Into the Deaf Season

Cricket chirps carpet
Summer's end underfoot
as woodpecker polebeaks
a ratatat canopy for a Fall home

But it is the static radio cicadas
buzzing a shower tap deep in my ear
that shut the Nature score out
to trip me headlong
--

Borrador en Vías

--
perdido el estricto norte
rumbo incierto de remedios
puede aún dar con salud

como halla justa palabra
la coincidental etiqueta
de mercader o poeta

si es un hombre lo que hace
¿desconocerá como ajeno
al que otra cosa ejecuta
dominando sus aperos?

cada respuesta es añico
sin medida para armar
crucigramas de respuesta

queda el papelón quizás
de un obligado libreto
a duras penas sentido

(la más clara voluntad
--error o facilidad--
ejerce resistencia impura)
--

Speak No Gritty

--
I must own up, surrender
to my battlefield arms high

my head my heart my groin
all mine down to my ingrown
big & little finger toenails

but at the core of pain
the heart of thought
the roots of wilted nip-in-the-bud
is a war of the tongues

behind the curtain of disembodied Oz
the cracked liberty tongue
tangles with an anxious mother

not a refuge, not a sound
understood without guides
--

Nohow Focus

--
ah youth ah youth ah youth!

free of obligations
the juice pooled in my loins
nightmared only for myself

ah youth ah youth ah youth!

I sat on what I saved
feeding on my shadowplans
for nobody

--

Inner Exile

1. Homing In

there is no open range path
no sunset horizon sunrise
for the rulemaker badge or outlaw

the mother tongue is naught but ill
all full around & deep inside

how everwhere to settle down
again a stranger in my town?

'tween everlusting pigsty sheet
& nightmare king's erected moat
there is no cozy cottage

amazing maze, how bitter roots
issue no mirror entry bright

2. Bolaño Birthday

shifting into neutral gear
at every downhill slope
I save my fuel

I map my route
along circuitous side roads
so the wind will be always
at my back

one hill after another
I am being blown down
into a bottomless ravine
where hell feels like home