writing through the earthboy 40

[Wetzelbill]

writing through the earthboy 40
bill wetzel

they shook the green tree down
its spindly bole forked back golden
in crystal’s lunar waves
the dirt is dead, further out wind
is all the rage, lethal in the dust

we raced a century, skinning together stories
the wages of sin, no one spoke
of our good side, winter jingled
meaning into the wind, bones
leave no sign, famous in my blood
mapped like smoke from narrow wind

men wept like public saints, women like lucky
numbers in electric flame, drowning cats
jumping against the new-found luck
of sky and mortgaged gold he swung
philosophic, implied in exile chrome
wind decorated stunted light, dreaming
winter against a world of silent legends

those songs busy with knives, stars that
fell cheap when eyes color a winter blue
starved visions, meaningless tapping
in recollections of myths so simple
beneath his bleached broken shack

No room for a wandering race dying
from imitated life, images clattered,
muscling winter red blood like rain
in my bones, I’ll move on, the renegade
astounded as real words create
life where dreams must end