Reverb

Hack saw mountains

back into dusk,

skirt the husk

of old corn cobs

left to dry rot

on the stalk

stood still:

a 3-pinned wind mill,

a murder log drive

down Umpqua River. 

Fire up on the mountain’s

breast plate:

Pythagorean

digestive autocrat

on the black-ball rap sheet

taped to the Chapel doors. 

The metal wars,

the old tin-can men

straggling in the alley

like acid cats,

reefer madness

came in through the window

drafty as a bed sheet. 

Birth dates

are death dates

drawn like the lotto,

little paper slips

so unholy placed

on the television screen

like warning signals:

lonely lighthouses

on Carolina cliffs

beam down the dogged night

into a cavern of bats

and bogeymen,

the walking dead apparatus

of social-democratic dissolution,

the magmatic pragmatism

of sticking to your Latin innards,

and escapades

are SUVs,

and the View

is an apartment building,

of our own front wall

on the Western Front

stands battered,

lost cold

and mad-hattered

in the streets shambooking

for Friday fixtures

on the Greek mantle,

step pedestal,

soap box,

ottoman

Empire

to put my sock feet on

like Hawkeye Piece

is a leopard

is a lizard

on the rocks

along the banks,

naked pockmarked

in March:

the cold waterain

kept me jumping in

to save George Bailey,

the whole shit

gone over the edge of the map

and back again

to waiting for friends

to make themselves appear,

standing at the mirror

like a mad woman.