should stand
a moment
commemorate
the landing
on grey
pavement
search for
appropriate
ritual
no time
to think
distill
an essence
AMERICA!
hotel room
prowling
in a moment
of soft brown
a frenzy
in these hands/arms
white bone fingers
clenching
(Poe's terror/delight)
forgotten
indelible
shooting glass
images
back wall
my ghosts
assembled
(already I laugh!)
preaching
to the converted
street ladies
proud/walking
corner to corner
statues
on green/wet
stone
are beautiful
eyes
clear blue
no sparkle
or pain
carry
takeaway
coffee cups
in hand
against the cold
a beggar tells me
this is the best
from Chicago
too tough New York
cool to the Bay
who can argue with a beggar?
window sign erratic flashing staccato I-am-on-the-bed
thinking scene: a thousand b-grade movies (am in one)
constant siren green lit night watching the street is lit green
all structure substance solidity (euclidean) reality dissolving
in green
The Today Show Is Watching You
who would have thought the Image is the Real
and the Ideal Tech. not even Plato and if so
is America just this dream physics in a box?
Border Town
jack
kerouac
in a cowboy
hat
facing
me
LONESOME
TRAVELLER
on a book
shop
shelf
I will buy
and carry
this book
I know
I will
never
read
in every
bus shelter
hotel
room
and mission
line
by
line
I
will
offer
it
as
proof
of
my name
should
I
be
challenged
by
dark
eyes
in
some
cantina
border town
want to bring back the world for her / still can't stop
feeling she's not mine / anymore
mexico
in the back
of the bus
black doves
sing
ancient
sacred
sonatas
fly high
thru texas
billboard
countryside
my heart
still
free
falling
in flight
Texas
street full
of
emptiness
a hobo
appears
and says
you won't
get nothin'
today
it's all
closed up
for
Xmas
I want
only food
and a place
to stay
and hardly
know myself
for it
is what
travelling
has done
for me
who once
asked only
eternal
questions
with no
place to go
but that
empty pit
I call
my heart
Xmas at the Salvos
abandoned
paper plates
and
jesus souls
what's left
of the faith
less
eating
silence
down
Congress Av.
walking
winter
thoughts
hug
in white
ice
chill
Austin Tx.
from
the porch
of a white
southern
mansion
my
banjo's
steel
sharp
angels
into
the black
green
breathless
sweet
night
I met this cowboy in a bar on Congress Av. said he was
Jack Barnett but that they called him the Alabama Wildman
was just killing time in Austin waiting for his partner
Larry to come up from Dallas said when he was drunk enough
they were working for the Government TOP SECRET can you
believe that they're looking for me in five states and
here I am digging missile bunkers for 'em in West Texas
don't make no sense at all
in every
honky-tonk
and strip
joint I drank
in tonight
playing
on the juke-box
FOOLISH FAITH
'I learned
the hard way
trusting you
and my heart
too'
The Girl From The North Country
she comes in
to the bar
and stays
close
to the wall
this Matisse
woman
or perhaps
a Degas
painted blue
is being
watched
and knows it
I say to the Texan
what is it?
and he says
she comes
from the North
I say but
how do you know?
he just laughs
and says
how do I know
what a question
C+W
david allen coe on my radio sings
you never even called me by my name
Sweet Water girl in my bed says
sometimes it hurts to come from Texas
what I know about Audrey is
she married a G.I.
