I don't like it,
I don't like it a bit,
The way night sneaks up on you as you have your back
To the threshing floor.

I've studied the tapestry,
The patterns draw in blood,
You stand back
Ponder its meaning,
It's diminishing shadow
Brushed on the floor.
You know It can get worse,
It usually does.
Yet you rise like a broken bird, Reaching for the sky.

Welcome to our show:
We have dyslexic jugglers,
**** retentive housewives,
Over retentive fathers,
The dark smiling stranger
Holding eyes of silver
In his sleek fingers.

You wake In this haze
Of a blue room,
The bebop tapping of raindrops running down the window. I look out,
A lion upon the night,
Running the veldt,
Feeling the power surging inside, running the page.
I eat it it up,
Filling the white noise
With sound and fury.

Its not exactly philosophy,
Just better than the low down
Fuckery that passes
As a way to live.
Underneath, the gears get out
Of alignment, as all the underlying muck gets
Brought to the surface.
And big events turn in small
Hinges, every now and again
Something works lose from
The fabric tying it all together.
Put on the flood boots,
Get ready for the **** storm,
Lay up and lay low,
As it builds out at sea.

Yet this roadside excursion
Draws long shadows.
Seeing her face at that angle,
Her aqualine figure,
I lied beside her,
I felt like a hoodlum,
I was a hoodlum,
Not of theft or drugs or violence,
But a thief of days.
I stole them from us both,
Never sure who I sold them to. But trying to buy them back in the end.

Burning with what's left,
******* every moment
Like a pimento.
You run, a lion through the
Veldt, as the words
Come rushing from the pen.

Its little, then less.
I thought I saw them through the screen, Out in the desert
With the Gila Monsters,
I should have brought my scabbard, but I brought
Jello instead. Better than
Maxing out your credit card
At the door, Then having
To ride the El back through
Bucktown to Lorgan Square.
Better to smoke out on the veranda,Ponder the winter
Moon flush full,
Cold in absolute north.
Better the ski lift to nowhere
In your mind, then the low ride to the bottom of the stairs. Almost post time
In the 9th race full
Of nags and nobodys.
Could have banked this ending to the trash heap
Of fine art.
I should have saw this coming, This blind swoon
In the dirt, kicking
Dust all around.
Sorry about your Pay Per View,
Left in lurching in the mud.
Said you lost the thread
Of it. Well I said the same
Some months back,
Now I only watch reruns
Of Wagon Train.
I didn't say it was good.
Hell, I didn't say it was
Anything at all.
I could have joined the
Union with my brother,
Stamping out uniforms for Confederates who still wear them. Instead the sell instant
Cameras to anyone who's looking.

I painted the lips on the clown, But it didn't wash,
In fact it was de facto.
My life was in the toliet,
And I was on flush mode.
Lost to hangovers and headaches, The stuff of
Bad dreams and sad sleep.
And it was all the same
As the red sun rising
To the stink of the highway
With the semi's belching
As I wake to the ***** window.
And the laundry needs doing,
And you have two days
Left on the rent.
And no cigarettes and no job,
And Little Joe's the color
Of avacado on the
Cheap Motel TV.

Hail Ceasar, sleeping on the grass on the edge of the woods. And never you said,
To no one until the cop woke
You saying you best be
Getting on. And Hoss
Tips his hat saying "Shucks
Ma'am " in his green
Slow witted smile.
While in the comfort
Of my cheap motel
The bloated afternoon
Goes on forever.
And I slipped and slid
On the brink of twenty,
And Matt Dillon
Eyes Miss Kitty.
As you remember the bronze
Young boy who dreamed
Of the desert and bats
Rising from dark caves,
Casting beauty in the shadow
Of the mountains.
As I practice this pause with such rare inflection.

