Can in the fist
                            ashy thumb
nail eaten to rust–
smashes the nozzle
showering gold
into the sack.

He watches the blistered
brass
            clock hands strike
hours by slipping
                                     a stripped gear,
dull tick of veneer,
the ventilator–
                              breath crushing
the sack.
                  Lonesome
as a trashcan fire–
antifreeze burning blue
                                                gnarling through
the chipped metal–
when the brick glows blue,
bright,
              the night
slashes the concrete,
swallows up store innards.

                               RED OAK
RED OAK
                               RED OAK
blinking atop
shingles
                  squalid
against a plywood roof
neon in the dim & muggy.
Snap of wing,
                           snap of exoskeleton
on glass–
                   the town sleeps
to the falling creek.

When the dawn comes down
what rotgut will be chugged
where vomiting is concerned
in the echo of latrine?

Scrawls of yardbirds,
carwashes,
                        distant worlds,
blue as mist,
                           blue as tv,
shadow boxes
                               shadow of mist
in his ledger.
Deadeye glowing
white in the socket
grunting
                   his face
                                    in the puddle
can clutched
                           praying
in the puddle humming
                             his innards loose
in the stockyard
                                   were grass skewers
a carburetor
                           half-wrenched
from an eggshell junker.

He can hear the factory
                       jutting,
                                       jogging,
corn niblets down
                                      a snaking ring
of gears.
                   No face in the dime shine
of can
              no face in the puddle
under the florescent awning
of SUPER S–
                          fried burritos glowing
orange grease on the storefront
window.
                    Gnashing his elbows into
atop his hips
                            too blanked
to arrest
                    kidneys boiling in 20/20.