at 17
went to Texas
when I was
3
came home
to visit
a photo
of me in a
Stetson hat
boots
toy gun
Audrey
hugging +
kissing
me
when I was
17 she
died
somewhere
in
Houston
mum
in the back
room
crying
listen
ing to
Kris
tofferson
sing
epitaph
(black
and
blue)
so
far from
home
I
have
a photo
of Audrey
and a
sailor
circa
1942
she was
very
beautiful
Time Dream
I come from
a desert land
its heart
of dust
and mystic
nothingness
its peoples
ancient
and modern
with silent
despairing
courage
have wandered
in and built
around
its emptiness
the illusion
of civilization
but time
will leave
no record
no mark
upon the space
for we are
rootless people
in a rootless
place
spent all day in the snow
searching for a yellow rose
of texas / for you
Outside Gilley's
the pulling up a shower of (brown) dust the night
black inhaling starless at the edge of the world ___
(the world is flat this night) to the side a redneck
hurls a bottle brown brown at/into the pure
the piano man
signed my T-shirt
immediately after which
one of his goons
threw me out onto
the Pasadena highway
I was very drunk
so drunk I couldn't
put a coin in a phone
to call a cab
I had no idea where
Houston was or how
to get back to it
instinct told me
to stagger one way
and not the other
I was very paranoid
about being spotted
by a pick-up full
of rednecks
and being bashed
because of my
long hair I decided
it would be better
to get arrested
I saw a squad car
coming up the highway
I stood on the road
waved and shouted
it slowed down
to a crawl stopped
for a moment looked
and then sped off
somewhere in the depths
I was in the back
of a hippie van
later I wandered
in a black city
this morning
I woke in my room
at the Texas State
I crawled out of
the bed and looked
into the mirror
I was wearing my
T-shirt
on it was written
sincerely yours
Mickey Gilley
in my mind's I a large grey bird is hanging
mid air it is eyeless and all knowing (I am
in this poem) a figure in a black Stetson hat
stepping onto a greyhound leaving Houston
early morning
Nashville Street Vision
(when the cities are dead)
along each street
burnt out caverns
charcoal depth terror
if you look too close
in these sockets of matter
smoldering the ashes of/
the search for/ (iron)
Truth (echoes)
dark years away
The Sam Davis Hotel
someone died
in this hotel room
before I came
dry blood stained
carpet pools
time turning
to black
(still / life
process unknown
to death)
in the bathroom
red spray flecks
like a peacock's
wings opening
on white stone
Outside the Grand Ole Opry
this morning I am white haired Lear hapless playing
with pebbles in a parking lot and the fool an old gin
soaked hobo from the black asphalt says he once
played fiddle with the King
The Letter (with apologies to John Prine)
wanted to sign-off my letter of lies to you with
/your name's on my tongue your blood's in my veins/
couldn't steel the truth
I am stick man sliding
on green thin ice-d pavement
on death empty street
a black windowless cadillac
slows to watch
greyhound bus depot stop/wait Birmingham
is through the door a piece of grey sky
Montgomery
4 hrs.
marching
girl
legs
in red
white and
blue
flowers
I HAVE A DREAM
and HERITAGE
towed
by a cadillac
a picture of
MARTIN LUTHER
KING
in black
and blue
the procession
lined miles of
police riot
vans
watch
in silence
the new Governor
pledging
a new
deal
Jerry Lee Lewis In Concert
ivory hands in flesh (artist/instrument) the illusion
is separateness the atom split qualities transfusing
(Spinoza) at this point we need poetry or insanity
to reach FACT
is music transcends sound(s) hollow I know but picture
Beethoven at the terminal typing (without his mind
happy as a kid) watch the screen random mathematic
figures dancing in/out of existence the hieroglyphics
of silence
blacks
are their own
ghosts
walk
without
shoulders
this street
sags
now weight
less
grey
worn ethereal
despairing
the pound
of too much
history
And Death Is Life's Prompter
a flash of the quick silver beyond
reality's translucent film
and death is life's prompter
glimpsed obliquely
a perverse court jester
dancing in a corner of the eye
in a cab down tree lined avenues going nowhere in
particular I ask the cabbie about Hank Williams
he says he didn't actually live here his mother had
a boarding house down the street the funeral was the
biggest thing that ever happened to Montgomery
Hank's Tomb
is a modern
sharp cut grey
stone monument
an old lady
with flowers
says
"it should be
on the tourist list"
I'm standing
to the side
picturing
a nameless
pauper's grave
by an abandoned
railroad track
A COUPLET LEAVING A GRAVEYARD
IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY
THE SUN SHINES SOFT ON THE DEAD
for words
a secret
of poets
I will betray
I do it all
for
words
others have
dislocated
my
bound me in
their
placed me in
a trunk
of
and lowered me
to the sea
of
but I have
on many
occasions
escaped
to get drunk
on
in a kitchen
once
there was
a raven
haired shrew
with a hammer
raised against
my
but I was too
old to die
for
and too young
to live
with
so I left
to wander
for years
I was lost
for
I turned
inward
because
of
and even
fell in love
without
but always
the moon
and now
after it all
bare and hard
this reign
of
words
still /
only in motion
I can see now
at the end
of the journey
my heart beats
on/down
the road
(c) Wink Tattler. 2021. 2023.
