[Brussels. February 1992]

Smoor clings to the fifty eight
as tenaciously as they
clung to life then, in Seventeen,
that June when the forest
might have been green
instead of splintered mulch
& mud 'round dead Irish Rifles.
all killed together, their remains
batched in eternal congress
under pale marble markers
on an island in muddy
asparagus flats churned
recently by farmers' tractors,
not German steel lofted coolly
from hill to dale, down on the trenches,
poured men at men
not man to man,
the product of mathematics.
Teutonically precise,
nothing personal, a matter of edict
sent pointedly by strangers
on the fifty eight, cowering there
or charging stupidly, we will never know;
there are no markers on these walls
to commemorate reasons
or its lack, only outcomes and names
among the chalky scat of hares
amidst the muddy flats and dormant seed,
life to return spring-like, later
when the air warms and chills ebb.
Old cycles known (not understood)
put seeds back to life
while Irish Rifles lie dormant
in eternity, that better place,
if one believes such speculation,
fifty eight men and boys dispatched,
unnoticed,
visited now only by brown hares
grazing on grave-grass in the smoor.

[Toronto. April 13, 1994]

Tirana, they say here, like it was
goddamned bloody Albania,
which isn't far off
in percentages of the
hopeless or anarchists.
No youth in the youth
on Yonge Street on Saturday
night, the turn of the season,
a most Equinoxious time,
soot ice still mugging curbs,
black hard ice, packed tight
in a sea of accents
from da Car-RA-Bean, Mon,
girls with the musk of heifers
wandered in from Alberta,
I watch one with dreadlocks
woven from her eyebrows,
skating the sidewalk
in scuffed Doc Martens,
the shirttail of a Blue Jay
jersey snapping in night air
like a battle pennant, her
loose titties underneath
swaying like Jello, Fuck off Chief,
she shouts to a Black Jacket
Odawa with rheumy eyes,
the grin of a man struck
silly by the axe-handle of history.

[ April 26, 1994]

April mornings without pollen,
the girls knock about a ball
in their shock-pink soccer duds,
hovering anxiously over
elbowed foes sent sprawling
inadvertently in the fray.
This lacks the fang-clacking of boys.
For girls the game is the thing,
its rules to be followed
spiritually, pure of heart,
while boys strain to push out
the envelope, strict constructionists
in the pursuit of outcomes,
they have no sense of fairness,
only winning, which in olden times
would bring a scalp on a stick,
not some be-ribboned gewgaw
from a purchasing committee
made up of housewives.
I prefer the gentle grace of girls
intent on not embarassing
themselves or others.

[April 30, 1994]

I have the best intentions
of traveling lighter than air,
have sworn to the Mermaid Queen
of the east branch of the Paw Paw
ruthlessly to cull surplus
gear, lightening my load
for slog-wallowing the icy creek
nestled in the rolling thighs
of wine country east of town,
but I am modern man,
homo technologicus,
by genes predisposed
to trust gizmos over
mere oaths to mythical spooks.
I hover hunch-backed,
presiding over inventory
with Pickwickian ardor,
pick-a-packing bare
essentials of the craft,
making piles, must-take, could-take,
leave-behind, the smallest mound.
More choices here than Hefner
in his house of wanton bimbos,
on Wacker Drive if I recall
or sure as hell ought to be.
The list lies medullan
in the base of my skull:
Foldable wading staff for water
sure to be swollen with run-off,
TP for a streamside squat,
I like my tissue dry, carry
it in a waterproof bag
from Royal Thai, the color
of the bottom of public
swimming pools. 
I think I can do without
the odd item, but the must-take
mound grows steadily larger.
Woven belt, extra croakies in
tropical fish motif,
two small knifes and honing stones,
hemostats, defogging wax for
my glasses, three new rods,
(having sat on two old ones
last year), Mepps spinners
in the Size of Zero, mostly brass,
all French with a dash of red
for blood, a sure color
for brown trout starved over
winter for crawler meat,
sink-shot, soft and hard, black,
stainless steel and brass swivels,
snelled hooks, bait-grabbers with
sharp tits and patented twist
to keep the worms in their place,
green neoprene waders,
fawn boots with padded soles,
thermies, polarized glasses,
amber and gray that fit over
prescriptions like a welder's shield,
immersible thermometer,
panic whistle, teal poncho,
rope with no clearcut purpose,
Day-Glo shoelaces to mark
the get-in, and by inference
the get-out, Canuck bush hat
that hawkers at Disneyland
said would last a lifetime,
ear warmer, packs of smokes
bought today before the
new half-buck-a-pack tax
takes effect, tonight I hear,
license and trout stamp,
credentials for fish cops
strict constructionists of law,
keepers of the scales of justice.

