It smells like diesel fuel in here, and something else. It smells like the sky, I guess, the sky that comes in when the overhead doors open. Heartman used to cock his hip and toss out the old coffee in a brown splashing arc, spin on the forefoot of his duct-taped cowboy boot on the lip of the walk along the office wall and head back in to fill the pot with fresh water. Skinny as a praying mantis, with aviator bifocals, bad teeth, held his hand over his mouth when he smiled. Over on the side wall, on one of the beams, he stacked all the rosters from every day he ever worked. After he died nobody wanted to use his truck, but they’d go over and get his lighter to light a cigarette.

Poems to my Skin

Inflammation

The fire is

an image of fire,

wound-voice

calling out, but not

the original wound,

which shirks inspection,

dissection,

interrogation--

criminal self

lurking under integument,

emerging wet, bloody.

Crusted over with shell--

parody of protection.

Sad self, weeping

through walls.

When protest is smothered,

fire goes underground.

Our Lady of Sorrows,

boss of neglected realms.

Distraction

I am an expert

in meditation,

able to take refuge

in sensation,

following the furls

of paisley

on a quilt, the varying widths

of the spaces between floor boards,

the dancing motes in a sliver

of late sun.

Able to find snags--

scabs,

dead skin--

to remove

with precise maneuvers,

divided attention.

Stuff

Theft of Suffering for the Sake of Art

1.

Dear old Darger, he were a good artist,

and fair to steal from, what with being crazy

and now gone. What was his is yours, no soul

but what was peeled out of a dead man's book.

Outsider artists who borrow brushes

from genuine freaks, being freaks themselves, but

less likely to be cold, lonely, or in

a lot of pain, ought to admit their sources.

Darger feared the storm of a strangled girl,

he warred, he raged. In the orphan home he

survived. Lost sister, mother, father, then

his only friend; far off, but kept in mind.

The Vivian sisters were his soul in

dresses, his heart in blood-painted flowers.

2.

Why was I so pissed off when a fellow

artist enthusiastically copied

a great dead nut-case's art, that saved the

nut’s life, or made it, more like, when what is

loved is inhabited by the lover

and is honored by the habitation?

What crime is it to lift out of the soup

of images some beautiful frail bit

of lost longing? Where’s my soul’s voice, my missed

gift of devoted copying, enrapt

coloring, living in? Art made by nuts

is art from the heart, bloody and full scale,

a gorgeous mutant, born of want, beloved

avenging monster with butterfly wings.

Story

Cicada grubs snugged numerously together

in the weak limb. Slept, dreamed,

devoured tree flesh, grew fat

with organs of song, reproduction.

They'd build

a cage of self to struggle free of, stand

in sun and wind,

fill the sky

with love's deafening racket.

The branch fell, their dreams

rolled on, green dials hidden in boles,

faces in woodgrain and clouds.