errol miller
Beyond Blue Bayou
Little darling, there is no final draft
starshine is everywhere, and the ivory busts
of the Saints line the pathway back to childhood
cultural affairs of the flesh, barbaric authors
soaking their feet in red wine, superficial
maidens from down at Little Chicago breathing hard
we don't need another mall or sound advice
shiny perfumed missiles or tickets to Paradise
what we need is a good spanking upstairs
converters for the trash and trivia of rejection
against perilous odds we have come this far
wearing lizard boots and sharkskin smiles
we have miles to go before we enter
Frost's snowy road not taken, but later
in that barrage of barren red clay
we'll ask for Lone Star beer and roasted peanuts
a good wind and one white candle to rework
our perverted manuscripts, a piquant band
of sojourners form Grand Isle
hung up on expansive realism, smoking
rabbit tobacco from the urban back forty, listen
to these agrarian reminders from the Old Confederacy:
the blue and the gray of tomorrow will consume us soon
in the brawn water bars of Delta, closed and shuttered
like fireworks stands in autumn, this
is the Journal of Means as recorded on cave walls
and mentioned in prayers of Southwestern padres
we have this day to view
the barnacled ships of Norfolk, Key West
and the alluvial cotton fields surrounding Greenville
so sorry, Cisco, for the service charge
that textbook ploy where the muse turns brown
and navigates a tiger of a river
on down to New Orleans, and beyond.
