your mother's bedroom window

                          
                            a shadowy recollection
                            of her frayed woolen sweater
                            hair-pinned and pulled
                            back neatly in
                            thin braids of auburn
                            amid early autumn vestibules
                            of her mother's inner city row-home
                         
                           I recall her
                           upon bleak November skylines
                           as blackbirds
                           scatter above
                           neighborhood rooftops
                           leftover chrome
                          from scrap-metal junkyards
                          toss refracted beams
                          into oncoming traffic
                          off route 309
                          fast-food chains and convenience stores
                          sulk in pale apprehension
                          of approaching evening
                       
                          I knew her in the pressing night
                          clutching frosted mittens
                          across frozen township intersections
                          flickering streetlights
                          snapshot an irreproachable moment in time
                          exhaling chilly p.m. air together
                          into youth's imaginary twilight
                       
                          gray cigar stenciled smoke
                          ascended
                          from next-door chimney grates
                          forever forgotten
                          into our earthen atmosphere
                       
                          on sleepless nights we'd peer
                          through
                          your mother's bedroom window
                     
                       
                          you softly whispered something
                          in my ear
                          I laughed
                          and
                          it tickled I
                          envisioned you
                          momentarily after
                          letting your hair down
                          into livened auburn waves
                          of early autumn imagery
                          inside your mother's
                          inner city row-home
                          in November

                          only
                          I awoke
                         you were
                         dead
                          and
                         it was
                      December
       
                         
                   
                           
                                   

god's country

                                        
                             Far as I can remember, God has been there
                           
                            on inner city subway lines approaching late evening
                           
                            as interchangeable pedestrians
                           
                            sidling down latent afternoon dooryards 
                           
                             of early autumn 
                           
                             leaves of auburn
                             oscillated gradually
                             downward
                             from withering branches  
                             of summer
                             once seethed in
                             tangerine rays
                             transfixed to daylight saving
                         
                            I watched you walk away
                            months prior to
                            Easter
                            and its flowering folly
                           
                            we bared witness to
                            oncoming spring
                             in its arboreal mannerism
                            our season as lovers faded
                            quickly
                            among the deadening treetops
                            of winter 
                            as squirrels scurried
                            atop the showering pine
                            frosted in mortal anticipation
                            of God's country
                            and his incurable essence
                           
                             January snowfall lingered
                             throughout eternity
                             blanched in tranquil reluctance
                            
                             of life
                            
                             and 
                             its lovingly kind predecessor
                            
                             Death  
               

within these walls

                                
                         Time does not have four sides
                         never did and never will
                         Time does not have a cushioned ceiling
                         to continually smack your head upon
                         until the dulling pain
                         culminates to agonizing torture
                         confronting us with
                         one abrupt lifelong indecision
                         to live or die
                         to fall or to endure another moment
                        of complicating simplicity

                        Time does have four walls
                        I looked upon them for decades
                        some of the walls acquired memories of
                        first kisses, premature ejaculation
                        and drug addiction
                        Some of them reminded me of women I once knew
                        especially the walls of
                       older apartment bedrooms
                        I lived within

                       Time is kinda like these women
                       they both came, went and
                       will not return.
                       Some are dead, some live freely
                       some beaten into incomprehensibly demoralizing resignation

                       The walls have always been there
                       constantly changing with the seasons
                       in sickness and in health
                       in joy, sorrow and fear

                      I made love to you within these walls
                      and said I'd never leave you
                      I told you lies within these walls
                      and you believed me

                     I died within these walls several times
                     only to be resuscitated by paramedics
                     within neon lighted halls of
                     inner city hospitals
                     I wouldn't be able to tell you the
                     names of the people that saved my life
                     but sometimes I think about them
                     when I'm alone at night
                     within these walls 
                      
                   
                         
                      

                    
                 

  

 
                       
 
                   
                     
               
                    
                        

                        
                  
                
                      
                       

letting go of you

           something way over our heads

           happened years ago                                             physically &

           when I met you                                                                metaphysically

           a pubescent morning sky
           opened out onto                  

           early Autumn sidewalk cafes 

           on the outskirt of the city I
           failed noticing the
           withering auburn pine
           spreading
           solemn evening ashes
           supinely among
           a day shortening skyline
           outside our apartment window
           cars motored past in grim procession
           while loving 

           drugs and not

           you fore

           God had a plan

           it was all
           gonna come back
           automatic and 

           haunt me one day
           alone
           as darkening shadows played
           their way through
           our nightly bedroom curtains
           your grey apparition 

           danced round the foot of my bed

           at the evil stroke
           of vulnerable midnight

           perhaps it was not you who died

           but I 

           and this routine purgatory knew no rest

           nor end
           'til now

           I'd like to meet you at a local bar one afternoon

           or maybe a village train station

           trivially make eyes on an evening turnstile

           one rainy weekday in June
           when

           things  finally change
           and

           I terminally let go of you

           driving your spectral vision 

           six feet deep
           into
           the muddled soil

           

