Words

“Holmes is as dream-crazed as Burroughs, and his verbal decorum
is as meticulous as Campion’s.”

— Tom Gunn

“A man who has gotten his language-tackle into life and dragged it streaming into the murky light of Now. Which indicates power under the hood and a wily hand on the levers.”

— August Kleinzahler

Self Portrait with Blue Guitar

(unpublished selection from a work in progress)

i.

A deracinated punk, agog next to Lukather—
still Paleozoic, a single myriapod footfall away
from Billy (O idle ocean), from Fagen 

Get out of my dreams and into my jalopy
or a tube to Piccadilly
(Silurian annelid or Sir Duke)

As I’m reeling in these years
I’m reminded of ragged claws, scuttling
Bulldog skin and carbon dating scud:

a trace of millipede impedance
450 mya in the making—
6 6 in the bridge and 7 2 in the neck

There is no casting here
only the dawn of black and white
dark circuitry, maple and ash 

I know I’m not in Kansas anymore, Steve
no longer wayward but holding the line
 

ii.

Hockney and Picasso and Stevens
wait till I get my money right
(last night the algorithm

sat me with the Clooney party
and I was friend fifteen), even ai
generated I don’t remember (can’t recall) 

loosening the black tie or returning
to the Future, my coffee and Moleskine—
the lost copy of Molinaro, Marek

and Meltzer back in the satchel again
What good are notebooks when the distance
closes? I’ll start with letters and postcards

(my chest aching, burning like a furnace:
the burn keeps us alive) to the gunfire—
I’ve finally got time for that now

I’ve got my Tumi suitcase, my lovey-dovey
peanut butter, to maybe help me survive