I stare at jars of salmon roe
held together by swatches
of nylon stockings,
and wonder what sort of legs
they decorated before Uncle Josh,
the emperor of pork frogs,
filled them with orange eggs
from the bellies a cohos.
The hardware is significant:
extra line extra limp,
four-pound-test and six, thin as hair,
diving Rapalas, fat-lipped
little divey-dogs made by Finns,
Swedish Pimples hammered flat
from sheet metal by Yoopers
in Gladstone, leaf spoons,
lighter than cigarette foil,
a new net in noir, so much
I start to wonder if there's
room for luck.
The wife wanders in round midnight,
surveys the cluttered floor,,
tells me I ought to pull
a travois with a head-tump, the way Indians
pulled their old fools across Nebraska.

[ May 3, 1994]

The dog's awake, shivering,
brisket swollen, ears laid back
at the window sill, watching
junk-cruisers curb-crawling
well before morning twilight,
crepuscular creatures,
bent fritillaries winging
between jetsam stalagmites,
mute scouts ranging ahead
of googie-vans and bondo trucks
choc-a-bloc beyond my chokecherries.

No poor here and no room
either, the trash-clan follows
the annual city route
same as caribou move by instinct
over fragile arctic tundra,
miles and miles of miles and miles
driven by some deeper need
to cut a corner, find Van Gogh
or Shakespeare's lost folios,
among discards stacked along
the Avenue of Edington.

The white crows arrive each May,
wonks of waste descending
to dodge bleached dog-rockets,
loading their catafalques
with ordure of strangers,
cognoscenti of fod,
sparkle-arkle speculators
wading through broken fencing
in a salad of butt-floss
and squiffy dealybobs,
hunting ersatz treasures
with the singlemindedness
of buck-an-eers tacking south
from Hatteras or Naw-lins
looking over their shoulders.

S'matter? the bed-voice asks
smokey-croakey with last night's Kents.
First echelon of junk pickers
hit the beach before the dawn,
as I speak, sift our want-nots
with jewelers' loups and NVGs.
You, she keens.  It's just junk.

Mer Douce, calm deceiver,
sweetwater viper, maker
of quick rises and sang froid,
we thrash under tsunami
helpless in invisible waves
pushed inexorably
westward to crash against
boulder-strewn wallets.

We sail in histories
of our own manufacture,
our shamans chanting
songs of thermalclines.
We troll for manitus,
worship Glo-in-the-dark wobblies
and fate -- might-a, could-a, would-a
if only you gents had been here
last week when electric pink
can-do, can't-miss gizmos
fast-hauled fathoms-deep
over Japanese-made transducers
from Bob's Baits limited us out
seven days running.

I am drawn to brawny water,
wading at first light
through gray rollers
on weightless feet
over green gneiss stones
the size of softballs,
my limp line glistening
cold, ice in the eyelets
squinting into a dull sun.
I cast blindly, free-spooling
for coasters, scions spawned
from German genes.

I have no urgency
in my soul or schedule,
like the fish
I am too whimsical
to be conquered
with regularity.
We are chaos,
our own order
like the sweet sea
which nurtures trout,
kills with a smile.

