on death empty street

 

should stand
a moment
commemorate
the landing
on grey
pavement
search for
appropriate
ritual
no time
to think
distill
an essence

AMERICA!


hotel room

prowling
in a moment
of soft brown

a frenzy
in these hands/arms
white bone fingers
clenching

(Poe's terror/delight)

forgotten
indelible
shooting glass
images

back wall
my ghosts
assembled

(already I laugh!)

preaching
to the converted


street ladies
proud/walking

corner to corner
statues

on green/wet
stone

are beautiful
eyes

clear blue
no sparkle
or pain

carry
takeaway
coffee cups
in hand

against the cold


a beggar tells me
this is the best

from Chicago
too tough New York
cool to the Bay

who can argue with a beggar?


window sign erratic flashing staccato I-am-on-the-bed
thinking scene: a thousand b-grade movies (am in one)
constant siren green lit night watching the street is lit green
all structure substance solidity (euclidean) reality dissolving
in green


The Today Show Is Watching You

who would have thought the Image is the Real
and the Ideal Tech. not even Plato and if so
is America just this dream physics in a box?


Border Town

jack
kerouac
in a cowboy
hat
facing
me
LONESOME
TRAVELLER
on a book
shop
shelf
I will buy
and carry
this book
I know
I will
never
read
in every
bus shelter
hotel
room
and mission
line
by
line
I
will
offer
it
as
proof
of
my name
should
I
be
challenged
by
dark
eyes
in
some
cantina

border town


want to bring back the world for her / still can't stop
feeling she's not mine / anymore


mexico
in the back
of the bus

black doves
sing
ancient
sacred
sonatas

fly high
thru texas
billboard
countryside

my heart
still
free
falling
in flight


Texas
street full
of
emptiness

a hobo
appears

and says
you won't
get nothin'
today

it's all
closed up
for
Xmas

I want
only food
and a place
to stay

and hardly
know myself
for it
is what
travelling
has done
for me

who once
asked only
eternal
questions

with no
place to go

but that
empty pit
I call
my heart


Xmas at the Salvos

abandoned
paper plates
and
jesus souls
what's left
of the faith
less
eating

silence


down
Congress Av.
walking
winter
thoughts
hug
in white
ice
chill


Austin Tx.

from
the porch
of a white
southern
mansion
my
banjo's
steel
sharp
angels
into
the black
green
breathless
sweet
night


I met this cowboy in a bar on Congress Av. said he was
Jack Barnett but that they called him the Alabama Wildman
was just killing time in Austin waiting for his partner
Larry to come up from Dallas said when he was drunk enough
they were working for the Government TOP SECRET can you
believe that they're looking for me in five states and
here I am digging missile bunkers for 'em in West Texas
don't make no sense at all


in every
honky-tonk
and strip
joint I drank
in tonight
playing
on the juke-box
FOOLISH FAITH
'I learned
the hard way
trusting you
and my heart
too'


The Girl From The North Country

she comes in
to the bar
and stays
close
to the wall
this Matisse
woman
or perhaps
a Degas
painted blue
is being
watched
and knows it
I say to the Texan
what is it?
and he says
she comes
from the North
I say but
how do you know?
he just laughs
and says
how do I know
what a question


C+W

david allen coe on my radio sings
you never even called me by my name
Sweet Water girl in my bed says
sometimes it hurts to come from Texas


what I know about Audrey is

she married a G.I.
at 17
went to Texas
when I was
3
came home
to visit

a photo
of me in a
Stetson hat
boots
toy gun

Audrey
hugging +
kissing
me

when I was
17 she
died

somewhere
in
Houston

mum
in the back
room
crying

listen

ing to
Kris
tofferson
sing
epitaph
(black
and
blue)

so
far from
home

I
have
a photo
of Audrey
and a
sailor
circa
1942

she was
very
beautiful


Time Dream

I come from
a desert land

its heart
of dust
and mystic
nothingness

its peoples
ancient
and modern

with silent
despairing
courage

have wandered
in and built
around

its emptiness
the illusion
of civilization

but time
will leave
no record

no mark
upon the space

for we are
rootless people

in a rootless
place


spent all day in the snow
searching for a yellow rose
of texas / for you


Outside Gilley's

the pulling up a shower of (brown) dust the night
black inhaling starless at the edge of the world ___
(the world is flat this night) to the side a redneck
hurls a bottle brown brown at/into the pure


