Dixon Ticonderoga

 I will improve 

My letter-forms

I will improve 

My letter-forms

A man can strive 

Thus in any century 

Fighting with all my breath to breathe. To inhale deep and feel free. To inhale and not feel a pain there in my ribs. Not feel the knife that twists at night as I twist in my sheets. My ruined bloody sheets. Rubbing broken glass into my skin. Rolling in my ruin. Rolling in my wreckage. A burnt fuselage with weeds growing through it on a mountainside. The heat, I can't sleep in the heat, summer sees long shadows grow under my eyes. Summer sees me dripping in my sheets staring at the ceiling. Summer sees me grimace in the night. I twist and wrap myself tight. Pull the sheets against the morning light. Still awake. Still unsated. Still unsaid. Never still, always moving, branches in the wind, no wind down here, no wind in this room, only the heat dripping down the walls. Only the embers glowing in the hot night and sweat pours off my back as I stare up at the black the clock on the wall says four and I'm no more just a gibbering hulk on the floor the bed's too hot, too small, too big and empty and full of sweat and twisted sheets and broken glass and I'm an ass and I'm a villain and pack the wound with liquor to keep from healing, wrong, or right or scabbing over at all.

And so I fade and flicker and shadow stumble into the dark like a jack slowly drowning hands up to be held and to be held up and to be warmed up from the twilight blue depths a bed a curse upon my lips and on my shoulders and on my back a monkey and a name and a set of lashes long and bloody twenty-seven years under the sun and in the rain and through the pain and through the sorrow all a brighter tomorrow and. A thing is as it is written and darling I think we both know we're both smitten and loves not love until you are bitten and I am laying it on a bit thick and I am feeling a little nervous a little whirling dervish feverish and wild and all in all just a child I'm a loser I'm a sot I'll drink all the whiskey you've got put a quarter in the box hear a song I'd rather not put me down put me in wipe me clean of my sins sorry about the mess.

Now we all just stand in line and wait until the time says no more you're dead and you'll die the same at thirty as sixty four and also four and eleven and there's no such thing as heaven just a dingy dirty floor and we'll all be asking for more but we won't get it we'll be dead

Untitled: dried up

The money's run out. The bottom of the well fell down. The bucket's rusted and the wheel is cracked and the rope is frayed and the mortar's been pulled out. Drop by drop the well goes dry and nobody understands why. If you give it away, they'll take it away, and who can say they put any back? Not me, I only took, and now I'm so thirsty my limbs are shook and shaken and quaking and drying out until the blood blows through my veins like a thirsty dustbowl twisted and the money's never coming back. We can break our backs digging a new well, but we won't find any water, or oil, or gas, just earthquakes and cracks where our homes and families used to be.

Untitled: bicycle ride at night in the rain

At the end of the day when the streetlights come on I am the only person in the world left alive as I ride my bike down empty streets past homes where dead people sit in front of flickering television sets. Dark houses lit by ghosts on screens, flickering static and dead laughter, and dead tears, and dead hopes, and dead dreams. The dead sit on their couches and watch somebody else's dream and I ride on past them in their million hordes. Castle by castle. Keep by keep. I ride on into that never coming sleep. They sit behind their walls and the dead do not stir, do not dance, have no thoughts of sweat or toil or romance, but they sleep with wide open staring eyes having dreams poured into their dead sockets, into their dead and rotted minds. And I was dead once too, and so were you, but tonight if we ride, tonight if we stir the air in our passing, if we push these limbs once more up the graveyard hill we can feel the wind through our hair, hear the whir and clack of wheels, feel the cold bright steel, of our bicycles in the night, maybe we'll come to life and live again and breath again and dream again.

Almost Doggerel 1

The ocean in its depths cannot hold me
 cannot chain me cannot bind me or tie me.
I float. I rise. I am the swelling tide.
I leap upon the shore,
glad in the sun and melt
I am foam, nothing more.