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