Well, back to our show.
Canned beans and bologna
And nary a witness to the
Strange hell of drinking
On a Tuesday afternoon.
And Pa Cartwright looks
Resplendent the color
Of tomato.
And you drink down another
And wake to the stinking
Trucks on their way
From the terminals
To the blight of the
Inner city. And I blurred
Out for a few years,
Coming awake in the 90's.
And I write this poem
To the wind, Forgetting
The cheap motel TV.
I channel Bukowski,
Write a couple lines,
Catch the wave,
Bang on the keyboard,
Write these lines with abandon.
Go the way of the elephant,
Strong in life and graceful
In death. Sleep the long sleep,
Wake to forever.

I watch the harried blonde
Searching her car,
Opening the trunk,
Closing, getting in her *****
91 Lebaron, missing a hubcap
She drives around the corner,
Turns back down the street,
Stops, opens her door,
All legs and ***,
Slower this time.
I'm drawn to
Her pale skin,
The curve of leg,
I'm a well worn soldier,
Looking in the heart
Of darkness, Or I'm a poet
Caught up in lust.
Either way, I look up
The lane for the harried blonde with the curve
Of leg. I breath in the moment,the time invisible,
The movement of dust
Lifts sunlight through the air,
Through the cheap window,
The bowed frame,
Yet it danced around her
Like sun's in their brilliance,
And she was lit,
And I was red, and dust
Filled the space with light,
Swirling and blue,
Shimmering and red,
And I loved her essence,
Blue smoke,
Blue flame,
Sun blazing,
Motes and darkness
Filled with light,
Blue dust all around her.

A wave coming out of China,
A ripple widens,
Connecting a world.
An Aria, sounding as water,
Breaking in a Michigan stream. Glory in the
Expanse of God's Eye,
Below a peninsula above
Traverse while the Locke
Pours back to the inlet.
And you drive into lake snow
Piling 3 inches an hour.
And the woods take the nightfall,
Bury it to the hollow,
As summer sleeps
In the bogs.
This interruption of
Blue twilight overtakes
A neighborhood to a place
I cannot recall.

Starlight winks, awakening
A child gazing to a moonset,
Slivered, falling behind
The trees. As the night
Lulls to a quiet we
Only remember in passing.
A conversation in low tones
Of time passing like headlights across the ceiling,
Then gone. A time of forgetting.
A dog barks at something
Only he can hear.
As your Father snores
And your Mother watches
Macmillan and Wife.

And you drive the endless drive toward Mackinac
To the dirt road and runouts
Down near the channel,
As the water breaks in
A run, Laughing in the rush over the falls, As the planets
Arc across the sun in due fashion.
A pattern of stars revolving
To infinitude.
I point my arrow at the sun,
It falls below it.
Hearing the twigs crunch
Beneath my boots,
And the breaking sound
Of voices trapped in the rocks
I paid the fare, I'll ride it
To the end of the line,
Carrying me where it will.
And it never rains.
And gas is a rich man's *****. Under a blue sun
And the trucks grinding
Up the interstate.
And no more rain
In a summer gone to drought.
The grass brown in blight.
Wishing for color rising
With the fall.
I'll see it between Sun
And shadow.I'll dream
Of November. I'll await
The first snow falling
In a white haze to the trees,
In a darkness descending
East to West. As water drips
From the eyes, and sweet rain sounds as voices
In a rushing brook.
And the Michigan waves Boom against the rocks,
Breaking the island in two.
I hear the drip of the faucet,
Its in these things
All dreams begin,
Back to the place
From which it came.

See the palaces swinging
On their axis?
Hear the gondola
Rocking in the sea?
See the horses falling
Off the latitudes
Beyond Norwegia?
I'll back petal this thought
Of late night,
Learning little in the lesson Dreaming fire from the floor
In peppermint nothings.
Then you wonder Who woke you before the movie ended
With the credits.
And it's summer with
The Coke machine humming,
And the night bugs
And the breeze
And the sound of car tires
Grinding up the highway.
Swinging on the moon
In the nightshade.
And the roses bleeding Red
With her blouse spilling
Open to the moonlight.
And you die a thousand
Deaths as she draws you
Deeper into the dream.
                 BY TJ STRUSKA