           

church bells

                               
                   church bells resonated
                   one deadening evening
                   behind rural county curtains
                   piercing poignantly through
                   our late Sunday silence
                   another summer weekend climaxed 
                   toward juvenile autumn
                   its provincial fires 
                  slowly igniting up an
                  assorted pastel conflagration of
                  maple and pine
                  past their prime
                  gradually ambling up
                  our township skyline

                  replaying father's latent words
                  tween my mind's tired auditorium
                 "remember son,
                  she will destroy you"
                 
                  I made love to your sallow core
                  fore the mild autumn, cold in its war
                  prior to being borne
                  fore the fall of man, nor
                  calling you whore
             
                  I made my way over to your apartment
                  whilst you were alive
                  I did things, write
                  we'd fuck
                   and fight
                      
                  between hollow weekday nights
                  and
                  mother's bourgeoisie magazines
                  stacked sordidly
                  upon residential restroom porcelain
                  perpetual moonbeams
                  found their way
                  through
                  family room windows
                  months before my eyes bled onto
                  your white, sable and grey
                  newspaper obituary inkling
             
                  church bells pealed
                  behind the unwinding sidewalk
                  neighborhood cathedral
                  your body hanged in stale solidity before me
                  dead in the placid air
                  I
                  a dank shark caught in the quaint abyss of expired life
                 you
                 as a good
                 book put down
                 in haste
                 shouldn't have ended
                
                
                  

Holy Ghost (a love poem)

                   
                              Holy Ghost where are you tonight as
                              dry summer air envelopes
                              the remote distance
                              between my love and I
                              our once dank supple bones
                              worn crippled and crisp
                              for more than a season now
                              you and I have fallen
                              one night closer toward the ancient burial
                              and missed

                              Telephone wires mockingly intimidate
                              our brief and feeble intimacy
                              alien to present nightfall
                              this rural city background
                              ashen and azure through complacent evening
                              before grim suburban skylines we
                              as premature pigeons
                              continue fetching breadcrumbs
                              up local cable poles
                              fail and
                             repeatedly hang from the wiring
                             only
                             to be yanked down into divine domestication
                             by God's humane hand

                             Holy Ghost it is no other
                             than you who have
                             let me down the most
                             gently back onto planet earth
                             returning us to Mother Nature
                             Instilling morality into
                             the damned and wicked
                             forgiving the world
                             in it's unforgivable folly
                         
                             I hate you tonight Holy Ghost
                             You took my girl
                             and her aerial retinas away from me
                             temporarily shuttering the dreamscape windows
                             to my soul
                             enclosing me in your cold reality
                             leaving me mumbling an
                             'Our Father' to you
                             in the vacuous darkness
                             and it's writhing solemnity
                             If you're listening now
                             please bring my girl back
                             before the Autumn
                           
                           
                           
                           
                     
                           
     
                           
                             
                             

girl from durham county

                          tawny olive skin enveloped her attenuated profile
                          one windy day in May as
                          "Black Velvet" radiated from sea-foam green
                           convertible windows
                           parked off the carpeted Appalachian freeway
                           peering out onto Meadowmont Village
                          one Chapel Hill afternoon
                          years ago, I recall
                          southern hair spread out
                          'cross breeze driven Carolinian skies
                          crisp evergreen incantations
                          reverberated throughout
                          back cottonwoods
                          filled with blackjack trees
                          tinseled in seaweed brine
                          hung like Raleigh county mistletoe
                          decades ago
                          we kissed
                          below
                       
                          What a pair of
                          maple eyes
                          that tranquil evening
                          I plunged myself deep within
                          the incurable marrow of her being
                          celestial firmaments opened wide above
                          our youths arboreal spectrum
                          water colored skylines
                          suggested
                          terrestrial undertones
                         somewhere along eastern ocean perimeters
                          I threw my seed down
                          she
                          initially attended UNC
                          at the cusp of the technological millennium
                          much later on
                          misplaced herself
                          somewhere
                          between
                          viridescent briers of her
                          step forefathers
                          whom
                          tarheeled and feathered her
                          one early morn outside
                          the local abortion clinic
                          oh well
                          we were young
                           then
                         

only loved you when I was drinking

                     We met in a village dive-bar reeking of diesel
                     what you may of been thinking
                     relocating into a filthy tenement building with me
                     must of been pure adoration
                     though I
                     only loved you while I was drinking
                     which was
                     as many hours
                     there are in a day
                     save those angelic morning moments
                     as incandescent light beams
                     played their way through
                     our fourth story window bedroom
                     winter, spring and into autumn
                     you savored every
                     sober breath we took
                     as I
                     ardently pecked at your pallid nave
                     seeking your sweet redemption

