HE COULD NOT LOVE HER ANY MORE

Sing some, Gail,
West Texas girl
Balancing herself down
A railroad track,
The wind to blow her red hair back
Where the sky is hard blue
And her audacious eyes this color,
But in the shadows, a deeper green.
Those perfect lips were split
By the fight behind the Rooster.
That night she hit him twice
Before he could stop her,
In her boots and her fury,
Her west Texas audacity,
Her face with as many
Freckles as stars
Studded down the middle rib
Of the enormous animal
Southern rushing sky.

Come on, lost child,
I am decaying up here
By the B&N tracks
In the grain elevator shadows
Beneath a moon of smeared yellow.
Balance your way up to me
In this northern darkness
From the graveyard we loved
To rub the hot skin
Of your back against
The cool marble crypts
In heat lightening shimmering
Down the silver- steel line
Of deep July nights.

You never listened.
All tracks run together
At the end of the infinite.
You never bought that,
And to prove it you walked
Away, stubborn, stiff-necked.
The rest of us broke down
To hitch back to cities.
Now I am there, where
The steel crosses and rings.
I am sadder than
Every dark Sunday.
The huge moon hangs
Over me.

C’mon, wild girl, sing me a little
Lullaby of Texas to the steady
Rhythm of starlight and trains.
I can still do a shuffle, a stutter
Step break down,
And moonlight and
Soft hand clap,
Swing in a circle,
A circle of deep green,
Stars and heat lightening,
Deep July nights.
I stretch down the steel line
Where I can touch you,
The illumination
Of an enormous aching
Southern rushing sky.

- R.B. Morgan

(added 01.03.09)

LIKE ANY OTHER

She is out there in the kitchen.
She is out alone, and crying.
She is out there in the kitchen
Crushing his bones and brains,
His testicles, that disgusting dead leg.
She is out there crushing all his thoughts
With silence,
With grief,
Betrayal,
With monsters of rage.
She is crushing his words with
Other men,
Better men;
Crushing his dreams with
Lawyers,
Jealousy,
Money.
She is crushing him with her tears.
She crushes him until he
Has no place to hide.
She crushes him with the brilliance
Of her truth and the black holes
Of his lies.
She crushes him and crushes and
suddenly
She is caught by the moon
In a perfect blue-black sky,
With no words to make it
Come alive.
How beautiful it is;
Remote, silent,
Complete and alone.

She is out there
In the hard light
Of the kitchen.
She grinds on
The knuckles of her
Tiny, sore hands.
Her heart from habit
Pumps pure venom.
There is no escape.
The night goes on,
Like any other.
He is in the back room,
Drinking, smoking.
Alive.
She is a captive,
And still there remains
The cold, silent beauty
Of a dead distant moon.

- R.B. Morgan

(added 01.03.09)

WHATEVER’S LEFT YOU CAN HAVE

The jig’s up, Billy.
I knew someone was sneaking,
Stealing my memories,
When I was sprawled,
Passed out in the kitchen.
You touched my ficus erecta
You rotten bastard,
And shook it until
The Lucky fell out,
And Mimi in cold water
Slipped up the side
Just to give you her wet look,
The same one she gave me
In the summer of love.

You’re a helluva thief, man.
I’ll be the first to say it.
You slipped through the barbed-wire of
Busted wine bottles and bent syringes,
Around walls of poems rotten,
Wounded, deformed.
I hope you stopped to drink
From my decades of distilled failure.
That’ll fuck you up, buddy.
Fuck you up good.

Billy, give them back.
Own up to your creeping b&e’s.
Or I’ll get on my sticks and come stumping
Right behind you,
Old, wild and raging,
Furious, frothing, insane,
Dead green with jealousy.
I’m giving fair warning.
Get your 6X7 ready,
Loaded with Velvia,
High speed, fast shutter.
You’re going to want
A serious light meter.
I am completely composed
Of shadow and light.

You’ve jacked the past from
Some unknown cripple, Billy.
Tell me, now, really
Make you feel like a man?

Okay, so fuck ya. Go ahead and be
Successful. I’d rather get gutted by
Some far away stranger.
Everybody closer has jumped at the chance.
I’ve taken plenty, and I’ll take this, too.
Go ahead, be brutal with your
Black and white beauties.
I’ll never forgive you.
I never forgive anyone.
It will take me your lifetime
To get to you.
But you better hurry.
Take it from me, Billy,
Mad, spun-out old junkies
Are always as fast
As you allow us to be.

- R.B. Morgan

(added 12.21.08)

LOOK OUT FOR MY CAT

I cover the cat with my hooded sweatshirt.
We are both freezing in this old shack
Which is, as usual,
On the wrong side of the tracks,
In Parkston, South Dakota,
As luck would have it,
Precisely nowhere.

