Stampede of the noun tied down, bright dancer, 
woman, black, native, poor and young, left from nuance, 
incarcerated, eviscerated animal.

How percolate the story through beach sands and wind.
Yogi in his breath with his picnic basket and Boo Boo.
Woman strong, night rider, 
Headless is the stampede action.
Democratic is the creed.
Infectious is the screed, 
Biblical and televised.

Hair shorn for the baptismal font.
She saved up since girl hood to be a part of her own soul.
To own a soul open as the windy day and to give birth and 
Say what it is worth this time around to be a girl child on board,
Not a refugee but to have a home like the wave 
Knows the arm of the sea as she crashes and runs 
Up the beach after me.

Laid low, the great strikes of the twentieth century, the religious momentum,
The giving forth of words and texts on love.  The love sex giving forth until
We give out in heaps like the grass plied or the oily rags ready to combust.

The barn is dry.
The way is near and we have to give it back so as to guard against fraud and pretenders.
She really wanted to say and she wanted to bring her dog.
You know how schools cut us short like an amputated leg or an old custom like binding feet or circumcision.

Who can be for such suffering of the people.
The chosen woman and her man, duly elected, consecrated, starved, beaten, aged like wine and meat, rice and beans.
The totems aren’t telling.
The grass fires burn.
No one can breathe in here, let alone talk of our future selves.

It’s a fire sale discount with people marking up the lives on their arms, notching the conquest of love, pasts and rope.
Don’t say it’s so.
Say it’s something else, long river green and brown.
Great Amazon fish slayer, tree dwellings and prehensile tails, opposable thumbs and the crowd is restless.  The crowd brought their own logs, No one can sit down.

That old pancake breakfast, shorts and flip flops, “Hey, we paid our money”.

Jam and honey, lips and money, garage bands and Lucifer himself doubled up with vomiting behind the shed, by the old tie post where the horses stomped and waited.

It’s our turn now, take your partner hand in hand, 
fruit salad, mashed potatoes, paper plates.

The radio says “da ti toe, da ti toe, dah dah dah”  
It’s a code for someone’s submarine, her subconscious cigar and horse 
and unicorn to the rescue “dah ti ta, da ti ta, dah dah dah”.

The bare feet pick up the rhythm, the menstruation, the lynchings, 
the time by the river we sat alone.
Old grey grave, granite hewn and immortalized.
The pace of all the suffering rushing down stream, 
The green reeds bending in the current, 
the stones and little crustaceans, katydids and fly larva feeling for the wing,
Knowing the sound like a bell of fury, an empty box at the night stand or
Strange notes at the opera.

She figured as much and took the place on stage
All mud smeared and ancient as a truth sayer,
A slayer of fences, submerger of limited boundary, now stretched, 
Taut as tight wires, as the tuned guitar with her cat gut gut chest and 
Heavy blankets laid in as mud chinking for the log cabin drafts, 
The drunken wind from the North and the laden moisture of the South,
Her man, her woman bedded down with the flapping insignia rubbed raw on the sargeant’s arm.

Tie up, lay down, pay the moon,
Pay the woman her due.
The night rains and the dew smolders as the kiln smokes, the buried pig
on a spit over hot rocks attracts dogs and birds and her men singing and ablaze.

Fire people indeed,
Mushroom lovers, 
Dehydrated from the walk with eyes like pincushions for the stars.
The far above theirs to the intimates of ours and hours and the train and the platform and the heavy luggage laid in.

The reel of round dance and cast lines that plop the bobber on the pool.
Concentric, concentric now everyone in unison rise as the smooke, as one body from the befouled air, from the hay fever of harvest heavy with dust and pollen and the ploughs turning dry hands like old spines rolled over in bed.
Cavernous eyes out from the corner for a look around and to have their due too.
What are we due for?

She and I embroiled as one soul in a rolling cat fight of two, tails, claws and the hiss of coming for air as the whale spout or the steam engine finally at the station letting go.

And the people come out from the cars and mix like snow on the lake with the people of the city attuned to their own ends.

A way of knowing, of sorts and types and kinds like a fastidious garage for cleaning and constructing a better way.

It all crashes down of course.
I didn’t think that I would be there to see it.
To go with her souls wrapped around to pick through the pieces with the crowd, but here we are.

It’s never the end but always some more, some next, some further, some other lover’s son who brings the rear and pounces like a moment on the stars, the ones so far away, twisting, spinning by time itself on the vagaries of next and manifestation.

Who but you, me, they, the vast regalia of animalia, time now and wrapped in the heart with no shell, the tender beating of everything to come.