Let's face it,

Dylan is 81, it rains like hell,

showers thunder on the roof,
and I'm trying to catch up
with what's left

Everything is open,
my projects line up
in my head,
on paper
and in digitally recorded sound files
of early stages

The diaries wait,
halted at 1968,
while I sort out the mighty repercussions
of the phrase ”I am an ombudsman for one and all”,
reaching me in a dream,
now involving other people
in its rhymes without reason
and its threefold guises

I chew my tongue
and reach for the coffee mug

I have a bell in my head,
summoning me
to an atheist mass
in a Chevrolet plant

I'm at the brink of myself,
drooling and muttering,
storming into the clouds,
balancing my bowl of venom and verses
in a brilliant equilibrium,
challenging the hardy guys and dolls
up on Mount Olympus
with bare bone poems strewn in the wind,
nails dirty, underwear stinking,
my rubber boots carrying me ahead
like the winged footwear of Hermes
or the ice pick of Hillary

The insides of my hands
talk back to me
out of the coming and going
of star-lined universes
while minuscule beings charge
through my lifelines

Were I a hermaphrodite
I'd go fuck myself

Each day has numerous crevasses
to hide from oneself,
but I jump up
to chisel out one or other observation
in water and sand,
just for the non-existence of something;
just for a handful of intense intents