                     The twilight of my youth
                     lasted six and a half years
                     recalling how beautiful you were
                     and how unreachable you became
                     to me, you were
                     demure in feminine mannerism
                     delicate in feline stature
                     nightly sable hair
                     black as ravens crawling
                     over either shoulder
                     animal-like under daily covers
                     people in our lives
                     coveted you
                     and asked what your problem was
                     being shacked up with a drunk like me
                     you'd rush to defend me
                     while I continued drinking
                     and
                     throwing you away
                     beside the recycling bin
                     where my true love lay
                     
                      

                  
                      
                     
                      

girlfriend on methadone

            She'd destroy everything she touched
            and
            how she destroyed me with her touch
            was there nothing behind those ashen eyes
            she'd see right through me
            towards the ashtray
            heaped with mentholated cigarette butts
            I really thought we had something
            in the juvenescence of the year
            what she really wanted was
            a refrigerator full of imported beer
            and a pocket full of fresh electronics
            I'd serve as a temporal crutch to artificial domestication
            soften her hardened reality for awhile
            quiet things down upon the living room carpet
            smug before a nightly television
            we ambled below fallen rain one evening homeward
            through this sullen armpit of a town
            she didn't like how the cold damp rain
            fucked with her high
            one hollow night
            I received a timely telephone call
            to be expected
            she'd be no more
            and serve as a whore
            to a middle age male homeowner
            In the end
            all her dreams
            she'd rather shoot into her jugular
            my love for her
            remained
           
           
         
         
           
         
                                 
             
     
         
         

For Miss Mcmanus

                               Dear Miss Mcmanus:
                                             
                                               After callously venturing through restless seasons of the world
                                               you've alone embedded your name
                                               upon the narrow landing of its crystalline mantle
                                               in return
                                              I've constructed an perpetual altar for you
                                              upon the familiar throne of my heart
                                               all I ask
                                                is to gradually mount life's trivial staircase with you
                                              your elemental eyes widened with fire, love & grace
                                              how i long to belong somewhere between your legs
                                              and your face
                                              autumn winds will blow
                                              long before the pine-trees know
                                              their boughs to wither
                                              in fallen winter snow

                                             an ethereal Springtime
                                             you are to me or
                                            long forgotten solstice of summer
                                            whence childhood dreams
                                            painted a tranquil sheen
                                            of pastel indigo
                                            on our minds impressionable harbor
                               
                                             our love together
                                             is beyond any vale I've ever traveled
                                             more precious and delicate
                                             than any prayer
                                             mumbled fervently
                                             in lone bedrooms of adolescence
                                           
                                             angels drift beyond measure here
                                              their words soft and amiable
                                              whitened & velvet
                                             clutching nighttime silhouettes
                                              you
                                              must be one of them
                                             
                                                                                            Your lover
                                                                                                       Dan Pollock
 
                                             

love don't reside 'round here

                   
                                    Mid June miasmas envelope the outskirt town
                                    subtly penetrating ones memory 
                                    urban streets deftly wrung out
                                    like blanched century old washcloths
                                    as I turn up King from 2nd Street
                                    peripheral junkies cower atop
                                    twilit neighborhood door stoops
                                    post evening shadows
                                    project then descend
                                    til dawn's routine annunciation
                                    disembodied natives 
                                    anticipate local rain tonight
                                    fallen from rusted havens
                                    of junkyard delectation  
                                    cemetery photography
                                    taken aside cryptic mausoleums
                                    of millennium old archangels 
                                    spun out on methamphetamine 
                                    jump starting eldorados   
                                    down soylent morning streets
                                    of degenerated desolation
                                   
                                    I had a lover
                                    she arrived somewhere between
                                    March's deafening ides
                                    and Junes platonic struggle
                                    soon to be misplaced
                                    perpetually forgotten
                                    within spring's infertile hearth

