William Carlos Williams, famous

local doctor, spark plug

of his landscape, set of wheels

for his community, delivering

babies among sexy

poor people who couldn’t,

or wouldn’t,

always pay, and some of them

I loved a little too well, and one of them

I loved,

much too well.

Herman Melville, harpooneer

of Moby Dick, became an Inspector of Things

with no visible promotions

for nineteen years.

But I was working

by the seashore, near the sailor

who broke my heart, which usually

made me feel better, because,

by now, I was

the mystical mariner, and the sea

was in my eyes

wherever I was.

Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote

and was windmill-tilting

Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Dapple, Rocinante, and

Dulcinea, gorgeous, beautiful Dulcinea,

the most perfect love,

romantic angel,

with such a long pen,

was a tax collector on horseback

for too many years.

People would throw things at

us.

And I wondered

how I had become

this.

I said to myself,

“How have I become

this

weary, sad-eyed, wine-soaked,

broken-hearted old soldier

with a bad hand from that long-forgotten

sea battle no one seems to remember

but me.

Next, I was a slave,

captured by pirates.

Later writing many

chapters of my only, endless

book while locked up

in their jail.

For something I probably didn’t do

and don’t remember

if I did do it.

Because someone stuck up

was down

on my energy.

As a noble Roman said somewhere, in jail

being where

more than one good book has been

penned.

For love.

In blood.”

Two teens talking

around the turn table

in 1983

A.D.:

“Maybe they were just unseen,

trouble-making vehicles

for bringing new, pure and cool,

lasting, low, good, flute-like hill tunes of old

to the people’s plains.”

“The trenchant word that well stings the eyes

of the soft heart from the eternal, hidden streams

at earth’s core.”

“Sometimes…”

“So soothing to a needy few…”

“Law man, doctor, debtor or fake, banker,

horse-back tax collector or user nurse, draftsman

or driver, musician, druggist, jailed, and jailor,

sailor, librarian, book thief, art thief, drunkard

delivery dude, public urinator…”

“Traveling teachers of all kinds blood humming

the Underground Railroad songs of another America

across a Missouri of the modern musical mind…”

“All the black and white rappers, sax, trumpet,

Charlie Parker, guitar player,

and she, she, she.”

“Was a Wichita piano player who landed in East St. Louis

on the dime

and somehow she died

on the morphine line.”

“My Christian Science

Fiction

Kiowa

Cowgirl who always pushed it

just a little too far!”

“On purpose!”

“Rise from the provinces, be normal enough

most of the time but always

further along.”

“And she seemed too young.”

“And that was the end of her one,

good song.”

“And I may dine at journey’s end

With Landor and with Donne.”

– William Butler Yeats

1: Now at the end and you know it.

2: Then, you find the stub of old pencil in a pants pocket.

3: And because you looked like a worn-out poet in some lights to a certain lonely soldier, she came on delicate tip-toes and gave you toilet paper, through the bars, with her long, deadly fingers, wearing nothing at all.

4: So now you blow her another kiss and wave her fondly away so you can begin to scrawl with your long, strong, starving hand.

5: Like the black, reaching, screeching, raven-filled tree branches at the shuddering culmination of earth’s last winter’s tale in the occupied village above your mind.

6: “…Not the end,” you write.

7: And you write it again and again.

Baby, this is not my choosing but I

got to go now and I

cannot be

put by

nor set aside for later.

Lady, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got to run,

I don’t know why or where, really,

and I definitely

do not have any idea

what the new road will be

holding.

But I got to fly

like a fucking arrow back then.

And I’ve got to go now, so I can fly again.

I was allowed to fly, back then, with the Word,

on the back of the laurel

wren, and in only this I cannot be, I will not be

put by.

Sweet Honey-pie, I’ve got to go now but no, I do not know

what you’ll do now

nor how you’ll get by.

I will be undone by all of this I know,

Female Deer, my

Dearest.

Now and far more later too, some day or suddenly.

And the road, it’s too long.

And the price of this midwestern song

is a red wheelbarrow

of sorrow.

Actress please stop

sighing

and don’t start

crying.

And try to remember me

in your prayers.

But not in your dreams of tomorrow

because life is still beautiful

but we

are the fallen sparrow.