[June 29, 1994]

1.
Third year on the doling swank,
the off-road time and walkabout,
a down-shifter at midlife,
I spend my days in glooey mudge,
hiking redishers and the nettle fronds
nor-by-norwest, the old way,
disdaining digitalic doodletraps,
my nose for orange water,
the bubbly-tumble brookling of knives
Notigpekago, Place of Skulls
boned clean by centuries,
our common future.

The wickiup forest hinged by sky
for bumbershooting, earth
phloop-drifted by sand-winderings,
rotted afoot, snow-sunk, arisen,
become a perfumery of pungent humus
clinging like plastic wrap
on an endomorphic wanjrur,
Julip-air you can drink
like your own slippy sweat,
dog days under scattering horsetails.

Warbled one morning among
the Hmoung and with the Kirtlands
up by Mack Lake, ducking two-leggers,
getting counted as a breeding male,
seeking meaning in the over-passers,
down know-my-own chindits
nicked secretly by surplus machete,
like me, self-sharpened
in my own holster,
bargain-bought snicker-snack
from Kim-Kim the ROK, squared-Kim,
Kim-and-Again, Fellow Traveler.

2.
Swam-dawdled in the Ocker Sea,
western fringe of Ozland, redsandland
graced by bread-pincers and Minnie Munchers
cast off from Pomgolia,
swam with a willow woman, tanned,
in the Rubenesque line,
a trash-talker, lust-fisher,
nakedly ladled brackwater
on her sun-cooked freckles,
heard her chant the nellygang
of want-peter, bugle the rogering call
most close to what you hear
North, fifteen thousand miles,
I reckon,
in the ryeflats east of Elk Hill
near Vanderbilt.

Addicted carnally, she was quik
to say, and life, having lived
fatly once as a banker's chattel
before fling-flunging herself
off the assets of the ingot juggler,
on an architect,
pinched in congress
outside the connubial contract,
commited by the White-Whigs
of the Hi-Highjudgehall
to pharmaceutical naps,
left to lounge
cat-eyed and empty
in a backless paper robe
among rubber walls and
other churlish girlies, sister chuckers
ruled pots before the mast: 
What woman shucks spendy-cash,
the sheer cush of the money wall
for something trivial as freedom?

But chucked it she did, straightaway mite,
had her lost times, same as mysteries’Aggie,
hours first, then weekends,
up to months, the addiction
of lust rediscovered,
flung her fling and all,
she was full-on
before me and she became us
to live raw on roo and woo
at the edge of Oz, Planet Earth.
Lasted its time, free-agented,
no promises, we hung in the west
at Monkey Mia, independent contractors
swimming with bottlenose porpii, browning
like oiled chicken flesh under Ozian sun
wild-winders, gotten off, getting off,
conspicuous copulation,
sand-skating the fringe world
with sulfur-crested cockatoos
and snake-smackers, kookaburras,
under the thump of didgeriedo,
the night-laughers watching us
joined as Shakespeare
put it, beasting with a single back,
sweaty, content.

3.
Neoprene sucky-stuck to sticky-sweat legs,
I foot-pick through henna-colored
water, acidic precipitate of cedars
the color of blood in a drizzle,
looking for my sapphire gal,
six racing feet of blue blur,
she sun-dozes over waves
of skunk cabbage,
hung like my willow woman's
randy-dandies, blue bunting
strung through limbs of barkless dogwood,
a windfall in half-life of rot,
certainty for her, she lifts her head
to sense my passing, gives tongue,
hisses with satisfaction of shared solitude.

The air here, below, saunaish,
steamy as El Junque,
pressed close, sulfuric,
vapor-making,
even the scruboaks sweat,
leaving the wind above
on the ridge
second-guessing
a master second-guesser
intent on German browns.
I insist myself on rivers
and life when it suits me.