                                   A fiery bond forever broken
                                   once soldered firmly in steel, lust and wire
                                   mechanically loosened through
                                   previous weeks spent
                                   fucking with the odometer
                                   yea
                                   I've seen her countenance change 
                                   shackled to love's fatigue prone radiator
                                   a gas stove turned on high
                                   in the back kitchen with
                                   god on the back-burner
                                 
                                  
                                    
                                 
]                                           
                                     

every child of God is a brat

                                   Since the fall of man
                                   every child of God became brat
                                   individually we attempted
                                   engraving our rain degenerated wormholes
                                   into soiled timelines
                                   of futile grandiosity

                                   eastern tenement landing
                                   a Jew middle-age slum lord
                                   harasses juvenescent females
                                   into exploitative inebriation
                                   stale apartment hallways
                                   christened in bug spray & semen
                                   in from
                                   moonlit section eight balconies
                                   of euphoric recollection
                                   midnights spent star gazing
                                   through bent translucent bottles
                                   of lower shelf bourbon

                                   Enrique Sanchez
                                   working class resident
                                   one with the 42nd street ladies
                                   lit up like the fourth of July
                                   every macabre Sunday
                                   as placid evening
                                   reveals a week's grinding assent
                                  what we breathe for
                                  lambently resides
                                  within our daily domestic tribune
                                  of uncouth dog food bowls & mistaken laundry
   
                                  youth's irreproachable candle wax
]                                 melted decades ago
                                  beyond its invaluable wick
                                  indispensable years spent
                                  trying to resurrect 
                                  the dead doorman as
                                  assorted cadavers lay supine tonight
                                  spread out cross the village morgue
                                  Louie the uptown mortician
                                  a bipolar necrophiliac
                                  had his way
                                  once again
                                  through the wee darkened hours
                                  with your deceased loved ones
                                  ashen fingertips
        
                                  
                                  lover
                                  shriek my name down tetanus alley
                                  do not let us rust
                                  as olde Shakespearean
                                  angels of alcoholism
                                  ride our sexual organs down
                                  into the stark penitential gates of Hades   
                                    

    
                  
                               

dead geraniums

                              a few years back
                              not recalling exactly when
                              within Halloween's fiery hearth
                              an acrylic moon hung all
                              jacked up on the right
                              suburban roads paved in euphoric evening
                              sidling windward
                             down residential streets to a main st. pub
                              to be with myself
                              nothing had me
                              in its fervent grip
                              clutching paper napkins
                              swaddled in
                              fluorescent orange orangutang fissures
                              pumpkin ornaments
                             drearily disheveled
                              spread out cross
                              the local whiskey counter
                              six pack family station wagon imagery
                               this location
                               this wretched county
                               kindled my bitten fingernails
                              along crescent full-time noons
                               it all led up to melancholic memories
                               of you in Brooklyn
                               being read Faulkner
                               by a middle-aged man in khakis
                               in some art village gallery
                               where poor bohemians waste all
                                their time and money
                               attempting to impress the impressionable
       
                               I walked home flattened
                               discouraged
                               throwing up imported
                               beer on
                               the dying geraniums
                               behind your mother's
                               old nail salon
                               back at my apartment
                               I recalled
                               why exactly
                               you
                               moved to Brooklyn
       
                               
        
                           
                             
                              

retrospective seasons

                       afternoon presented itself innocuously at one point in time
                       golden days scattered into seasons
                       a frivolous sun settled down upon
                       swaying trees gently pressing against an auburn sky
                       something happened to me
                       memories came crashing down
                       as decade old crystalline chandeliers in
                       drunken barroom brawls 
                      
                       artificial light radiated sharply
                        once in each others presence
                       til a familiar gasoline burnt down
                        continuing running on decrepit fumes
                        much too long
          
                       your nose has been running lately
                       but where's it going?
                       where it all goes
                        down the human waste-pipe of intellectual futility
                        our past is as an old rustic shoebox
                       desolated through bland epochs of pointless history
                        among sordid
                        personal pathos
                        and embarrassing marketing logos
   
                        Friday night on the blanched hems of the city
                        you, the bathtub boy and an inexpensive bottle of plastic gin
                        run-on mornings in cheap motels
                       surrounding nightly phone calls
                       to a middle-aged woman in Massachusettes
                       that lectures you
                       "learn to control your emotions before they control you,
                        find a way to curb your lust and desire
                       before you wake up in the local holding tank
                       with the gutter queers you know all too well"   
           
                       My youth has faded beyond any possible recognition plus
                       what's the point of holding on to it?
                       When all you got anymore is all you have learned
                        to wake up every morning and try not to kill anyone
                        including yourself