Holler

This city apartment
is nothing to start with
like a home in a holler
on I-40 east

I pounded the batter
like potbelly deathcries
against my white truck
you beated my brains

A once-over cowgirl
told too many strangers
"the night was mysterious
and I never knew his name."

I told a big bopper
to twirl round the antiques
but crashing he went
with style and with grace

My dark haired Virginia
where spilling is nothing
as long as the cry-milk
is fresh every morn

a time honored rite
a time honored norm
a time honored sprite
a time honored roar

I saw a black doggy
in the sad drizzle
under the guard-rail
of some interstate

I put a blanket right next
to the child
on a tandem
a party boy down
no man down over here

my darling my darling I've loved
you forever
my darling my darling
I just want to
die

with you by my bedside
God's hatchet of course
pressed on my lifeline
I'm gurgling now

for Jesus hath spoken
and angels are knitted
in stockings o'er
cobbles and cobbler's
great-greats

bottles of sorghum
cans of grizz-green
dance in the moonlight
in Mentone, AL

Jongo

"So, you're a train punk."
"yep."
"You ride trains?"
"yep."
"Where've you been?"
"I've been to a tailgate party in Tuscaloosa. I've been to the Rock of Ages. I've seen that crazy tree house in Tennessee. I held the hand of a dead grizzly bear in Bozeman. I filed my tooth down on purpose because it was too canine and now I have no nerves in it. I slept naked in Overton Park and wiped my ass with Prince Mongo's wig. I drank whiskey with the Mayor of Olive Branch, Mississippi. I came on the side of an iron mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. I fell in love and out of a moving freight car in Asheville, North Carolina. I felt the love in a Margaritaville in Panama City Beach, Florida. I napped on a pile of rotting orchids in Roanoke, Virginia. I..."
"Have you been out of the South?"
"I said Bozeman."
"Aside from Bozeman?"
"When I'm in those places I still think a lot about the places I've been in the South. I think about them when I'm riding the Rockies. When I'm holed up in a recessed doorway in Cheyenne, I think of Savannah. When I'm out of dope in Tacoma I think of Ranger. When I find myself crying Oklahoma City I just think about Memphis. When I'm out of gas under a Redwood tree I googaggyf ff  fff fffffind myself in the interests of a good God atop Lookout Mountain."

Roots and Flesh

These roots

yet gnarled,

in rich earth

now barreled

into ethos

so quickly

bought

the neighbor's son

is smoking

pot

in shade of multicolored

wings

of umbrella

the retard rings

a bell for you

to shine like God

put a penny in the sod

revisit with musk

of genteel graces

smelling Memphis

in lonely places

as if to say please come back soon

"Have you really ever rented a room?"

bright lights fading

with dancing bears

and Jack Frost nipping

Pink Floyd underwear

us and them

and you and me

and shapely,

this yonder "thee"

truncated spoils

and woop-de-doos

are in the hold

of Jim's Sea-doo

calling toward the

brine below

the murky murk

the duck bones

riveting me with every

stroke

I hurry back

to the wood boat

teak and tall

yet ever-small

under this moon

Cool Springs Mall

the walkers there with

ebony eyes

CHAR

Super soaker days
Night smoke haze
a bramblewood chiminea
is the only indication of
settlers that have been before
a tribunal of their own making
"I thought they were half-human
and these people next door I knew not
I found their dog dead
in the drive,
a
RAID filled ball
with a smiling tear,
the smelly stuff porn
out
on the aggregate."
"Under these circumstances we
grant you amnesty and appropriate
your time well spent out back
with the trees blowing in the breeze
and the now-dead dog barking
at the squirrel den in the trunk of the
Tulip Poplar
and the dark cream of a windstripped
puddle in the base of a bowl
feathered and leaves falling
all about the
F
  A
     L
        L
season air that irrigates your scalp
the tundra of your mind
pores thru
the drive-thru
dramatic mean bug,

I wonder if you piled all of the cigarette butts
in the world into one
pile how many people would be displaced

If you never take anything away from 100 books
I hope you hide this in your bubble goose:
find a friend
cultivate gratitude
handle the hard
jog your jogger back
to the foyer
where the blanket read TONY
in script like a dying woman wrote it while
she was dying
with peach preserves long dried
in a shape not unlike
two dachsunds being biblical
DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, TONY
GOD IS ON MY SIDE AND
I DON'T HAVE TO JUSTIFY MYSELF (I DO)
I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE JUSTICE
I GUESS YOU JUST HAD TO DASEIN (BEING THERE)
you'll remember the smells
of Pulaski
when it "wasn't you back there"

it will be a time or two or three more longer
to come out of this, Ruby Fall