Outback
Where Ned Kelly used to roam.
Accommodation & bus fair supplied.
I should have known better.