the poems behind me

Parched cracked sidewalk
on the highway out of town
and junk cop cars
with rigged light systems
flashing orange
instead of red white and blue
as though the road
were some loading zone
where thieves pulled over thieves
and my heart beat faster
at Midnight
when they tracked my bootsteps
from across the brush fields
behind a supermarket complex
left dark in the forlorn planes
of a small mountain town.

Later I had dreams of jealous love
and not in love letter format
but twisted with apparitions of steel and metal
that formed into the commerce of coffee
then and early in the morning
leaving me to wonder if sometimes
my dreams are symbolically psychic
or just repetitious
to the waves of Reality
and the undertow
of a less wakeful Beinghood
where I traverse through matter
unlike a ghost
but cautious and unalarming
frightened of wendigo lore and violence
without offensive weapons.

I knew my armor well
for it began to pattern like tattoos
across the nudity of my body
and I wondered where it wouldn't stop a pistol slug
or those broken dull urns
they save
for powder of ash
and broken ulnas
that weren't my keeping
or relevant to my corpus.

I should have taken a car
but for the wind power
of sailing gestures
leading me into blockades
of dark uniforms, blades, and chains
that didn't resemble the Hellcat dress
that I grew fond of
in drab theater performances
until I gathered that metal
carried some kind of electrostatic resonance
that could blow apart a vessel
containing magnet powder.

I could have sailed earlier
but the nightmare of hatred felt in the cabin
would have warded off any animal
much more a person.
Now the story is about unaccomplished violence
that I will let die and rest dead
in a cushioned crib
made of linen.