Houses with turrets rut and turn
quick below the touch. Let’s imagine
a street quieter than this one on

a Saturday, and more choked
with gothic. The ones with the taped-
down doors make me nervous.

I imagine the dead numb and filled
with stars; like getting so high
even relief is beneath you.

You probably like those midnight
allies so black with going nowhere
following becomes epic. That’s some

killer shit. Bit by bit they’re boarding
up Lorain, Ohio, and leaving it
to starve the ghosts out of its guts

Technorati Tags: lorain, ohio, ghosts, houses, saturday, postmodern poetry

I could have been watching
the sky shrivel dawn widening
a thick dark lake.

Skin below skin around
time thickening as private property
dropped off into some purer oblivious

ending through which the ground
could or couldn’t be seen.
I could have been helpless, lessening,

only barely a filter for low winds
or niche above upending.
But I was poring over lapse.

On the east side of Lorain, Ohio
trees bend over silent streets
as if the weight of the sky is
too much. I spin along the sidewalk,

crystal and efficient, another mad
man out in pitch night, looking for
the mauve in a vault of storm clouds
that released on us before dusk.

A curtain is open quarter-way on
the second floor of Stan’s Grocery.
Houses push me through the street
making ghost more of me each block

…which in itself is wherefore
an inconstant innoculation
or suffering a returning
flaccid morning orange blossoms

flotilla inelegant and slightly bruised…
I lost that solid deliciousness by shirking
impromptu mesmerisms replete with dawn
stumbling down this new gravel alley…

Funky Cold Elyria

Thanks go out to Michael Kapalin for helping out on this one. His input was invaluable.