Moment

Library of fevers

Of ochre syllables hatched in mullen

Cloaked in shortleaf needles stroking sedition

Shivers with your words

Don't be feeble when the trailer tilts

That rascal moment when Ozark moons drip periwinkle

And log trucks tumble at ridgetop

Somewhere schoolteacher's ass is bared

Night is drowned in green light

A rooster silenced

One pale beep breaks unheard over

Earth about to miss its turn

David Thomas Roberts (September 8, 2004, Walnut Creek, CA)

Rodeo

Originally appeared in The Experioddicist

In honor of my arabesque whining

The key is turned,

Launching thickets of ice-tears…

So sang the tonic

Your baroque uproar of shacks and cattle

Squalling and tinny out the end

Where I drive you dreaming

David Thomas Roberts (1991)

Reedy Whimpers

Originally appeared in Broadside, Number 6, March 1991

The reedy whimpers of houses caught by hillsides

Fog down the loam and crust of farm scatterings

Purple with scarves of webbed voices

Like termites singing down a hallway of hymnals

Their bristled ticking afire with chloroform

The harmonica chords of houses that could be boats or effect corpses

The ping of their throats jostled across rocks like sheaves of crickets

Or clouds of accordions funneled through chimneys and porch gaps

To pour their gasping dreams upon the Ozarks

As the wind curls around stovepipes

Ingratiating its form to furniture and photographs

That sit without questioning the ice that will also caress them

When the pumpkins are hidden when the bellows are gone

David Thomas Roberts (October 25, 1989)

Tea-Time

Originally appeared in Broadside, Number 6, March 1991

This is how I seize the highway by its tail

And make my dollhouse right down the middle

With roadsigns and fence-fragments I spook all barriers

Charming material past its known potential

Shaving the first sticks of my finicky mansion

With Edwardian care and suburban aplomb

Don't think I'm not cocky as I smooth the foundation

Then dress the walls like Christmas cookies

Sorting out cardigan and spools of spice

Gingerly piling tiny goodies

Prissy as a teapot about to start his lecture

I'm sorry

Unbeknownst to relentless traffic and the shimmering truckstop

I make davenports and Black Forest cakes

A spinet piano and rosewood shelves

A bisque a bar a diamond-backed fireplace

A cornflower lamp for my lonely reader

And chests-of-drawers for happy cats bounding homeward

To the mute figures of my choosing

So while some dear dumbfuck pontificates upon nothing

I'm ready for interstate tea and mannequin rump

David Thomas Roberts (1990)

I Know You

Originally appeared in the chapbook The Execution (1991)

Oh you incredible night plopped with houses winking at the moon, your banister a knapsack of hilltop goods pleated with jacks…

I know you from eons of memory, the bands of seamless life that I rambunctiously am. I know the electric smiles of your windows and glittered twirls burning from thickets like pine knots-turned-rockets; I know your rough game of marbles and chimneys jangling like leopard eyes; and I know that chuckle of cream you tilt and spatter just for me like a bookcased dream unfrozen and sailing down the hillside.

Oh you rowdy sweet thing of-a-night with lips upon the barn, goosing legends and country jokes, exulting in strokes of township butts decked with calico; you burly beauty dynamiting the goofy praxis of matter and time, slinging your flashlights into carrot-hued homes entranced with libraries, varnishing the crust of these almandine territories; nighty-night night uplifting my precious pines like buttered rutabagas, combing stars with syrupy rye and dousing orchards with your pixie eyes; oh-God night yanking me through lost loops of memory, roaring and squalling me like a timeless baby as it seizes shacks and trailers with arms of horsesugar and sweetgum spice…

Yes I know you, night turning cartwheels across the map of this unfettered life…

David Thomas Roberts (1991)