Mont Clare

There were stockpiles of grain during the Holodomor
And waves of emotion a thousand miles offshore
If I let all the heat out when I open the door
Then what has everyone been praying for?

4 in the morning, on Armistice Day Eve
Your grand uncle Elgin was poisoned in his sleep
His lungs turned to paper while the delegates convened
Now, 102 years later, it’s occurring to me

That I don’t wanna live without you

The skyline reminds you of the lives you fell behind
June of ’72 when all the water left the line
The stain upon the stucco, the bruise upon your mind
You swore that you loved them, but you kept it all the time

Every single memory that I ever cured or preened
The only way that anyone is ever truly seen
Silent night, daytime dream
Are you there? Were you waiting for me?

Me, with my plaster on my lath
And my heather in my grass
Towing that path
Of least resistance
Two teeth missing
Still insisting

I don’t wanna live with you

Oriole Well

Play to 11, stay out all night
Wear on your tendons, swear on your life

Venture investors shuttered the plant
You’ll get a bachelor’s at 11 percent

Somersaults in a singlet
Letters in a ring, purple and white
Consolidated Rail
Hot on your trail, every night

It’s open waters when you’re in your brain
Wouldn’t you rather be constantly entertained?

Dam at the Black Rock, under Tunnel Hill
Ladder lets the brook trout do what you never will

Somersaults in a singlet
Letters in a ring, purple and white
Consolidated Rail
Hot on your trail, every night

Wolfington

Ain’t my memory supposed to serve me? Cause it laughs at me instead
Saying, Your pipe dreams tested positive for trace amounts of lead
You oughta rip em out and put em in a pile on the lawn
And sit tight till the coast is clear and the evidence is gone

Otherwise some Tuesday morning it’ll be 2002
And you’ll be made to ride the Wolfington across the Pipe & Tube
Sat beside your baby sister while some psychopath frustrates her
Asking, Who the hell is Jesse and what the fuck’s a revelator?

Well, I’ll show him. I’ll just toil in obscurity
Commit commercial seppuku on the sword of insecurity
And chalk it up to artistry and piety to craft
While I act like all the damns that I could give are cut in half

And wonder, What if self-awareness isn’t based in worldliness
But an impotent, postmodern reluctance to exist?
And, What if I’m not captivating when I take myself to task,
But exhausting, like a hand that’s raised before the question’s asked?

In middle school I learned an endless apology
That I recited and resented, and became a part of me
Now I’m 32 and I’m begging you to buy it
In a pledge drive for my ego where the tote bags all say, Fuck you, Greg Hyatt

The Bohunk

In ’32 they triturated you while you were praying on a land bank
In ’71 they dipped your first son into defoliants at Don Mueang
In ’83 the NLRB was all but pissing on your wingtips
Donald Dotson and the interests screwing you into a vise

But in your mind, you’d already gone to where the porches rot
And there’s a heart in everyone soaking in soda pop

Do you like that tassel taped on the bludgeon of power? Do you like your summer in the autumn?
If there ain’t nothing been trickling down, how come you gathered around the bottom?
In 2010, all your money was spent, you hit the reverse on your mortgage
Moved your bandsaw into storage, kicked your grandson out of his room

But in your mind, you’d already gone to where the porches rot
And there’s a heart in everyone soaking in soda pop

Rabbit, Run

Long-knighted, short-sighted
Mayweed of the Median
Bomber moon conceding to the dawn

Side cycle, the turnpike’ll
Shake your hand and heart
If I just knew where to start then I’d be gone

Am I still on your mind?
You ask me that all the time. And now I’m never falling back asleep.

The ladder’s in tatters
Stranding me downstream of
What I used to dream of in the aughts

Flare jeans, square screens
Meg White made of Legos
I watched it with the dagos down the block

Am I still on your mind?
You ask me that all the time. And now I’m never falling back asleep.

Proto-neo-
Classic-modern man
Just tell him where to stand and what to eat

While he runs through on Street View
Till his finger’s got a side stitch
The road is just black itch I can’t reach

Could I lean on what I seek in the corners of my dreams?
It could feed the candle quarters till it’s easier on me

Endless Panel Blues

Everybody’s clothes look so uncomfortable
And their jobs all sound made up
But apparently, I’d give a shit what’s a block chain whiz if he showed me his paystub
Isn’t he awful pleased watching me cower at his crypto-babble
While he asks me fuck all questions? Is this a goddam talk show panel?
And am I the host or is he the host, and when do we break for sponsors?
Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain

