Wherefore Is the Dawn So Bright?

Bow
To the whisky bottle,
And put your finger
Here
Between these frets.
Hit these keys
All at the
Same
Time.

Dip cigarettes in crawfish juice,
Get stymied by a gas station
Condom wrapper.

Know this,
These,
People and faces and professions
Neuroses
Dogs' names
Relatives
Those others
So significant.

Lose elastin, use lotion.
Snooze buttons, schmooze cliques
And
Play
Your part
Running
For local bar regional review assessment commissioner.

Repair things.

Learn how. It ain't hard.

Hit it with a hammer, weld it.

Learn the back roads in Tuscumbia,
Drive a stick shift, order the cheapest beer,
take cold showers, go camping unprepared. Eat the guts of
Crawfish, make terrible
Homemade pizza, burn bad poetry,
Burn good prose, burn letters, burn photos. Keep photos, get in touch with old friends, then never speak to them.

In a daydream, we dance to
Skynyrd in firelight,
Mosquito bitten and barefoot,
And the pebbles rattle under our feet.

Now look at the whiskey bottle,
see how much you've drank. Acknowledge this as a dose,
how much you need
now, versus
every other time.

Don't freak out. Don't eat too much.
Don't act wild at work, it looks weird.
Don't play with
fishing poles in a parking lot,
don't talk to yourself at wal-mart.

Be a human,
Love, remember,
Be a reptile,
Hate, forget

Red Autumn

The cypresses shed blood
Red on the asphalt, driven like
Snow at the marina, and
I deathlessly sneeze and
Cough, sniffling in
Leaf mold and the changing weather,
Watching yet another
Youthful season grow old
And senile. The summer
Waned helplessly before me
And could I have seized
It, and shook it by the shoulders
I would have, saying,
"Wait for me,
Just a little longer now."

My father says one more frost and
His lawn will lose its green.
He said this morning,
"Do I hear someone mowing?"
And, sure enough, the black
Neighbor who married that nice
Filipino woman was mowing the dust,
brown clouds soaring up
Into a clear and bright Alabama
Sky, little bits of dead grass
Slung out sideways from the blade and
His skin shining, hat too, bright white,
And my father says,
"I need to mow too."

The fiddle sings like a
Well-tuned train whistle, it screaming
In my ears out of the stock
Ford speakers and it drowning out
The lack of muffler, it giving me chills.
I headed to the end of the parkway
Where it hits the highway and
Stops, the highway running
North to South.
South led to the same, the familiar,
the dark and dirty foundry
And swollen hands, busted knuckles and
More sinus infections. It led
To the same too-soft beds and
Staticy televisions.
North went straight to my brave
And beautiful wilderness, dead
On into smooth pebbles worn
By water so clean you can drink it,
To tupelos reaching into creeks
Drying up in the winter's thirst,
To birches' silver knives waving in a
Stinging wind, to the year's last
Topwater bass that leap into my lap
And there,
There I made the
Tough choice.

"Another year," I said,
"Another season."

Let Me Tell You About Your New Boyfriend

He probably runs an atheism blog
He doesn't care about
Coming in stealing your
Heart because
He is a nihilist;
No consequences when he does wrong
So
He never, ever goes to jail

His car is new
Not
Paid for
But he can afford the payments
And
He has better insurance
Than me
But still complains about the price

His job is easy, he says it's hard.
His hands will never be calloused
They
Are thin and soft like
A woman's he

Still has both parents alive
But
They are divorced and he claims
Traumatization from that,
When he talks about his childhood
He will complain about that,

He is not
An only child
And he will have good relations
With his siblings.

He will never be covered in
Iron filings or grime.

He does not like the outdoors
And you don't either, so
That's fine and that way he'll
Never have fish guts on his
Shirt or never have B.O.

He doesn't mind paying
Rent and probably even
Makes house payments.
He is normal; working just to pay
For clothes to wear to work
And a house to leave vacant
While he's there.

