Two Poems

Dusk Returning Home

Stretch of oceanfront aeons long, I saw the night pour into

the sky at a million miles an hour every way.

The darkness whelming and swallowing the sun, a frog gulping

a firefly and seeing the glow in its gullet.

An orchid haze dots the clouds, like rouge on a swarthy face.

Pollock swaths of orange alights the idle automobiles on the sides

of the road, and turns the balding pedestrians into ogres of fire.

How I adore these visual symphonies every night!

Song for Burroughs

Raze and paste another news headline into jagged prose,

chaotic as the magic you practiced, good sir.

When I recline on the couch in my living room

with the leaves of your junkie-speak, I

feel your presence:

volatile as gunpowder cigarettes,

nauseating as straight Everclear.

Penned with the arm of a thousand woesome holes

flexing anemic blood and smack, shooting

a stray bullet through

a gray heart.

Opiate oceans offer their waters for the pall that

will drape the Bellefontaine graveyard

and shower you and your

grandfather’s tombstones.