fort

for tara
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a pumpkin lantern glows
in the black cat lake. it's fall again



these utilitarian hovels are one class
above ghetto, sporting half century trees
spared from thrash and burn
development in a fit of ecology ten years ago

i already lost one child to the streets,
she is so much like me, it was inevitable.

sublime: he junkied out, didn't he?
there is a bloodletting in the fear
driven wild cats tonight. they lust
mwrrowling pond's edge - on the wind 's
promise any little thing born this season
faces deprication on a hamstring budget.
do not blame yourself - arms of rwanda,
heart of venezuela, dust mote of a black hole.


i hear a lungbone's carbonation. constricted alveoli.
the blessing of the inhaler. this is how we survive.
trudging foward and foward salmon slammed slalom
without even promised progeneration at the headwaters.
we know the dioxin content. the clean up fund's
been pilfered by donald milken and oprah
is too bought to matter anymore. if she ever did.
i become increasingly ashamed of what we've dreamed.
my words of comfort ring hollow to me.
what brave new
what brave
what

poetry could offer is spit on.
co opted , marginalized
until all that is left is the sound of wings
above a street that no one walks anymore.
it has to be enough.