nine poems

Buck Downs

hard like

I met this country girl

from another country

she took me

around the world,

it was another world

the way she says, y’know

makes me wish I did,

get to sweat that

good stuff out

down for the second shot —

she made it clear

but I don’t know how

like when somebody

does you a favor

and never tells you

what it was they did.

brown dirt red

the kid was so street

I had to say hey, kid

whose muddy boots

up under the sheet

every time

dirt daubing

a double margin

in bed — every side

either way

we had been led

to understand

this was the experience

everyone wanted

the kind of zero rewards

that catch you in their prime

no wonder when we decided

we had to turn away

companion of the night wound

some sick stuff in sweet february

we get together to do

to each other

like reverse bidding

on your very own

tick tock apocalypse —

lowest unique bidder

gets to press the button —

the courage of a lost lover

persevering through

the thicket

to make eye contact —

really, any

contact will do —

little wages

widely alleged

to be a thing

some yahoo mini john

with a dumb luck job

and a one-room love

quitting comes easy

to a quitter like me —

it’s the living

in it after

you have to do

that hurts —

it never seemed like

leaving town

was the way to get

ahead but here I go —

wrecking flowers

trick or treat dancefloor

these are the kids

you expected

one up

two up

blow up

screw up

space clodhopper

in the nite glo

my non-word compliance

with the dictates

of little cherry jane

and I was kind of like

oh huh who wow —

poem

I live with a condition

called being hungry —

science has yet

to develop a remedy —

even our dreams’

very fulfillment

does not always

have the desired effect —

it will take

a second lifetime

to get my fill

tiepolo mississippi for bill

about as big

a geographic

as a man could pull — I got

meaning on my mind,

to do so early

in the morning fog —

pigment

& pigpen

my minimalist

roots have

grown over

some things

— after Sam Biddle

taking a crack

at the piñata

isn’t always

about the candy

some things you can’t

stay home and binge,

some things you must

come out to see —

they would not want

you to miss it —

hit the snowbuckle

everybody kind

of looked like

they had wandered in

from the rain

folsom roses

strawberry blues

weather like the weekly chore

of some unworshipped god,

points for showing up

the adjustment was on

we were there for it,

welcoming —

we will never be

completely ready