I drive
into a never ending horizon 
through the night and into the morning 
I collect the miles
the road I’m driving on frenquented by
workers, bums, sinners and saints 
thier dirty feet scabbed and bare 
their eyes wide and ravenous 
Palms open to the sky 
a desperate plea for a direction 
a destination 
an end
I drive pass them, hitchhiking on the side of the highway, hanging around exit signs
I drive on 
beckoned by the road 
seduced by the infinate distance 
I see nothing in the horizon 
Yet I see everything 
The road leading me to whatever destiny I earned
This is how it was meant to be 

We know one another by how we move 

I was sure I was the bully on the school bus.
And I doubt my third grade victim
even remembers but
I’ll never forgive myself for that first time
I used my words to make someone cry.
To be fair, I was defending a cousin.
Even though I don’t remember why,
even though he was the step kind of cousin
and I didn’t think much of him
and he might well have deserved it.
‘Cause to this day that boy ain’t learned
when to shut his mouth and ride along.
I was too soft for the school bus.
Lakeside wasn’t too far
from our gray block house
and the day I stumbled down the steep
and sticky steps while hydraulics hissed
and I confessed my meanness
and tears streamed down my face,
Mommy had had enough.
There was spit in my dishwater hair.
She drove me to school the next day.
And the next and the next.
Sometimes in the big, blue Ford farm truck
with no power steering.
I’d laugh and feel my tiny chest
get tight when she’d holler for help
and I’d stand up
and set my feet wide in the floor board
and grab hold of the wheel with both hands
and lean into the curves with her. 

Last call at the joint down the street
regulars push away from the bar
I’ve got headphones on, my Friday night retreat,
playing pinball, a planet-less star.
These are days I’ll examine from afar
and think what a waste, what a lack
of imagination, if only I could take time back
stow it in reserve for some future use,
a museum, a movie, instead of this track,
no free game, a life down the chute.

There’s a beauty in the sitting alone

                                                                                          for today, though
                                                                                          when morning comes
                                                                                          we go in clouds
and you ask me
what it really means
to shine—
                                                                                         and both pray God by night
                                                                                         be our incense-tumbling-thurible
                                                                                         a pillar swirling fire—soothing warm,
and I sear you in buttered sage,
snatch out the fishy bones,
and burrow deep through
                                                                                        the ragamuffin furniture
                                                                                        that doesn’t bother me, but she takes
                                                                                        15 dollars to a thrift store where
your burst head adiposed
addles—scoop! a bowl
of voodoo
                                                                                        snakes sell a low cash loveseat sale—
                                                                                        my love’s snazz and character charms me,
                                                                                        Grace slings the meat, and returning
I’ll bore you, and bore,
and bore you down to the seeds
of our sometimes union
                                                                                        also a table’s worth of three pounds
                                                                                        of food to our place in the rain
                                                                                        where I cook
the succulent fruit beckons
hither, hither unto my heart where
I’ll eat them both.    
                                                                                        because our children surprise
                                                                                        more
                                                                                        than they argue
What are you thinking
my old hobbyhorse?
I think best to forget.
                                                                                        and no one here will argue
                                                                                        at all. 
                                                                                        Not for several weeks of rest.
This is dissociative shit—
all we ever were to each other
that’s it, that’s who we’ll be.

Shards of light shatter off the water
this summer Michigan morning,
sun slanting like an axe’s edge.

The girls rousing in the dawn, stirring,
the fishy breeze flowing from the West
and the promise of unfettered freedom.

J. isn’t home, but his boat keys dangle
from the iron hook, ready to Ruth’s hand, 
and readily taken–the call sounded,

the five girls don their colored glasses 
and take to the wood-paneled craft
hulking with muted speed and power.

Key turned, motor purring, bubbling water
rising from the propeller’s spin–
now they glide out, like a bold swan

cleaving the glassine surface, the
prow painting a silvered “V.” Ruth urges
the throttle forward, the rumble building 

to a roar, the thin, triangular wake 
swelling to waves: rows of soldiers, 
an orderly force, invading the shore.

She laughs, the raw power of the boat
rising–the girls all grow heady, 
overpowered with sun, water, and youth.

Objects abound like model train towns—
leafy willows dipping, fishermen
drifting, buoys and rafts floating—

only a frame to the urgent motion 
of this boat now carving circles that
cut the freshly incarnated wake in half

and the circles, the spinning, becomes
an intoxicating challenge to beat back
the wind and–slicing–capture the past. 

Past Orr’s Point, spiraling, the speed
increasing, the prow lifting to the sun
the motor stampeding into the light.

And then, a crunch, crash, and crumbling:
this steed bucking and twisting suddenly:
Ruth cuts the motor, the prow now flaccid.

Looking back, there is a cartoon scene:
one old man clinging to a rowboat, fishing
poles sinking, an oar outstretched toward

another venerable gentleman, eyes
full of fear and fire, grasping the blade,
pulled inchingly, achingly into the boat, 

blood boiling up behind him, staining the 
greenish-blue water with red, the three
primary colors that make white and 

in this he moves toward the light, the 
lifeblood ebbing from his leg, which 
the propeller, those cast bronze blades,

nearly amputated. This man–who only
expected to catch fish and bullshit with 
his friend–succumbed to the void. 

Where did we stray? 

Who will pay? 

What is the reason? 

Whence this season? 

Why did it shatter?

Does it matter 
that she is twenty-four?

Is she more or less ruthless or an 
arrow shot by fate to bring him home?