When You Know about

When you know about

Solvents, alcohol can be part

Of the solution.

Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Couldn’t shoot straight last night ‘cause I’s in ma whiskey. Now, I hadn’t a drink.

Dinner and Drinking

Dinner and drinking and late hotel rooms. Not the news the family wants.

December Poem 2: The Flattened Shadows

Life on a black Monday extended as

To kill all the light in the house. Shaking

Out the man’s hands and god’s to hold loose their

Gaze, I find myself balanced on this blind

Woman’s grip of existence. The black and

White echoes of where things might be. Confound

These frozen nights frosted with angry dogs

Barking at the flattened shadow of things

Hidden only in the deep dark rising

Fast from the drunken steam of your own breath.

October Poem 19: God Bless the Damned

The quality of the light through the clouds

Blessing the trees softening the shadows

And lightening the green in the outer

Layer of leaves like the holy light of

The virgin mother. You were, vestiges

On the golden age of highway. The life

Of watered ice and liquored drink. Lights on

In the house abutting a busy street

Pocket. Over the bumpy road, threadbare.

Angry Japanese lanterns red in the

Window lit straight to the street beyond the

Road reflecting in pink. Beyond the

Weedy hill of the crack and gravel drive.

Beyond the utility of a knife.