In cold cobwebbed cellars
underneath the back
of your mind, the far back
corner of your mind
there is hot ambition combusting,
bubbling over lips of
clean concrete crates,
there is a new collection
each moment of moments
unsorted, unembellished,
there are villainous words
holding blades to each other
at the throat – whispering
sharp eager threats, fighting
for belief & release.

In the strange sturdy valves
of your heart there pump
poems that will never be read,
beat rhythms you only hear
in your head,
bleed language that hasn’t been said.

In wanton fingers
sit stories you’ve been through
before, are not waiting
to be seen but making
this happen:
there is a soft pretty girl
with her brother sharing
pictures with one another
downtown,
& when they get up to go
she walks quickly ahead,
eyes down where she steps
not slowing for him
to keep pace.

In the back of your mind
there are thugs
without faces writing
words in the blank
bathroom stalls. There are
great banners that read
DREAM THROUGH THE NIGHT,
DO NOT LET SLEEP
AWAKEN YOUR NIGHT,
NEVER OPEN YOUR EYES
AND GET DRUNK ON
THE NIGHT –

there are sleeping in the back
of your mind pistons with
crippled hind legs, frost
snorting from the holes on their faces,
teeth bared & broken & white.

In the black bright patch
behind your eyes
there is you, blinking
speechless & barren,
building dreams in the night,
trailing empty banners
of sleep, catching villains
& thugs, sisters & brothers,
youth captured in full –
in the corners, in the walls,
in the pitch of the vast dim
back of your mind.

I want the end of the earth on a platter,
For all of this to matter it would take a miracle
That would cost a lifetime of yeses
And nos that none of us have,

It would take more than what belongs to us
To sort out the difference between a beam
And a truss, to raise high the studs and kings
Of a stiff hammered wall, straight enough

That we trust it will never fall over, or
Splinter and keel in the strongest of winds,
The stiff-backed spine, leather hands
Of a man the color of the Appalachians. The sounds

That he makes are whistling songs
From a whittling stick, the scrape of an end
Without means we will never forget. I’m tired
For the scourge of blue Virginia’s lost

Who clamor up roadsides relying on faith
And the balls of their feet to bring them home
With more coal in the bag than was there
When they came, I’m afraid that they fear

And trust that they don’t.
I want a line of work that scabs my dry hands,
A day so long we use lighters to find our keyholes,
Memories I never had but wish were my own –

I’m tired of sashaying, relieved
Every day instead of reliving, I’m tired of not being
Tired when I wake. Where are the ends of my earth?
The beginning of me was more than I’m worth.