First Blues

I’d slaked myself in the dandelions,
little sun manes weeding in the grass,
fatting the summer with useless constellations.
I was a cricket, unseen by the Mighty Ones,
making my little sun song,
chirping the blues over dirty strings of a cheap guitar,
hoarding myself into the quarried lake of sound
mewled with deaf steel, wanting the wind to open
highways in the sky, hobo trains freighting
Jesus tears to stop and let me ride the blind,
wanting the Road, the Road!
Unraveling and raveling its gravel lungs in my chest!
The Sloughing Snake, Tailbiter, Neverender,
Passagemaker, Seedsower, Devourer,
Regenerator.
The Lemniscate Road, The Way . . .
to be absorbed by the Hunger
that coils the cosmic spring . . .
Ol’ Blacktop, Ol’ Motion who tears at soles,
who tars, and tolls, and swallows . . . .

You stung me like a hornet.
All I could
do was look
down at the wound,
walk
away stuttering.

(Then my ears fell inside you
like seeds)

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