AM

This morning I awoke to a thick, cloud
rolling off the Missouri River beneath my window.
It was so white.  Resisting the warmth of the
already risen sun, it awaited the burn off
of all its blinding opacity.

September's end left me like a persistent dream
no detail of which I could remember,
but the mood of which could not be forgotten:
An unpleasant hangover
from yesterday's illusory promise.

PM

This evening I went out to walk
a perfect, Prufrockian, October evening.
All day long the day had passed.
All the daylong the news had been bad.

Could it have been other than it was
at this ratsass end of Empire
in this sick, old country
tottering on the edge of its grave?

There was bad news on the TV.
In the bar I passed on my myopian ramble,
They wildly applauded a puppet
who pranced like a beauty queen,
winked, did a little pirouette
and then spoke in tongues.

Amazing!
Her running mate, a man rotten with the
stench of death is sure to pale in comparison.

I'm sure such delights as we see
On our nightly TV could not have been
better conceived by Dante himself
to plague those lost souls of his Inferno.
This applause, this throaty laughter
of these inhabitants of this deepest circle
of our national psyche are in reality our death rattle.

When the brain dies the body is doomed.

AM
No sleep is possible.
Across the river, the distant flash
of the clouds discharging their power
and their rain, announces an advancing storm.
Far beneath me, between my window and the river,
a Union Pacific freight rumbles
along the dark bank into the west
with machine parts for cars that will never be purchased.
It leaves the landscape clear and clean for its passing,
except for the thunder's distant advance.

Even on a corpse, the hair still grows
the nails reach out.

I do not weep for this Summer's end.
In its passing it has left too much rot.
The Winter's pruning will be a gift.

Perhaps tomorrow evening
I will celebrate our passing
in the style of those late Roman aristocrats:
step into a warm bath,
sip a glass of that Chianti I have been
saving for a special occasion
and open a vein.