Just A Shell

She's mad at her face. Cuts
It like it's her doing
Only a shell, baby: it rots

It turns to shit, gets you around
Is all. Other shells make
Fun. Worm food is worm food

I heard something as
Loud as a mirror. Just needed
A new temple won't come

Down on me & sit 
In ruined dark
Forever & ever

Is worm food
I'll yell at them, kiddo
Daddy loves you, sweet girl

God gives us you kids to
What did she say? Baby,
Don't listen to them

Think you have trouble 
Sleeping, pops? 
Won't do. That boy'll have

His way— we'll bow to his
Holy cocky statue (pray he has
Daughters.

Pray pray. Always in here
Always in here. Always always) 
Pray. Life is on

Your knees. I'm praying, baby
I was young once
He drove his car off a cliff, took

All of youth with him
Haunts me forever
Sweet girl got the wrong face

God don't make ugly, darling. Cut
Yourself when it's the world
You're after. Lightning bug

Summers, little cousins
Slam slam doors slamming
Thunder on the stairs, fussing 

Every which way
How you cared for them! How 
I miss it

Little kids sticking up for
Little kids fill that hole with
Unearthly soil. Night

Light in the grownup's room. When'd
You get so sad, baby girl? What
Don't you see in that mirror?

Baby, look there 
Look look
Why'd you go and do that?

Tell me all about those summers 
Lightning bugs, remember?
Tell me all about it

Tell me, baby
I hate this world, baby

On The Road

Johnny Snakeskin has an idea
has a mouthful of American broken towns
whiskey tumbles past those yellow rocks     in that shitty face
Johnny sits right up against the bar
at its runny weepy lights

highway coils to eat us
breathe when we're somewhere (this is somewhere!)
skinny neon yelling at the unfinis  hed universe
yell   at the squashed black bug of night
scurry   inside already!
piss   on the road and its critters

there's Johnny and that idea of his
float our mystical cloud over him
bring him our noisy rain
where'd you get that name, Johnny Snakeskin?
(the cloud palace is crawling with kids, just so you know)
what happens when you walk outside into 

that wild emptiness?
what then?

I still need to know all these years gone

"I have an idea," says Johnny
into the terrifying universe
up at our horny cloud
"you and me'll trade bodies
I'll make it so you don't make the mistakes I did"
so we did
it's an absurd thing

I don't know where I got this name.

Stupid, Old Cigar

Why did I light
this terrible thing?
must be a year old

parched and sour
lying in that case
old corpse

touch it it falls to dust
put it out now
& go on licking

sour cadaver 
off my lips
broken and hot

in front of these teeth
lousy Sun
what'd he do today?

work the winds into a lather
nearly blew my hair clean off
made time to cook lips

you were busy
smoke lays there
looking down my throat

like a kid dangling his
legs into the rest of his life
won't make a difference now

so I'll go on sucking at
the damned thing
til my cheeks touch

make myself like it.

Pretty Ordinary

A dream came true,
I'm telling you it did
a little thing
next to theirs.

I'd stand a ways off,
see if I was tall as them.
what a fool!
Made the puny mountain small,
made the one next to it look like it 
broke 
into outer space
like when the dream was just a strange jewel

Over there where I'm pointing.
My body will turn to trash 
all the same
I fumble in the black for loved ones.

I still sit on the porch
some nights, listen to those
whatever they are
climb onto the rotted leaves,
break the tiny stems,
crawl all over the garden,
but I can't see them.

they're pretty ordinary I'm told,
I just can't see them.

Spring Came

Spring! Spring!
My non-believing eyes see 
green plastic stars

up and down the branches
The tree is a shy kid
softest hands made my head tingle

I thought you'd never come!
Bless your heart
I'm sorry for

what I made in my head
I thought you'd never come
I'll laugh now

with the laughing rains
Spring! Spring! 
You made it

I told myself I wouldn't
get sad at the winter
I did good this year

I really did
My friend, he didn't make it
the winter was alright, I thought

but he didn't make it.
You're the miracle I needed
I read the Bible in your

new leaves
I see Jesus Christ
up and down the branches

he says the world is broke
the world is broke
Cry with the weeping rains

It's broke
but this should cheer you up
and it did.

About The Weather

Little kids play their game,
get awful mean after a while.
Well a person is all the stuff
they scream in themselves
How loud and frightening
that voice is 

All alone in its own head.

better smile and  
shake hands,
talk about the weather
(used to make me fierce

Now I think it's all we got
what keeps us from going
into 
 the 
   black 
      sea 
& 
Not coming out.)

Drunk Kids

Those drunk kids piss me off.
            Their indestructible 
   laughter, that hollering 
slides up the side of the 
building into my room—
I was so gone I lay on 
the road. They grabbed a foot each,
pulled me into the black grass.
            I lay for a time.
They fell into the cool grass while
the cigarette’s end got red.
Funny sharing cigarettes,
funny the clouds at night look 
like frightened cats, someone said,
  their magnificent laughter 
               stretching far into my life
—fizzes and gets sucked out
and hurries back on them,
their idiot laughter 
         in the foam.

First Snow

they can’t reach the water 
in their arms. Not all that

symbolic I suppose
            it’s a kind 

of disastrous ash to 
the crickets or

someone in old-fashioned 
clothes holding 

a bag of flour that 
blew up in their face

Snow comes off in
bits of sun, takes 

the dumbfounded 
leaves with it and 

now it's   boney 
      arms and winter
if they like it or not.

I knew this lady,
she'd go out and shake

the branches with a 
pole when the snow was

just new.

Goodbye, Youth

Singing notes burst on 
rattled strings

rust a little in 
grownup breath   and disappear 

just like that

He sits with the gravestones
        not really disrespectful
just plays a young song  to them

The ones under him say where 
they are with the 
stones
(part of this world as much as anyone)

The young man keeps making
those singing notes 

drill 
   down
    down 

       into the soil

and another is walking 
inside the fall leaves
They whisper on her life

wind blows tears into and out of her eyes
make her a little and 

a lot older

the ones under the graveyard
well, were they after love from 
the whole world or  just a handful?

is it alright to love the dead?

Young Mr. Graves puts  down 
his guitar 
some years  later  he 
picks it up again

His little ones don't know about the
playing in the graveyard

they just don’t know about that stuff

he sings to them and his voice isn't so good
so maybe they'll know
he's singing for only them

           And the stones move and
fall off mountains
Sometimes you hear them sing:

                "Goodbye, Youth"
 "Goodbye, Youth"
(and, boy, some of them got really good voices)

but that noisy kid over there'll
burn up  before the world 
 gets him down

He won't hardly see the world
from up there
and it hurts my eyes to look at him

So I sing, "Goodbye, Youth"

Old Mountain Pass

aspen
silver and ghastly
yellow coins vibrate on 

turning wind
see them snap off

sparkle 
on the air 
hardly a moment

mulish pines whisper in their secret shade
mutter old blood like 
fretful old folks

"teeth
pieces of his shiny gums
her hand on the demolished face"

over and over in 
the wind's voice

hear the horses strike the mountain like 
gods upon us 
hear them tumble

into the valley
into gathering shadows
  driven like hell by those sons-of-bitches

you'll remember it
powerful and fearsome
twisting over dim mountain into 

that ancient thing
sun counts the frightened trees
must die

feel the strange time of year

part of me remembers 
here and I 
long to be on the other side