Tennessee Tree

Reagan Riffle

Find me at the foot of a lightning-struck midnight Tennessee tree trunk

Where I pour wax over my thumbs, And turn peach rings into prayers; Tree rings into verses.

I made a home for myself there, Underneath patient green and treacherous vines

The spot you chose to intertwine

Your heartstrings with the big Brown Earth.

My Tennessee tree holds a River for the thirsty

In its branches are the fables

Sprinkle moth dust on the table

Made a dragon’s dharma gentler

Silver locket in my pocket

Tell the creatures dare to dream

Of basins where the water’s clean

No dirty Man, no hunter plunder

Crystal honest Placid nomads

Rest in haven winter raven.

I feel the pulse in my palm burn

One day it’s said that you’ll return Prophetic whispers from the stars

Carried by a lucky second bolt.

Until that dawn I’ll sleep in sonnets

Shade from branches blessed body

Tucked tight in your bed of stars

Unbound by Mechanic chains and bars

Nurture this ground in gentle mumbles

I’ll see you when the thunder rumbles.

My Father’s Youngest Brother lived in the East Village 14 years before Allen Ginsberg died in it. What’s a punk to a poet?

Coming out at 6’2” from West Texas, Matthew Vann, an All-American beefcake like the Polish street Franks, Kielbasa cooking on rotating spits around the block from his apartment where his lover awaited him.

And Gene waited, waited in the doctor’s office for the reaper’s prognosis which was the same as it always was: some variation of death colored purple with lesions or sudden, surprising, scratched from its own certification.

Matt had called Gene from a rusted payphone and drawled he may be running a bit later. The L train was slower the night his heart danced spasmodically for the legacies of Gene and of Allen until it starved.

So at home Gene turned on the television and, from somewhere on the news, Tex Antoine told him that it was raining in the Catskills.