He used a dirk
                    a dirk is a dagger

                    He used a bezoar
                    a bezoar is undigested matter from a cow’s gut

                    I shit you not

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury
          Is this your true verdict
          What say you one and all





          Count the nights you lay awake waiting
        
          Count the nights you lay awake wondering

         Count the ways you rewrote the ending







    Landing on PRISON OR RUIN sends the player’s piece
    Back to begin life over again from Space No. 1

    I can’t make this right        It is ungetatable
               In the blank space for future plans he wrote barker

    Fried pickles: another discordant culinary experience


Snake-infested dreams at the heel of the Tunica Hills

          Shift              into absence

Often picture        in my mind’s eye      the light on Sugar lake
          the loft of pelicans from the cypress stand

None but employee or trusty or fugitive
          has seized the sun going down there

See the black curl under my chin
I live on the ground by day and by night…
                                Don’t ask

Whom do you see in the mirror

A flick of the conscience
          before the windows darken in hard vertical lines

It is inenarrable

A trunkful of snake-infested dreams

The grey pelican is the state bird

Her aunt moved from Ruby to Florence
because her house was possessed
                                                     Don’t ask
          The you that you fear
                                                     is here

The fear that you fear is everywhere

Emotional collision of taker and taken

          Hot water sets blood

Helluva lot easier to kill than pass a bad check

Imagine if it were you son
          Badly decomposed

          Coffin kept closed

The strap down team is entirely voluntary
          you would be there

An area man tried to describe
          the sanctity of being
          a state very like happiness

ODI ET AMO             don’t we all

Hate bracketed by love

Vice versa 

AMA guidelines forbid a physician to be a participant

The pavid eyes the gravid set to the jaw of the condemned

            see me              hear me              feel me

I go I go at last I go — his face transfiguring