4.
Chingchungkwan, central island,
Chang's then,
western stone-clouds eat our
metal birds, a war world pure
as nine nines,
I watch a noseknocker summersault,
see the mushroom of black fire
burgeon, the pilot crispy-crittered,
still strapped to the rocket seat,
well-done China meat with tendrils steaming,
his eyes on mine, flashing.  Why?
The wind.  Zen of bad luck
to land short in concrete moguls
at high airspeed and angle of attack.
I think.  More risk in speed than lack,
the violent smack, not the stall,
the cause of death consistent,
impact, except when cooked by
Zen.  To not live is the bad life.

5.
I have seen men gravitate over moonsand
in quicksilver suits, and Elvis,
before he left the building, waddling,
snake-snacked my way
through the Middle Kingdom,
drunk the blood of kraits to keep
my peter perky, squid guts with
bone chips, played for table stakes
and won, dream now only
of the Snowfly, a secret caddis
that rises in the Notikpekago
once a century
when the snow is thick as crusted sponge
and the smell froze out of life.
Hoarfrost on my glasses,
my nosehairs thick as breakie-brittle,
I depend on anticipation to warm me,
wading upstream through steam serpents
roll-casting the heads and tails,
a searching pattern, an old story.

She says, twenty-thousand ins and outs
to a customer, you're using all yours
tonight.  When the snowflies hatch
I sit on a rock and smoke,
thinking sometimes we pass through
the point before it reveals itself.
My father dying, raises up,
asks, how do you know, the Virgin Mary
and all?  Somebody's map, I say, about the
best we can hope for,
that and the thing inside that acts like
a compass and goes by the name of hope.
I crave the cold and snow
and wet coupling on hot sand,
wanting it all, what the Finns call sisu,
refusal to bend
to anything,
ever.

[ September 9, 1994]

September sun so hot it
bastes my beer, while a nameless
barmaid with shrink-wrapped buttocks
leans over my shoulder,
her pendulous breasts
grazing my libido.
I ask what sweet flower she's
been rubbing all over herself?
Essy-LOW-der, she allows, 
maybe Friendly or Lover,
the sun twitterpates my brain,
but I had this beau once called
it mount-me dew and he sure should
know, if memory serves me.

The Rusty Rat Inn reminds
me of one of those trees
outside a Buddhist temple
where worshippers tie paper
wishes to the branches
and bang a bronze bell
to beg the indulgence of bonzes.
Much asked, little delivered,
the trees filled with rice paper
butterflies that age to yellow.
You learn that asking ain't
receiving, the best odds is
minding your own libation.

Not that I disapprove
Of pheromonic intentions
but I learned in the way-back-when
never  to bet
on love meandering down
the honky tonk river.

Don't remember how many
brews I threw down that night
but come closing, I got out
to the baby Blue Bronco,
found her with a boot upon
the front bumper, smiling that
way a woman gets when
she's made up your mind for you.

She had that sort of half smile
that suggested it could stretch
the limits of lust and luck
on imagination alone.
Low tolerance for small talk,
she whispered at me,
I don't mind if it's your
place or mine, or the back end
of Bronco, long as we get
this show on the road, PDQ.

What's a chump bet in a bar
when the sun's hanging high
is no bet at all when you
find the bare leg of lady
carved shiny
as Madagascar eelskin,
curved so alluringly
it looks like God used
his tongue for calipers,
starin' up from a Tony
Lama red-lizard boot
with a silver toe cap
perched on my chrome bumper
under a lemon-colored moon.

[September 7, 1994]

Wading in the river,
the water under sixty,
the air over ninety and no shade,
quakeys suggesting change,
salmon pods finning in the black bends
flashing golden sides
under banks of gneiss,
their mica flecks flashing
in the early afternoon sun,
I stand along the shallows
in shorts, no shirt,
just a vest packed
with plastic boxes,
while rental canoes pass
filled with nubile girls
in space-age thongs
waving paddles with scarlet tips,
grinning lasciviously,
my gonads pressed
so hard to my backbone
I can't move, standing there
nodding dumbly like a paper mache dog
in the farback window of a fifty five Chevy.

