here I go brother looking for shadows good morning brother night

my companion I am dead like my mother I hold my hands over the fire

like the lightning that struck her

I walk through the breeze I am the falcon my dreams the falconer

the jaegers will have to take it from me I intend

to put up a good fight

I remember those guitars under your arms still

this jack tar makes a little headway

in to the past with all its spiders touting hour glasses

where I cut my feet on the crystals that have sprung loose

where some negro burns a leech off my shin with a Lucky Strike cigarette

where we go hunting the bulls in britches spun out of mud like gods with tridents

and split tongued creatures knock their brains out going for the gorget

those fables in the photograph like heirlooms put away in brandy

where I see the lieutenants entering the room in maroon

and lifting the slips off of the women with rapiers

so be it

the dream for all its splendor was run over in the middle of the road

while it was licking itself and we will all go south from the Susquehanna

with my chaplet of ashes and ice I swagger through valleys with a black sash alone

and I see the maidens with the backs of their hands over their eyes

listen to them trill on the S that means sad

and see the teachers in the halls asking for excuses in plain daylight

and go to the school at night and see them taking the pups away

the unweened ones with their eyes still shut see them load them in their sacks

watch the water level carefully where the teachers have all joined hands

do you see that concertina below their feet

do you see how afraid they are the water wheel might come loose

do you see them passing their whispers along in the night like a dead man's wind

do you seem them joined to their lies like cancer

do you seem them joined to their word like an insurance salesman

look at the cankers that signify the name of the club on their belts and lapels

when you enter the city limits the road signs announce the time and place

where the diseases are having their noon day dinners

look at them talking like they don't  want to go home watch them go home

watch them accuse the niggers of backsliding

see them grading the paper with a scalpel like a piece of butchers's ice

am I wrong to say there is no place for the parabola or the shipmate in their

shingles of nerves and skin infections

...

I can see all this out the lunchroom window at school and I throw up my dinner

someone slips me a note saying  I was betrayed by a rat I see the teachers

assembled like an erector set and one of them  is looking over at me what the hell

this place is a port of  lies and a sewer of words it is a harbour I must never

allow myself to enter again for the rows of desks are like a regatta of coffins

my teacher has a tongue like a cow it will reach all the way up in her nose

she is saying attention the president will speak they turn on the T.V. up on

the pall the stage it shows a picture of the flag being raised and when it is

tied in place a buzzard sits on the pole speak president cave in my ears

while I am dreaming of submarines

and  a rooster on a ladder floating down a canal

frank stanford 1971