I.Why?#

so much like speech,this rain,useless, gray urge of bone-October on my face, this rain,so much my own mirror: on the inside – when I want to go play outside / inside this raintill Death Steals the Snowman,all night / all day,books of blow, embodied, beatagainst my brain / this actual lobe of: jump / quiverstuck inside this nowhere trainlike some a-gonna’ fly-flyawayso much like quitthis node of peel me / I love you,peal me beats againstthe bell ofour own common skull – the deals / doles / dregs and dooms of the “Joy Channel” operator,like this rain, so much likespeech,stares me down,so much like this raineats its own obsessionsall fordopey tawdry favors from a dream deco modulator,inside a red cityso much like a mouthitspits at me: Drink / Eat / Piss / Dreamso much like I’ll be in your dream,I’ll break any law,so much like I’ll be in your dream / I’ll claw my own wayinside you like a screw,like there’s a word for thisone slow eye / I could trade it?for better / ‘nother but another’s just as useless,so it goes / so it goes till Death Steals the Snowmanso useless, tooand so muchlike this rain

II.How#

this cage we madejust like this rain – they got to be the worst – so careless, useless, sweet as a scar,like this rain,like hard city skin can’t usethis rain, saecula saeculorum / all through Octobertill Death Steals the Snowmantell you what, they got to be the worst – and baby screams / thumps upon a wallsweats like unto: speech, like bullets pimp you, rule you, teach,I don’t want to hear that song no more / no more – they & they truly are the worst – they lock us too smarttoo hard inside a raw worldwhen needknows only wing / tongue / skin / the orgone pulse of speechthrough each holein each faceso much / and so useless,like this rain

III.Where the Snowman Goes#

this rain mutters and sighs, full of red eyes all night / red eyes all day, and this rainsays you and me’s got to goinvisible, justlike this rain, and jitter, together, like amputated angelsin our own skin,alone,say our storylike this rain,backwards, yes,our own story must beginwith speecha nose for Death, another / better nose to get away cleanway before October,like how this rain fallsuselesson you / on meall its matter, heft and suchness seeps down through our skullsyesthis rain says our own story‘til Death Steals the Snowman,unmoors us from memory,drifts backwards into simple presence / plain flowinto panicinto jagged threatof lovethat falls down, red-eyed, into you / into me, so useless, too / so muchlike this rain

I slouch toward holy Youngstown flat out, shaking down my ‘69 LeMans full of spit, sloppy rings and its own kind of lust. Pulling on my quart of SunLand Gin, shaking that way too, I tune my radio to this griot lady growling scratchy / scrabbled house blues behind a D-harp, and poke my tongue out the window just for remembrance – for that last taste of steam, particulate and acid drool in the used-up, but still flammable, factory air. O Youngstown, I remember you, owned by Westinghouse, US Steel, in thrall to Youngstown Sheet & Tube, your pale sun spinning, blind and hollow, in a brown sky like the palms of Pluto, yeah, like Egon Schiele out of Goya gassed up and gone on something skank but otherwise eternal. Long time, long time Youngstown, you cut a swath through my dreamtime, flapping your wings all around like a black shroud at a new Tong Funeral.

That’s how I remember, but too-bad-now because the Steel Goddess done lost her shine, got stiff and creaky, flat shut down and the air now tastes all government approved. No burnt shards of recap, no junkers of the fracked and dead spread out along the highway, just glowing civic skin and soft light, all things pleasant, total too, and downtown near the formal zone of silence I meet this avatar of Allen Ginsberg, shaking like an Ariel with no wings in the wind, just like me, so: we shake it down together for a while and wait on slow bolts from Jesus, shaking, smiling, I say: Mr. Allen Ginsberg, my main baby, whatever incarnation are you working on today? And he beams back at me, his smile transects the dead orbits of industry and need spinning hollow over Youngstown while eldritch ravens gnaw down hard on a dead knight’s eyeless corpse.

My first peep at Allen G. was a PBS rerun (circa 1967: the one where he levitated the Pentagon) and his head glowed through his tonsure like the bone beneath. Even then he beamed throughout the stratosphere and drew a tree of chakras on a screen behind my eyes, and his mouth moved as his hand moved, and he said while he drew: “Love is multi-polar, a warm valence, a wave that washes over, and renews . . .” on and on, as sullen Youngstown sweated for the promise of an early absolution. I’d sleep then, nestled in my ignorance, and dream upon the shiny dome of Allen Ginsberg – like an ice moon, like the blank swollen eyeball of a punchy swollen monkey – until my own dream became the bone beneath his tonsure, became, itself, that shiny dome, became … became … until my eyes snapped open and my own mouth moved: but O the price, my own mouth sang that groove, the one price always got to rise, especially when you need the merchandise that bad.

