COOK OUT FOR THE HAY MAN (DYING)

 

“I’m livin’ off earth and swirl of the early motion of has been. A shakin’ loose like a 
storm heavy full of thunder loosening itself all at once on the below. The puttered dirt 
battered and the pat on the house roof
                                                              yes tin.”
                                                                                The laid down man spoke for the 
sad village of sheds become barns
(his heart the biggest barn
 empty of all its animals.)

I confess
a conflagration of sun couldn’t.

A conflagration of sun drowned in the diesel the tractors drank couldn’t

I confess

a conflagration of sun drowned in the diesel the tractors drank struck by the lord’s 
lightning couldn’t
          
                           cut the dust and dark of this abandoness.

I confess.

In the yard grew a gathering,

(The faded brazen ring of the tub’s open mouth
 moss sits the stand still water)

a gathering
                  ached with the air of before.

A configuration of fences spoke past like a tree, and an old mare unraveled the growing 
months with a laid down noise and slow sweat birthing the pores.

Spoke and spoken
                             the glassy eye isn’t calm but far along with the reigns of restless

unrest
                    unrelenting.



ORCUSEAN RUSTIC VISTA

Adopting a colonialesque stance
the old man opened an oratory
on the ramifications of the lighting and the thunder:
tilled a panoply of dances from the front yard,
as the crowd and clouds gathered,
and tossed stones into his wheelbarrow
ferrying the weight away.


After the hard days

The man appeared and blessed the domestic serendipity of the ashtray.

careened into months

With a crash lucid as the moon come down
he crooned cockeyed and ebullient for the path and reach of the wire.

the year was realized

As the crowd gasped and stood he chained the word highway from his roof.
A heavy disaster hung like a thousand strung puppets.

Across the street we befriended closed blinds.
Stayed clear of knocking noises and the mailman.
Placed the dirty laundry brooding over the house phone.

We sang softly to the shoes we adorned.

We said goodbye small town.



HOMAGE TO TAXIDERMY

Fisher girl
               what have you done

preserving the said, dead?


Our broken apart house
                                     your now together house.


What did your husband think when the shell arrived,
the saw horses waiting for the weight like pallbearers.


Toil and cajole
                       toil
and cajole


I’m a stuffed fish pretty as you make me.

Eyes black as holes in a casket.

The green spilt-oil gleam of scales
shinning like a heaven you can’t have.

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