the piano man
signed my T-shirt
immediately after which
one of his goons
threw me out onto
the Pasadena highway
I was very drunk
so drunk I couldn't
put a coin in a phone
to call a cab
I had no idea where
Houston was or how
to get back to it
instinct told me
to stagger one way
and not the other
I was very paranoid
about being spotted
by a pick-up full
of rednecks
and being bashed
because of my
long hair I decided
it would be better
to get arrested
I saw a squad car
coming up the highway
I stood on the road
waved and shouted
it slowed down
to a crawl stopped
for a moment looked
and then sped off
somewhere in the depths
I was in the back
of a hippie van
later I wandered
in a black city
this morning
I woke in my room
at the Texas State
I crawled out of
the bed and looked
into the mirror
I was wearing my
T-shirt
on it was written

sincerely yours
Mickey Gilley


in my mind's I a large grey bird is hanging
mid air it is eyeless and all knowing (I am
in this poem) a figure in a black Stetson hat
stepping onto a greyhound leaving Houston
early morning


Nashville Street Vision
(when the cities are dead)

along each street
burnt out caverns
charcoal depth terror
if you look too close

in these sockets of matter
smoldering the ashes of/
the search for/ (iron)
Truth (echoes)

dark years away


The Sam Davis Hotel

someone died
in this hotel room
before I came

dry blood stained
carpet pools
time turning
to black

(still / life
process unknown
to death)

in the bathroom
red spray flecks

like a peacock's
wings opening
on white stone


Outside the Grand Ole Opry

this morning I am white haired Lear hapless playing
with pebbles in a parking lot and the fool an old gin
soaked hobo from the black asphalt says he once
played fiddle with the King


The Letter (with apologies to John Prine)

wanted to sign-off my letter of lies to you with
/your name's on my tongue your blood's in my veins/
couldn't steel the truth


I am stick man sliding
on green thin ice-d pavement

on death empty street
a black windowless cadillac

slows to watch


greyhound bus depot stop/wait Birmingham
is through the door a piece of grey sky


Montgomery

4 hrs.
marching
girl
legs

in red
white and
blue
flowers

I HAVE A DREAM
and HERITAGE

towed
by a cadillac

a picture of
MARTIN LUTHER
KING

in black
and blue

the procession

lined miles of
police riot
vans

watch
in silence

the new Governor
pledging
a new
deal


Jerry Lee Lewis In Concert

ivory hands in flesh (artist/instrument) the illusion
is separateness the atom split qualities transfusing
(Spinoza) at this point we need poetry or insanity
to reach FACT

is music transcends sound(s) hollow I know but picture
Beethoven at the terminal typing (without his mind
happy as a kid) watch the screen random mathematic
figures dancing in/out of existence the hieroglyphics
of silence


blacks
are their own
ghosts
walk
without
shoulders

this street
sags

now weight
less
grey

worn ethereal

despairing
the pound

of too much
history


And Death Is Life's Prompter

a flash of the quick silver beyond
reality's translucent film

and death is life's prompter
glimpsed obliquely

a perverse court jester
dancing in a corner of the eye


in a cab down tree lined avenues going nowhere in
particular I ask the cabbie about Hank Williams
he says he didn't actually live here his mother had
a boarding house down the street the funeral was the
biggest thing that ever happened to Montgomery


Hank's Tomb

is a modern
sharp cut grey
stone monument

an old lady
with flowers
says

"it should be
on the tourist list"

I'm standing
to the side
picturing

a nameless
pauper's grave

by an abandoned
railroad track


A COUPLET LEAVING A GRAVEYARD

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY
THE SUN SHINES SOFT ON THE DEAD


for words


a secret
of poets

I will betray

I do it all
for
words

others have
dislocated
my

bound me in
their

placed me in
a trunk
of

and lowered me
to the sea
of

but I have
on many
occasions

escaped
to get drunk
on

in a kitchen
once

there was
a raven
haired shrew

with a hammer
raised against
my

but I was too
old to die
for

and too young
to live
with

so I left
to wander

for years
I was lost
for

I turned
inward
because
of

and even
fell in love
without

but always
the moon

and now
after it all

bare and hard

this reign
of
words


still /
only in motion

I can see now
at the end

of the journey
my heart beats

on/down

the road



(c) greg t. charlton. 2021. 2023. 2025.