Everyone laments gentrification
But we’re standing in Kensington
Confusing Alex Haley for the guy who climbed El Capitan
While the sound system promotes the wisdom of some peckerwood songwriter
Who learned to play the blues from the Mel Bay Guitar Primer
So, is he the guest, or am I the guest, and when do we break for sponsors?
Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain

Everybody prefaces their every
Word with, I feel like…
And I’m, Of course you do—that’s why you’re the one saying it tonight
Lord, am I meant to resent how they live so deliberately
Because my life feels like this thing that’s just been happening to me?
So are those cameras on or can I finally drop the act?
Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain

Poor Kid

You might wake up one Tuesday morning wanting to shave your head
Or take a shine to American Beauty-era Grateful Dead
Or start sleeping in cars and get given to the drink
Or tie up all our savings in a roller rink

But every zephyr was once a typhoon
And butterflies come kicking out cocoons
Yes, if you wait long enough that blue sky’ll rain
Which is to say, I’ll always love you
Even if you change

You might decide to be a Ghostbuster reenactor
Or do a photo study of old nuclear reactors
And insist on the kids and me tagging along
You might grow tired of making love to ‘Bang a Gong’

But every zephyr was once a typhoon
And butterflies come kicking out cocoons
Yes, if you wait long enough that blue sky’ll rain
Which is to say, I’ll always love you
Even if you change

British Museum

Bloomsbury center, October 10
Two brunettes moving hand-in-hand
Spoils of empire, pearls out of the
Mouth of the world’s savagery

Love all day, love all night
Wish I may, wish I might


Wintertime on the Metro
One brunette in the hedgerows of her mind
Where’s my great granite cipher
That once decrypted my life for me when I was 17
When I’d go home on the weekends, and hit my feet off the deep end
And try to keep in the wheezing when I’d go inside?

The white man’s burden is to break your heart
In two

Feather-light and fancy-free
In a B-roll dream you saw in me
At the Grand Bazaar, way in back
Just a barrow boy fencing artifacts

Hampstead Heath, summertime
Two brunettes sharing sherry wine
Neither one face like mine

Stranger Becomer

Oh, the night is upon us
And the sights that the window promised
Lapse
Into mirrors black
Where the moon breaks into

The outline of your head as
If your mind were the fence out at Peasant’s
Pasture
When it captured
That stray Bleu du Maine,

If upon being wrangled
It had caught black and blonde, like the Funk and Wagnall
Spines
That once had lined
My room like a tomb

Then the sounds of early Townes on an Orpheus abound
While they’re putting Pancho down underground

And it ends how it started
Play pretend with a quarter-hearted
Kiss
From some supplicant
To some lord you abhor

While that line you were drawing
Like a blind got to finally falling
Like
The balkanized
Land I abandoned

With the rain through the basin
With the train blowing by my station

When the sounds of early Townes on an Orpheus abound
While old Lefty’s leaving town unrenowned

Then I go away and become the kind of person
Who has nothing to say when you tell me that you’re hurting
And that nothing seems to help
Except drinking from the fountains
While walking through the valleys all alone

Future Flower Stalks

If you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you

I just pray you’ll be out seeking exactly what you want
Not heeding all the bugle calls of other people’s hunts
Or feeling bound to yours truly or your mother
Should your homeland never call your name as clearly as another
Of course my heart would turn to rust, like a bike left in the rain
But I’d drive you to the airport and you’d never once hear me complain

Because if you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you

Of course you’ll meet a million people with lips to lay this claim
And hands to help you rearrange the letters in your name
Out of love for you, or perhaps for themselves
The struggle comes when you’re too turned around to tell
Where the line’s supposed to be or if it’s a line at all
Though if you ever track it down won’t you give your old man a call

Because if he ever needs someone, you’re gonna be the one who’s there for him

I just might be dying slowly while I watch the parking lot
Waiting on some demi-urge to slide me in a slot
See, I, for one, was too ashamed to see my outlook tested
So I just defaulted to whatever I thought was expected
Until in the most stunning way, you gave me all the help
I’d ever need to justify not quite living for myself

That’s why if you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you

The Basement of Babylon

I used to wonder, If the world’s ending, will anyone bother to tell me?
Then Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez pulled on the ropes in the belfry

I think I’d expected there’d be some grand outro, or mankind’s credits would roll
But in the great end, from 8 states away I hardly heard the bell toll

My neighbor tells me, the world isn’t ending until that’s happening to him
And he laughs when I half-jokingly scold him saying, Vanity’s a sin

But hold out, if you like, for that perfect goodbye to look back on what all we had
As for me, it’s enough—a daughter face down in the mud with her arm around her dad