late journey into darkness
(for Carter Monroe)

cold nightmares fading into memories
bard spirit self free
drifting leaving graying body
lantern theatre of flickering dreams
father's old plymouth coupe
peddling life insurance
rural hardscrabble mail pouch dekalb signs
mother at kitchen sink hotpoint stove
maytag washer Mondays ironing board
husband and wife providing genes chromosomes
now distant cemetery dust
chiseled headstone dates only history left
years racing by frightening reality
aging son backwater poet
never going home again
young tommy late Saturday nights
motorola orange magic eye
wwl clear channel jazz
"blue room" exotic sounds
roosevelt hotel penthouse suite
overlooking lake pontchartrain
"nawlins" metrop
special musical seminar
louie, dex, 'trane, fats waller, leadbelly
nighttime shadows ricocheting off walls
dancing across bedroom ceiling
lake michigan picnic
almost drowning
dangerous south haven breakwater undertow
still panicked moments remembering pull
graduating from matinee milk duds
rialto theatre oaters adventure serials
steeped in high minded american patriotic ethos
"peace" "justice" "american way"
portage lake summer swimming
water slide trapeze swing
x-cello rubber machine dressing room wall
contraband 3.2 indiana beer runs
old ford flathead v-6
noisy muffler growl loud piston slap
summer hush of corn stalks breathing
sea of stars rushing overhead
velda amish girl lover purring
"tommmmm I've never felt like this"
teenage marriage husband father
soon bored sameness of sex
divorced friend of the court lifetime pays
never seeing daughter's concerts plays
son's sporting game successes
too late understanding
loving requires gambling losing everything
ego celebrity money grown up toys
still empty painful memories
electric sizzle blood rush of soft caresses
knowing extraordinary "frieda" mate not to be
unloading flatbed jacklin steel deliveries drunk
aorta throbbing surging growing larger
surviving thorazine meltdown rehab fogs
true believer foot soldier bitch goddess academics
discovering bellow's henderson growing whispers
"I want I want" drumming refrain
fleeing university honors chasing degree mediocrity
literature without visceral spritzy edges
sterile vocabulary faculty committee dictates
following beckett creative dictum
"fail, try again, fail better"
lone bard shying from wannabe other poets
losers in love with blank page excuses
bio credits work in progress know it all
backwater ghost town recluse
others wondering what he has found
mass mesmerized media hype suggestions
life exciting things happening somewhere else
beautiful people wondering what fun comes next
graying existential cowboy distant runner poet
refusing surrender giving in to ordinary ways
still learning who I am
time running thin growing suspicious
becoming like emery steady sober salesman
mornings brewing silex pot of drip coffee
margaret's girlish scoldings
"breakfast, hurry, don't be late for school"


reunion

reading poetry
empty calumet theater
ghost lamp
red exit sign
darkness
mother
first tow balcony
quiet lone spectator
"my son" admiration
later casting crawlers

cattail tall reeds
lac la belle shore
coaxing yellow perch
frying pan dinner
momentary companion
dad's shadow
watching


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