if i could see the flowers growing

as van gogh once saw flowers grow

then these poems would twist and writhe

upon the page in torment slow

splash and swirl with yellow passion,

hock and spit a madman’s green

vomit blues and blacks across the night

in a sky stark and obscene

but my eyes

are forced to faces

and catch the bend

of breaking backs

as black and bitter coal

comes crushing down

on souls in shacks

if i could hear the voice of war

come floating down throughout the years

as once made forever living

by beethoven’s dying ears

then these poems would ache with steel

come screeching down from scarlet sky

and tremble with the clatter

of the body carts piled high

but the gunfire

on blair mountain

is all i hear

above the din

the scream of mortality

from the mouths

of murdered men

if i could feel the gulf stream churning

‘neath the thin hull of my boat

catch the sun on marlin burning

as hemingway once wrote

then these poems would

clip and clatter with

precise, staccato prose

and when i’m old and fatter

i’d trip the trigger with my toes

but it’s the feel

of my forefather’s flesh

wearing my skin like a glove

that defines me

and reminds me

what my soul’s shroud

is made of

these poems are of my body,

the rhymes my rhyming limbs

the meter is the beating

of my blood through

ink stained veins

i chortle and i chuckle,

i grumble and i roar

i throw myself at heaven

and i fall back on the floor

i have nothing left

of charming words

or pretty paint and

pleasing sound

nothing but the ghosts

of these dark hills

who await me

in the ground