My Own Big Sky

Amor Vincit Omnia

Love rustles his

       dingy feathers

Absarokee, Winter

The fields lay fallow
with their thirsty anomalies
and the old world
ground to flour
is blowing across the highway

IGA Parking Lot, Billings, MT, c. 1995

All I know:

we don't like those fuckers
at the K-Mart parking lot

K-Mart Parking Lot, Billings, MT, c. 1997

All I know:

we don't like those fuckers
at the IGA parking lot

Billings, Summer

The way is hard
and it can't be helped

I'd rather make trouble than money
  

Rocky Mountain Locust

Let all who live in the land tremble
at the lubricious stench of spring

After the feast of the plow
the summer cannibals will quit their hunting
in deference to the cold hills

they don't sing
those old hymns
out here anymore

not since the fields started burning

the Bach fugue
rain swirling through gutters

the highway an open vein
the thought a phantom limb

News from the Homestead

"Gonna be another dry year

       but if that rain fell

I'd take off my socks and shoes
and run my toes through
the cold mud"

Cowboy Songs

1.

It's just me,
the coyotes
and the prairie


2.

I may be lonesome
but at least I'm alone


3.

yeah,   you're tougher than me
             it's not hard
but I've brushed a lot of dirt
           off these jeans


4.

it is in what I lose
that I find out
what it is
I've been needin'


5.

I'm only happy
when I'm leaving

Lutheran Prayer

  (To be read in the voice of
Garrison Keillor sexually harassing you)

I'm of the generation of vipers
    (a snake in the grass)
innocent as a dove
            (my buggered ass)

Labyrinthitis

Sometimes
  the light shines in the darkness
       but the darkness overcomes it

I am so cold in the memory
    that even its echo
       makes me shake

    the smell of alcohol and chlorine
    the reason I like my causes lost

   and God says:
"you will now wander
         in the wilderness
 until you understand
            how I hide my graces
        in every tragedy"

And these days
  I don't question
    that some are
      called to a path
        and some are put
    on it
      and God,
        whom I love
    is sometimes
      very
          far
              away

Paul the Apostle Plays Dead

"I've seen angrier mobs"
Saul says and smirks
Barnabas starts to sweat

Go meet your congregation, Paul
Go preach to the choir
who are gathering stones
to return you to the God who sent you

He approaches them like they're all old friends

When the first stone misses his ear
he pretends like he didn't expect it
He knows he can't fake being dead right away
he has to take a few bricks to the head first

You can play a pratfall for laughs or cries
they're faithful folk
they won't know the difference

                                he falls

& after a few dramatic spasms
God's interloper lies still

so they drag him to the town dump
and get on with their day

...

later, with just a few apostles around
this crummy little Jesus
            and his crooked legs
                                rises again
to the amusement of the whole crew

They discuss leaving for Derbe right then
But they already paid for the motel
So they head back to town
tiny Paul strutting in front

the folk who catch a glimpse of them
are too embarassed to say anything
resurrection or scam: their anger is spent

besides, you don't want to mess with a guy
who takes a rock to the face
turns his cheek
then dares you to throw another

The dead suffocate the living
The living crowd what is holy
and history
  tosses its empty bottles
    out the window

We live in the age
of bad omens
and weird weather

                  In this life
I have been blessed with pain and beauty

I would not have sought the latter
without the former

Life is cheap among the exiles

  LinkedIn announces
  a career milestone
  for a dead friend

Skype pings pleasantly
with a suicide note
just for me

    I know for certain
    it's been 164 weeks
    since that last happy selfie

this is a new world
I suppose
but it is already haunted

it was a bad year for transit

first the knife fight
  on the 20 heading east
    then this
      then getting hit by
        the commediene's car

          then on the train
      staring out over dog town
              trying not to cry

I tell myself every morning
move with a measured mind
and also with kindness
maybe try Godliness
and every day
I slip but
not as
far

That one weird trick
that THEY don't want you to know

The end of history
That plastic surgeons hate

6 simple ways
  to pull the republic
  out of the mud

the city is a widow¹

My fellow stunt philosopher
to hip to even smirk

Is he ridiculous or heroic?
Lucky or clever? Hard to tell

But as the world collapses around him
he almost winks at you.
                         We both know
we all owe God a death,
when? That's His business.

I snuck out my girlfriend's window
to have the purple sky
of a witching hour storm all to myself

I walked in the eye of it
feeling its heavy rustle spread
across the flooded farmlands

the river's clamor no longer
had the beer bottle joy
of nights around the fire:
everything had fled

the fields smelled of an earthy petrichor
I heard a horse's grouchy whinny
or maybe thunder

I thought I'd get driving

my wrist still knows
how to slip the clutch
of that old pickup truck

I carry that feeling with me still:
my own big sky inside me

In life there are no second chances
there are a multitude of chances
every moment, every day, every year

That was when I promised myself that
I would have nothing and go far

I've been chasing beauty ever since