[Såstaholm, Sweden. October 10, 1995]

I wade dry straw at twilight,
the crepuscular explorer drifting
an umber forest, anticipating winter
under a gold-foil moon, at arm's length,
thumb-size and lingering,
find a dark ram prone on a cedar stump,
harem circled, bleating softly,
the sentinel over fallow fields
where dusky deer paw stubbornly
for sugar beet leavings in a cool veil of air,
the first day of moose killing
when the North is closed
for blood-letting, men only and neutrals
constitutionally.
Behind me in a tall window
a lady of blonde tresses
massages her breasts, to keep
the flow of milk warm
before the freeze.

[Såstaholm, Sweden. October 10, 1995]

The room is the white of bone chalk
textured of goose flesh or chicken skin
accented Scandinavian green
to keep the blood cool, I think.
On the wall beside the bed
an elaborate woman
reclines as fish swim downstream
from between her legs to freedom in the air
around her hair, growing as they get further away,
a reversal of biology,
insistent feminist fantasy
in neutral surroundings.

[Såstaholm, Sweden. October 10, 1995]

The rune's a leaner
windblown, wind-blasted by centuries,
its inscription scraped clean
of prayers for Lief or Per, Vikings
sailed east to visit random
carnage on the Rus.
I stand alone with stone
bearing witness among morning birds
on the edge of a rye field
in a place with no name
in a country turned neutral
inward on itself,
socialized socially, a constitutional
monarchy taking from its people
the way Vikings pillaged others,
an ethic changed direction
not intent, history's winds
hard to resist
unless you're stone.

[ October 11, 1995]

The rushing roar of a trackless train,
high-altitude white noise pushed
along the aluminum skin beside my ear,
I see head-tops, light knives lasered into
colors blue and gray, porridge of
cool hues trapped inside the white wind,
we have movement only in our imaginations
while the steward in his pageboy
serves me water with shale-ice
clanking cold scallops to chill my fires,
a judgment call,
we need peace at altitude, no passion
over icebergs and an ocean of green slush.

[November 30, 1995]

Fox-bear
dead in his office yesterday
a hovel jigged with columns of yellowdog pads,
curling manuscripts, this-N-thats askew,
pillars of a life
lived on sweet words
penned by authors,
his hangabout, gadabout children & pals.

Listen, he said solemnly,
drawing out each word like gum to its limit,
Random House
does not publish...Joes,
so there it is, Keed,
pick a new name,
publishing is a game,
only the work matters.

We sat one summer in rumples,
crinkled sportcoats & stained ties
on the naked edge of house rules
drinking Dom Perignon in Grand style
on the Great Turtle's back, Mackinac,
fresh off the road
from Hemingway's Haunt
The Fox above Seney,
driven, not walked,
red with leaching tannin
sipping scotch from tin cups at sundown
under mosquito clouds blown down from Alberta,
gabbing on a two-track,
then glitz of sorts
the high-price spread,
on his birthday,
I gave him a hat lugged along in a paper sack,
a hat of fox fur made by a Sac-Fax
for the Fox that day I fished the Fox
while Himself sat scratching on a manuscript
our Four-Fox Day.

Today a sunrise the color of native
brook trout meat, flaming
pink and orange, an omen,
maggots wriggling in my spinal fluid,
then the Death Call into the Rust Belt,
tears, an all-day funk,
my feet cement,
shuffling like a Muscovite gotten by the green snake in winter,
brain dead, pickled by grief,
relieved finally in an open wood,
revived by love.

