trane ride

“From such crooked timber as humanity is made of,

no straight thing was ever constructed.”                                                         Kant

he liked the shelves of white rock broken and turned on end by the Earth

their noses jutting into the crotch of the bright sun lapping blue skies

the broken fingers of brush hanging at the edges of rock slides

where they grabbed the descending earth trying to save it

the fingerless earth unable to grab back or pull up

uninspired by the yanking brush

unable to cease their slip   

the demands of their gravity

knobs of their bones strewn in sorrowful rents

beside the railroad tracks lie the desiccated skins of black and white cattle

drawn long by runoff into shapeless sacks

except for the elongated tubes that were once their legs and bleached portions of skulls

peering out of their mouths    

under improbable trees blown wayward and ridiculous

                                      rusted corrugated tin sheets collapsed on a broken wood

skeleton  timber beams and broken ribs

                                                several boxed rooms broke flat  indistinguishable 

an immense cow flop  digested  then evacuated thoughtlessly

“There is not a negro alive who does not have  . . .  rage in his soul  . . .  this fever has

recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die  . . .  Our failure to love without

due care . . . ”                                                          James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

careless loving  thoughtless loving  or love ignorant of the ramifications that supple

pairings may grow brittle

                                          a quiet fragility 

while supple can sway and bend and withstand abuse and force  brittle shatters

and splinters 

becomes sterile   

        then what would become of all that Beauty

                                                                                        a formation of empty pilings

driven into a low tidal creek  for some reason

stands forgotten  unfulfilled    patient

dry rot permeates its heels

                                               pits its heads like a worm-eaten lobotomy    forgetting 

remembering  

                      forgetting to remember

                                                                                                      or remembering to forget

once possessors  now vagrants

some still erect   crumbling proudly

while others turn   slump

the collapse of an ancient tree is heaped with spent fence posts and planks   kinked

rusted barbedwire and uprooted shrubs gathered with nooses of hemp rope slashed

possibly   Once thought to be burned in a raging bonfire 

                                                                                         a fireballs tail nailed to the earth

Now embraced by sexual wood squids in orgy

tenacles winding  groping   intertwining

                                                               finding sexspots  beaks agape  gasping in boiling

pleasure

                  and among them odd calcified skeletons  tight-lipped  bitter  unpleasured 

ugly  sullen  untouched

the train turns inland turning his back to the sea

the vivacious lands evaporate

he is surrounded by brown bald hills  fields of flat pancaked faces and depressions

harrowing in their gauntness and deprivation

                                                                               some of the crackerjack houses 

wrapped in clotheslines  were decorated with colored and geometric patterned fabrics

other structures were washed blue  slush boxes  like melting ice cubes dumped by

wayward drunks who think fresh ice will bring plentiful fresh liquor to sweeten their

nightmares and cease their delirium tremens shaking

                                                                                        pitiful alcohol junkies

who cant recognize spilling booze is a waste and there is no one who will refresh their

glasses  slake or slay their hard-headed demons

or spur their ugly cross-eyed lovers

                                                                        who were never worth the dip of their dicks

at the snap of their entrails or the cleft of their asses

                                                                                               nor were they

they all were just Something  literally  to do

a forgotten fuck is a disease

a warm receptacle breeding their discontent

                                                                                                

                                                                                    he could see what they cant

1pmishness,  Twosday,  11  11. 08