So now the polished air of Youngstown’s fallen deep into grace. Far from flare and smoky contrail, far from the blaze and orange breath of the Bessemer ovens, the new sun over Youngstown floats, all domestic now, cuffed and coifed, why “wouldn’t it be loverly”, and this avatar of Allen Ginsberg chants steady into my face: “. . . the problem is embodied liberation, the problem is embodied liberation, the problem is . . .” like I’m steady nudging on his needle, or he’s got this glitch in his deep song circuits . . . then wanders through the dead heart of Youngstown stuck in a recursion loop. It’s plain to me that now: the plain folks got some downtime during graveyard shift, and breathe good, too, like Kundalini zombies, but now, and also, they got no pockets, can’t dance, won’t walk, don’t much sharpen their hobnails on the old familiar skull-songs. All the gears and jacks and levers of ancient Youngstown stalagmatize and rust, and this avatar of Allen Ginsberg beams its futile dream, and chants into my face: “. . . the problem is . . .” my gin’s all gone, and the bottle slurs a dry tongue of dust back at me, jeering nya-nya-nya, etc. “Still got the try, old machine, or what?”

I.#

Watch the thin moon open. A wind from spacestirs our skins together, and the cold light bleeds into it. It’s always brighter from the East, so they say,what makes you think you’re poorwhen you own it all?Don’t turn your face away.

A world beginsthat same fat dream, again,this time. Again, this daywaning, always stuck in its tracks.

It’s all got the same vamps / the same turgid lyrics, Isis. You can’t own it / stone it / and beat it down, too.

Dreamer / breather, you: driven naked / driven blind / and deaf from that old world of scattered ghosts, your lover / brother hacked / strewn, up a tree and frozenmid-breaththe Big Strangeyawping at your own heartbeyond the cull of death andstill, from the startyou always get to be that one true staron every screen / in every roombut stillon the inside: you knowyour feet can’t dance / your ears don’t suss the tune.

II.#

Watching you,a bone moon floats / dirty-yellow / wet / blinks back hard: its knobby knuckle jammed in my eye

Level with our wilderness, Isis: those sad ghost-songsof which we are the rhyme, or not

Dreamed back into skinlike a shot.

III.#

Isis, my Book of Gates and Slick Geometries / my broken angel carriedon my own back: creep right up / and into “In-Betweensville” with me, ring that sullen iron bell,again, and shiver, with me,while we wait for the ferrycross a river with no mercy,brand new, yet again: ripe to die / dancing in our heads. Could you be my own wrong angel? This wouldn’t be the first time I mistook simple light for damage / or the other way, too. Can you tell me: does that bell ring true,this time?Can you show me that you love a son who steals?

Isis, my Hell flower / my mother of all the Blues to be: while one hand stirs the burnt bones of mutability, give me Vertigo or give me Demerol. Toes / tongues / baby fingers flex and jitter in the ash,right here. Count them all. Was there a murder here? Maybe so, between smash-escapes that never quite congeal / and your chronic slog through cities of blue smoke / stalking dreamboats / covert continents in mid-drift. Or even simple golems conjured out of humble clay, and vengeance. So, you tell me: who said people just hallucinate / or people just lie? And who will pay, now,up front / or on the slyfor a murder?

Isis, my star-body,tripping down event horizonsin your tricked-out Book of Coming Forth by Day,top-down / head cocked-back in a swan’s snarl,just smokin’ all the boys / soft neck open to heat / waves / and ionizing rays, alike:you steady make up new names / new faces wear you like a mask. Once again: you are kick to me / an expectation of hot-push / of rush / of yawning anesthesia,long time coming. Of jumping back into panic like a hot foot fly,long time coming on to it. But first: I know I’ve got to ask.

I know I’m small to you,a raw tooth / puny shriek of appetite / nothing more to you than a horny little flea: so scratch me if you must / you do, underneath your pompadour. But first: you really got to ask.

Isis, my blue-light baby: while you’re steady teasingwith a peek, here / a peek, there,at your good stuff,your very own sister, Blue Crane,spreads her honey,for love, over my finger, for some love / of some sort / that falls down – all empty-eyed – each vacant morning / and sucks at my tongueall night long / welling it / swelling it upbeyond all hopeand what I should not do / I do, again,like any average damaged mope,I do / what I need to,and run home like a dog, so . . .

Now, I got a case of the Crazy Jane’sfor you, girlI sing a secret song that wants to name us: “Guilt,” / and “The Price,"so one way / then so far the next,“Guilt” will feed us bothuntil “The Price” comes to cure us: our own thirst will be our chaser, our blood-oath,our sanctified lever:way on out of here we goin our magic get-away-car

IV.#

So where is little baby crying now? Close to me – you hear it, too?

And whose head stares? And stares? And sings?

To you, Isis . . . just you . . . to only you, watching you.

For you . . . and you alone, Isis . . . just for you, only you . . . watching back.

V.#

She kisses sand, first. She kisses dreamers, all in a row.

She does not name them.