Later, last light under teasing sleet
erupted a long, thin rainbow
wide enough for a Fox
to cross into the next office
cramped wth sheaves of paper
and all the words, billions maybe,
awaiting The Editor,
living legend crossed to Legend,
Hey Keed, I tell you about the Andrea Doria?
my friend,
missed,
never forgotten.

[May 29, 1996]

House flies I know,
but these Latin doohickies
flutterflitting & spintopping
over stained riffle-baffles
remind me of chalk bones
piled in museum drawers
known only
to curators and bonologists.

[Building 88. December 16, 1996]

Smoking with outcasts at noon,
four crows in ice-broke birches
pecker-heading for leftovers,
billows of black smoke west
employment office behind McDonalds
overloaded with underload
never enough work or food in trees,
rooks rooked.
Security says, No smoking here
this close to the building
where humans work.
We crows fly

[ December 16, 1996]

Doves bobbing on the phone line
stealing messages with their feet
a lot to think about beneath them,
they are statues in a stiff wind
cowed by words instead of coo's,
needing insulation to find sleep.

[December 19, 1996]

Snow piled on rusty hoops
powdery bundt cakes shaped to perfection,
winter's way to make our mouths water
for the inedible.
I have heard from Ojibwas
that snowfood freezes viscerally,
man made windigo, flesh of our flesh,
no substance in splendor,
our eyes lie, a hard learning.

Lake effect and fate
defy prediction, come nights
without convection or conviction,
chill factors in the Kill Zone,
a black buck paws corn stubble
against a wind-row of black pine
south of a farm village
among pigaloos, pork quonsets,
covered with snow, like powdered sugar,
jelly rolls, I think, fooled again.

Holly spines sputter red
from swales and gray dips,
five crows hop in line
silently, I find tracks of rabbits
ending suddenly in the open,
have they flown, left the birds
to their burrows?  In the distance,
a chainsaw eats under winter's sun,
the one with no heat,
like all else these days, all show.

I watch my water from afar
I see fish there, still,
sit on a fresh stump, piss a mist,
let warm coffee warm my hands
remember a brook trout taken
briefly on a small fly on a day
when truth could be found
and snow had gone back
where it belonged, anywhere but here.

[December 21, 1996]

Interstate, artery of wheeled life,
weekend before Christmas,
good day for the license plate game
but no kids, who have teened predictably
to follow their own rhythms.
I crab into Arctic winds among
mariners on macadem, tacking small
points beside drug dealers hauling
roofies and smack, Detroit to Chicago,
round-trip, bearded men with Jesus-eyes,
a college girl with one tiny foot
on the dash, examining her pedicure,
trucks stuffed with Hooker Barbies,
shiny milk-tankers flicker-gliding by,
man in a red parka picking up
a dead black dog, dead bug,
four legs skyward, fresh meat and
all the city shelters full of dog-eaters,
too far to fetch,
doleless schizoids on the unravel,
a Cessna yaws over holly and yews,
down the median at tree-top,
nine deer, a license on a Lexus
beckoning Eat Me, driven by a blue-hair,
this the season of dreams,
snow dust swirling silver,
a red herring, coating frosted
horse apples, I find amusement
every drive to fetch mom.

[ December 23, 1996]

Eve of Eve, we are drenched,
fog-thundering amidst the bleak
landscape of our souls,
mouth-breathers afoot,
frenzied on the blood-feed,
no accident all this red at Christmas,
Saturnalia sleeps in our neurons
hidden in fiberous cortex
spurting biochemical droplets,
messengers of winter solstace,
like the hunt,                             
flashing active after eons,
undeniable,
we have torrid loins
hungering mindlessly, Jerusalem
farther than Never-Never-Land,
no pixie dust save what flows
from glowing genitalia.
We pretend civilization poorly,
take fates as it comes,
like fronts, blown willy-nilly,
grope for meaning in random
atomic particles, soldier on
as if outcomes are decided
by prayers and votives,
sin tax lacking syntax,
I hold my breath
until spring comes
and trout rise
red, that again.