I’m off on a binge, my main occupation,
And money goes flying when the snow
Comes in. The cat is okay, I’ve boosted
Some tuna, 78 cents at the Walmart in
Mitchell, South Dakota.
I swear to god, it’s the end of the world.

I’m running out of women who will
Let me sponge off them.
They’ll take it for awhile,
But then it’s my turn.
And they give it back, harder than ever.
It’s winter, and women know just how
To grin at a man, then the haymaker;
Suddenly, brother, you’re out on your ass.

I’ve been out on my ass
In this blizzard forever.
Blood will freeze in the
Veins of hard eyes.
Highway 37 is closed until
Further notice.
Responsible people have plenty
Of food, clothes and shelter.
I have tequila and luck so hard
It will break out your teeth.
I pet the cat and
We watch the subzero sun rise.

Snow in tequila lasts just a second.
No lemon, no salt,
Just one big gulp.
The trains don’t roll by,
They shake up the wicked
With a Judgment Day horn blast.
When I come up for it, I blow out
Pure cactus, vaporized.

That’s the whole victory.
One pint left to keep the heart moving
With the long black train heading
Back down south,
And the news from the atmosphere is
I’m still living.
The ghost of my breathing is
All that is moving in
The icy light of this frigid air.

Snow’s coming in. Women are flying.
Money is tough. I am freezing.
The train is gone; one is coming.
I’ll sleep awhile here, first
Jot down a note:
Look out for my cat.
She’s real tough.
She likes tuna.
Get her albacore.
Lord knows she’s earned it.

Time to stop
All this commotion.
Time to curl up,
Get me some rest.
Long black train
I hear it coming.
It will be here
Before my eyes close.

- R.B. Morgan

(added 12.21.08)

STREET PREACHER, HENNEPIN AVENUE, 3a.m.: TETRAGRAMMATON

I am here to tell you
I am not down with that; or,
For that matter, with any of you.
I have never been Da Man, but
I once fought the bastard to a stand-still
In front of the Green Latrine.
If I ever manage to get behind anything
It will be completely out of context here.
I do not care what’s crackin’ bitches,
Boom-shakka-lakka-Boom-shakka-lakka-Boom-shakka-lakka
Ah-Womp-Bam-Boom.

As my all-aluminum walker drags me
Into my 54th year in this madhouse, this raging
Torrent of blood the chroniclers told us,
You don’t remember, the horses up to their
Chests as if it were water, the illiterate bandits from
Darkened Europe pillaging and slaughtering to conquer Jerusalem
In the Name of God,

I condemn us all, every one, a terrorist.
We hold each other hostage for 10 buck pussy, rocks of crack,
xadmissions to Harvard, love, a lousy paycheck from
DeathMart where three hundred pound housewives stampede
A poor mope, crush him to death without a break in the Action
xall to get their fat little children
More mind-eating games to teach them to revel in death,
To worship war, to sack the Garden of Eden
In the Name of God.

Right now in a city once called Bombay in a
Victorian horror named to honor a mausoleum
Young men in jeans and Harvard sweatshirts
Are turning it into a flaming abattoir
Praising a God who made Abraham to spare Isaac;
Our God who cried out in divine anger, universal disgust,
No more of your savage burnt offerings. No more of your
Children’s blood.

I pronounce us all murderers, brutes, tyrants, monsters,
Infidels and apostates.
We are the hideous heresy of human-kind.
Let God be,
In the Name of God.

We have driven Him mad
In this gigantic tomb
Where the many go hungry so the few may gorge,
And
The workers reap poverty so the rich are rewarded
For their ghastly crimes,
While the helpless die as the healthy betray them,
Stealing their grave goods, the coppers from their eyes;
In a world where men swear by God
To destroy His Creation
In the Name of God.

Go away from me. I cannot breathe for the stink of the Blood on my own hands.
I cannot look at you, your demon faces,
xyour grotesque shadows slipping from your fine, shapely skins,
Our priests and reverends kneeling before children
To demand the unthinkable
From the innocent, the obedient, the docile, the beautiful.
There is nothing for any but to kill
And to kill and
To kill one another.
My own sons, my beloved boys,
Went willingly to war because I am a criminal.
A coward, I worshipped with you
All in the cult of death we call America.
We have set upon God the ten plagues of ourselves
To punish Him for His love for us.
We have broken, we have crippled Him beyond measure.
A Rab envisioned our God in torment as we torment each Other.
xIn the endless act of murder we endlessly murder
The God of Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed.

At last, at long, long last, admit we are the children
Of the bene elohim and the creatures of Man;
Stand witness, forever, to our unspeakable,
Endless crimes.
We have, here, from our daily battleground,
Touched our one bloody finger to our One loving Adonai;
We have ripped out His heart.
xxxWe tear Him apart
xxxIn the name of our god.

- R.B. Morgan

(added 12.08.08)