WELCOME TO KANSAS
MORNING
Waking up, another day—
Urging myself to get going
Pulling the sheets back again
Covering myself once again
How strange it is for one’s
Heart to be loveless in the
Cold Arctic Kansas morning
__________
NIGHT DREAM
A slinky shadow rules me—
Cocteau’s chauffeur takes me
For long evening dream drives
His gaudy Cadillac convertible
Cruising late at night there
Downtown on Commercial St
From college to the tracks
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MOVIE THEATERS
Nights are for dreaming —
Beneath the glowing lights
The Dream Bijou marquee
No more Sat matinees—
Like back when I was a kid
Virgin in the Strand balcony
Elegant Granada Theater—
Not a dead Film Palace anymore
Movies & class reunions
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OBLIVION MON AMOUR
All I wanted was to be alone—
Alone in my back room with its
Bamboo shades and books
The rest of the house—
I left alone, my parents dead
I was left alone back then
Family photos tell it all—
Divorces and grandchildren
But I stayed single
Beneath it all obituaries—
My job as a college librarian
A desire for oblivion
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FOR NOW
Sometimes I wanted to just—
Shrug my shoulders & leave
Quietly without a goodbye
I hated home I guess—
And having to be there
The same little town
But everybody died—
Moved away, so I became
A male Miss Havisham
I’ll die someday anyway—
Reprehensively perfect
They’ll say so knowingly
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LESS DECEIVED
The sun’s occasional light—
Down thru the naked twisted
Elm branches along the street
Small college town full of—
Retired folks & old widows
Brittle and stiff as reeds
Each little home full of grief—
Along unhurried one-way streets
Like Constitution Street
Many of my teachers lesbians—
Their minds like drawers of knives
They were the less deceived
_____________
FLY OVER STATE
Flying high over Kansas—
Sighing and sipping my martini
“Emporia, that’s where I was born”
Smiling my friend said:
“Where you grew up and
where you had your roots?”
“No, just my unspent—
Youth and most of my manhood
Finally I couldn’t get out of there”
It was like dying down there—
Boys all biceps, girls all tits
Lonely wheatfields forever
Nothing much happened down there
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EVENINGS
I digress though however—
I never did get out of there
I stayed there instead
Same sky, same streets—
The highway glutted with trucks
Railway tracks heavy with freight
Midwestern towns that way—
Rotting away from the inside out
Slipping down into oblivion
And above it all hanging—
The long summer nights
Nothing but prairie silence
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EMPORIA
Swerving east and west—
Gaunt Highway 50 moving
Through the little shithole town
Past grain elevators, haystacks—
Scarecrows, muddy snowy
Downtown spectral streets
Dead-straight thru town—
Isolate dingbat little hellhole
All the way to Colorado
Cheap suits, kitchenware—
Sharp knives, old brick
Commercial Street ruins
_____________
KANSAS
Loneliness clarifies everything—
Because there’s nothing left
But Flint Hills nothingness
Purple-bluish dead horizon—
Ending the land way out there
The range doesn’t talk much
Everything is out of reach—
Here cattle roam the range
Old limestone fences
Silence ruling everything—
Negating anything human
Stoic Kansas prevailing
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NOTHING CAN BE SAID
Saying anything at all—
Means nothing to the ones
Living out there in Hills
Birth and death come—
And go slowly like seasons
Life is one long silent dying
Cattlemen like Jones—
Z-Bar Ranch Millionaire
In Prairie Grove Cemetery
People in Strong City—
Don’t remember him much
They only think of the rodeo