Poem For Robert Osbourne and my Country

for Robert Osbourne and My Country

Fragments

of songs

of time

TCM summer of the stars

my intimate dalliance

with Robert Osbourne, his pancake

make-up

smear on my cheek

reminds me in the mirror in the morning

who it was left these rumpled sheets

on facebook I leave a message

and he responds,

saying he’ll call

and I wait like a sucker

sipping one beer, two three four

on the porch

as the twilight tides

and the pack of cigarettes

grows larger and larger

and my phone sits

as quiet as his

lovemaking

his involuntary gasps

afterwards

told me he could introduce me

to Ben Manckiewicz if I like

he told me he had a Masserati

“it’s a fucking million dollar car.”

“I rigged a cowcatcher on its front

to get through the riot.”

To get here. I felt us draw apart

he left to get a bowl of cereal

stayed downstairs for twenty minutes

I didn’t even think to think

that it was my house.

I lay feeling my abs and my sides

strumming a guitar in my mind:

“learn to say the same thing,

what defeats people

is a double confession

one day they will say one thing

and the next they’ll say

something else,

you talk to them

and they will say,

learn to say the same thing.”

That’s not even my song,

but when I sing it I make it mine.

Like I made Robert mine,

even as he played me,

for his is a double confession

and mine a silence

a pounding silence

on the cusp of a glass

a hand dipt into wine

a ten mile plume

a cloud of oil falling from the sky

miles of railroad

and no home

and two wigs

and a row of bottles

800 in school bills

800 in rent

a notch on my wall

a scalp on my belt

an old cowboy walks down the street

and I cry

hey you want a nip old timer

hand him the fifth

his mouth dirties the bottles,

says nothing moves on

he smells like blood and piss

down at the intersection

a car crash piles

shots ring through the mountain

the shale extraction machine is a gigantic rocket

shaped explicitly like a penis

when all the shale is gone

and all the poison runoff

it will blast away

go back to mars

the alien harvest

the full harvest moon

a red welt in a blue night

a cheese wedge strapped to a robot cockroach

we lunge after it but miss

as it scuttles under the fridge

never to be seen again

our head banged the door as we leapt

down on fourth street they’ve started to drink their own piss

and we sing

Sanctus,

Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabbath

Heaven and Earth are full are full

of the Majesty of thy Glory.

Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna in the Highest

Blessed is She that comes

in the name of the Lord

Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna in the Highest