Crossroads Dream

The dream always ends with

the devil at

the crossroads and

the storefronts along

the roads are exactly

that, facades behind which

no faces peer out, no witnesses

to what transpires when

paths cross, when travelers part

company or dreamers

wake or memory returns hungry

from the hunt.

But Old Scratch

waits and watches fully

imagined by any

traveler with an itch, which

is to say any traveler,

imagined, dreamed, remembered

no matter, the meeting

comes and no one is

watching.

Night Passage

Into the night on the insides of

my eyelids I set out

beyond the threads of color and

the flotsam of

the enraptured

“down in my heart

down in my heart”

the resistance of what

can’t be known

when eyelid image screen

gives up to the sleeper

I lie by myself but not

to myself to sleep

or not

and when sleep comes sewage

flows to the river, taking with it the angels

washed from sidewalks, a distant

cousin returns performing

card tricks, hollyhocks

burst from a burial place

of Neanderthals, recovered

papyri are lost again before they

can be read

on a shortwave radio voices

recite numbers through the night

a comfort of many voices, a comfort

of many numbers, unceasing till

sleep ebbs and treetops wake to

the lift of light

City Limits

The darkness rattles with vandals
shaking latches all over town
sleepers shatter glass with
their snoring, moonlight hums
and sputters on the rooftops
refugees clog the exits, the old ones
among them fleeing
desire, the young confident in it
in the night air, opened up