25,26,27

25

Yellow starthistle sucked at daylight in Roseville train yard

Robert’s veins creaked with chemo-electric rush, beeps of machinery

We sit waiting for northbound Union Pacific Scarecrow, Klutter, and little Timy

Max the cocka-poodle has fentanol suckers stuck to his fur, Bob sleeps

Charlie blinks red, Dunsmuir in line, raised by Hells Angels Timy bleeds

Bobby weezes with sleep apnia, cancer, she’s calmed by Zanex, television

In boxcar hum and sway, rollicked in soot blanket lake Shasta swims bellow

He thinks for hours on itched boils, Fox news, and “don’t bury me yet, I’m not dead”

Bob the veteran splits cold coffee n’ whiskey, orating schizophrenic; donut shops, guns

Come to find out she’s been fucking his cardiologist, he thumbs through medication What hour is it?

Past midnight we crawl through spotlights into Klamuth Falls the bull is waiting

The round soldiers in their regiment pill bottles dissolve in his chest, it’s stage five

Running with metal braced military packs we enter the BNSF yard, poised to flee

He’s not ready. Thinks about his wife’s smile, his son’s dirty boots

26

Did too much blow night before the funeral, I miss the sublimaze, the oxicotton

Read Dylan Thomas to the crowd, weird group of Jews and cemetery rats

He worked there, in the mortuary, twelve years sober 13 dollars an hour

Wasn’t long after I left Jersey, Bergen County jail, stolen inmate cup, that he died

Proud his son hopped freight trains across the continent, never heard of Guthrie

Or anything American, a Zionist he thought of Israel, sobriety, and pain

Lying in bed, I lit a smoke, twisted the knob of the fiber optic peacock music box

He’s only tears now, animal thoughts, a monument of decay

27

I jerk off, look down, and no shitting you, it’s the Virgin Mary!

9 am Captain Beefheart growls out pathological blues

“Strawberry caterpillar, strawberry butterfly”

What are these stains on my boxers, take a picture quick

The peach tree is blossoming birds and pomegranates are hard to eat

Skid row dope, Mexican says “I know people who would stand where your sitting”

Shut up, I’m living like Bukowski, late twentieth century, Fuck Lowell

She doesn’t mind the Tijuana whores, kisses in New Orleans, Mescalin in Death Valley

O yes, mescalin in Death Valley, incantation for fat fingers, we all three cry for fathers

Nude in the sun spittle, dancing in the Panamints, we cry for our fathers