there is a twin-headed mountain of grace where God Manes watch girls wash bull’s blood from their hands in the river of darkness they contemplate the power of this day’s holiness they dream of giving birth in the Almond creek they ride glowing ghostly horses and if a witch cannot execute at least 1,200 spells they don’t even bother with her i know all this because they told me just an ordinary spirit i come up the river in a dugout boat singing this poem which has been carved into the sarcophagi of all my people

The mystical terrain of my new epic poem, Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light, led me to investigate some of the most astounding and dramatic moments in world history. The Icelandic Laki Eruption of 1783. The brief, victorious life of Frank Hayes, the only dead man to have ever won…

11 years in the bughouse dreaming synagogue death chants crossing the bridge of old junk the snake eyes river evildoers pissing in my wine especially on Thursdays the mafia king controlling the world’s jukeboxes dark news in my hands hauling a wooden wagon of woe death promising me the prayer during the slitting of the throat the moon has a spirit calling mine to fight my body left behind i chisel tall tales and nothing more mar the mountainside scratch out a victory

A country store rookie of 19, I had no idea in hell only suckers worked race weekend. Surrounded by lotto tickets and jerky, Gilbert guffawed as his morning shift caught the checkered flag. “By yourself all afternoon? They are gonna eat you alive.” Didn’t take long for the bullshit to…

Poem + Story — i saw a man meet his end one time from a pack of bears they were giving chase the man ran up a tree cussing gracefully he was dangling there i was young and scared and i threw a rock the bears did not leave they just laughed at me and resumed the hunt…

the worker opens the door of his Buick and a flood of the old poison comes rushing onto the pavement like the car had been submerged in a sea of spirits thrashing drowning and his weeping more powerful than the demon who held him and his footprints of poison down the road to my hovel where he summoned me from my sleep with a glowing candelabra he was wearing a necklace of mezuza parchment and millennia-old metals when he imparted to me:

Some years ago, I rolled with a pack of break dancers who each spoke nine languages. We were on the 13th floor of the Empire State Building when I shot snake eyes, and a drunkard fell upon the die and lost his eye. Riding to the hospital on the back of a flatbed, all around us, we had seven souls spinning like whirligigs. “Can you fellas sing something in Friulian,” the drunkard said in my arms, weeping blood from his socket.

i’m so human i sent my heart to that tree where the blade was glinting calling out to me by the river stealing time in a land of green until i go forth and am no longer seen unsaddle all the horses let them graze where the holy dead see flowers on my…

a mushroom and a cat from the same family a tree chopped down with a baseball bat a worker’s flower that blooms on May 1st a fossil crying out for shrimp no wait, that’s an old cat raspberries i stole from my youth winding vines singing my songs greenery growing for years without sunlight then, like fleet foragers of hope we catch a bright burst —