He is good in bed and does
Not have performance
Anxiety.
His dick works even when he's
Drunk or takes the lorcets
He keeps secret from you.

He has big doe eyes
And will look straight
into your
Shit brown ones
And tell you
That he loves you, though
He doesn't really know
What that means and
Only says it because
You do.

He never gets mean
When he's drunk, he
Can handle his
Liquor
But
He will cry when intoxicated
And alone with you,
Probably about that divorce
Again
And
You will spend your
Effort
consoling him,
Poor baby poor sweet thing
It's okay I'm sorry
Et cetera.

He will
get mad though
And he will expect
Plenty from you
Get your shit together Christine
I can't have you
Laying up coloring all day
In your little books
What are you, nine? Why
Don't you clean the litter box
Your house smells like
Cat shit
That's why I
Always have you
Over to my
Place, you just seem
So sad Christine
Here
Why don't you move out
You should pick up more hours
Christine
Get your shit together
Depression's all
In your mind,
Et cetera.

He will be funny,
he steals
All the right jokes
From the internet
And Saturday night live
So y'all won't know, and
Being funny, your roommates
Will like him all right, not
Like they liked me, but
They'll like him enough.

he will leave you
And say
I just can't
handle you
Going to the psych ward
It's
Just so stressful
I've never
Dealt with a woman
That gets
Locked up

And you'll
come to me
saying
Allister
I'm so sorry
I know what
You felt like now
I'm so sorry

And I'll say
Yeah,
I guess
You
Do.

A Shoe

My heart
Like a shoe
In a dryer
Clangs and bumps
Pushing, bursting
Out the unlocked
Door of my chest

Slam it shut!
And good this time!
Back to thumping, whirring,
Humming loud and
Shaking.

A buzzer sounds,
A cloud of lint and steam
Signals peace, sleep.
I have found solace, and
My shoe is dry.

Summer Sweat

It's a fever-pitch
evening downtown
the heat still
radiates off of the walls and
asphalt,
hot
black and silver
daytime coming
from underneath,
so we're sweating
and it's
beer sweat, smelling
and thick, no breeze
in the alleyway
to cool our brows.

It's a low drone
buzzing to actual
conversation, meaning
it's
looks and gestures of heatstroke
until the beer
sweats out.

Those peers of the gingkos,
the streetlamps, shine
that orange sheen onto everything
and no one knows
what colors
the cars truly are.

Broken shafts
of light trickle down
to the sidewalk, where
a little
slick of vomit
reflects a green, then
yellow, then red
light.

Through a Lens

There's a rosy vision
in my mind
of you:

Making jokes in fireside flickers
and for moments
falling embers lit the night
so that we
might look
into the points of light
in each other's eyes.

The vision there before me
tasted of fireworks and
model train engine steam
the only
embers' shine
was
the end of
a Marlboro light.

But the jokes were still there
and through a joviality
we wrested back
control from the stars
and so
divine our own
horoscope-love, to
spin a zodiac back
around to Aquarius
and trip him with our feet.

Lauderdale

Come on come on
and what I mean here is
get your ass in the car.

Whadye mean you left yer
phone at home?
That sonovabitch,
you don't need it anyway.

You smell 'at clutch dust?
I kinda like the way it smells.

When you go down
to the creek and kinda try
to wash the road
grit from your forearms
in the cold water.

Flying down a county road
to get there
chasing daylight
at eight thirty in the evenin'
the sun is still up
and it's 89 degrees

"whoooooooooo!
Y'all smell 'at polecat!"

And you're yelling over
a blasting radio, it's playing
something you really
jam out to.
It's "Hold On Loosely"
or even, "Caught Up in You"

We talked about
the gun show and the fair.

We drank cheap
smoked brown
burned regular
in smoking vapor
trails all over
the county.

Racing the Waterloo
Cop down
redneck riviera
into the sunset.