The only safe place 
on earth from the cradle
to the grave, you can sign in
just don’t ask
                for a helping hand
or the Queen of Spades;
that mad dog with karma to burn,
refusing to surrender
her knife, sharp as her insistence;
                                    crazy
about alleviation (she says, ‘it’s a dangerous life, 
always having to look over your shoulder’, 
you stumble toward her
on a cane made of bone, 
                         in hot pursuit
of two skinny girls with a golden key),
she's a gambler laying down a Lincoln
on Manifest Destiny.
                      You speak
with your legs all the stories you wrote
in the chalkboard night, those million things
to do;
       build homes,
                    bury the dead,
                                    burn
the mattress or get good head.

Firm on the feet God gave you;
                                flat as Kansas
and rolling endlessly through the mist
where you hid, from the mad dog 
you’re seeking to be;
                       savage
and journeyman walking through the ruins
                                         with Jesus;
He tells it like it is, words spreading across the sun
like tea, working by candle light
to cross sulfur and lead.

On this train even Jim Morrison could be a martyr,
drinking gasoline and refusing
to join the human race,
                        screaming 
like a flower from the garden wall
‘You won’t take me alive’



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