Problems at Salisbury Fair

Problems at Salisbury Fair

Playing a gambit
but still playing it straight.
Sent a fluff-girl downstairs
shaking her pompadour.
Silver badged shadow boxing lady cop,
she carries a gun.
She sits at the piano with a song
tight as a nun.
Clicking her flashlight
working old mimeograph.
We face our reflections
in the city of fishbowls.
Smoking with a journalist
over by the window.
Drinking strange mead
hesitates on delivery.
Working underground
flim-flaming in the fog.
Picking minds
for breakfast couplets.
Shakes her Dickinson hair
Strolling by Salisbury Fair.

Crabbed picture reflects
as she inspects herself.
Winter is rugged
on the frail apple-tree.
Wrinkled man in a snow cap
hip shaking
through Spanish Moss.

She quietly turns and runs,
from a silly basement bar.
Too much fun, it was mostly a waste.
Helped her stagger to her trailer
after drinking beer and sniffing paste.
Some of this and a lot of that
she shakes her tits with tats.
Grinning from the stage
with her over sized dentures.
Clicked her door to the night
shutting out new adventures.
Tight lipped little loser
stapling his chapbooks.
Shakes her Dickinson hair
Strolling by Salisbury Fair.

Clicked his flashlight
asked was it him or them.
Saw the bloody handprint
no flatlander expectations.
One gone before she was born
the other never born at all
they only exist because
she remembers them.

He's wound tight
by she who intoxicates.
The stone bag empty,
Sampson follows the thunder.
Press her hands back
she's flat on her back again.
Kiss the space
her face is open wide.
Stars sparkle bittersweet,
dripping from
these bearded lips.
Boss burbled gobbledegook
chewing treacled tobacco.
He feeds on her mind like a vulture
as she cries out jargon.
Shakes her Dickinson hair

Strolling by Salisbury Fair.
-Will Dockery

Shattered

Shattered

The seconds have piled up
at the floor
lost here in some other guy's past
lying there
with your seconds piled
there went by a life
untold
unasked
going by
never caused and never traced
the future never ever appears here.

If some morning I wake
here for you
trying to find some reason to return
if I see things denied
I once defined
a life just passed me by there
slipped through my fingers
everything here now is real
so wait.
That portion of the finish
never comes.

Now that the lights are going so low
the dimming glow
falls on my ego
now that I'm falling
into my morning
here I am gazing into those
reflector eyes
morning light
is blasting my head clean too.
Morning's clearer
I've been forgetting it.

Your thoughts seem to stream
like a highway
dimming lights seem to streak
like hitch-hikers.
When does this dream end?
When do I get on up the road?
The light sped out
like a fire-fly
like gravestones
never noticed
never seen.
Like marbles
spilling from shattered minds.

-Will Dockery / August 20 1976

***
(Published March 1977 in the Carverlite, the Carver High School newspaper, Columbus Georgia)

Opera Positions

Opera Positions

This is a moving studio
motion
you're independent.

I'm holed up with Search Boy again
sniffing the heroine.

From the room
where Bodeen is sleeping
to a hundred year old
building downtown
a mathematical structure.

Jack Burlington
in his land of crack head hos
his holy mass.

Touches of exile
in this squalid box
brandishing browdsword.

Locked away
at the edge of the world
sealed on a cliff.

Tomorrow always closing in
shut down future.

Opera positions
in the front seat
formalities
forward.

Doc Pendleton
running on empty
pacing
placing
fleeing
accelerating,
vacant broadcast.

Seeing what it's like
to be old again
aged vision
youth drugs played out.

A date with an empathetic expanse
like the portrait of Dorian Grey.

Silhouette shadow lady
your tender river hands.

He remembered the harmonicas of Ed Gray
The years of this separation.

I feel green like Jack Midnight
The freedom
the crushing loneliness of freedom.

Tomorrow closing in again
never get blessed with a memory lapse.

Opera positions
in the front seat
we've lost the passion.

Studio house with no lights
concubine by candle light.

Stacks of art books
and furniture
sex sleep.

Having a bad day in a bad year
mischief in the neighborhood
generation of the Hood.

Sinister figures in the paintings
she's devious
her nose is covered.

Sinister friends breaking and entering
lap dance pirouette.

This school
is destroying my poetry
and the cranking power
of this honky-tonk.

Or is it just boxing it in
with discipline
feeling like a punch drunk lumberjack.

I'm not doing words of some rich soap opera
some blue velvet candybox
I'm right here in the streets.

-Will Dockery (1997)

Cheshire Bridge Road (edit)

Cheshire Bridge Road

Early Sunday morning walking with you
on Cheshire Bridge Road
barefoot in the dew.
Sunlight burned until the fog was gone
as it brought in the dawn.
First time I saw your face
it reminded me of music,
smiling across that yard.

-Will Dockery (1981)

Sensitive One

Sensitive One

When we were young
when we were cool.
That pancake thick mask
made you look like a fool.

Got a stash in my mind
so I can get higher
than you'll ever be.

Pentagrams and cages
pretending to be
a slave of Thoth
you see.

I know you have courage
and you're a midget
just for me.
And he, he's the owl
and sees everything.

Disco salsa
a load of lumpy love
from a casualty
in the battles of love.

Under reconstruction
by the good grace of the King.
By his consent
you bestow on me
your magnanimous love.

Ghost of Cortez the Killer
a spontaneous Hitler.
The mystic ringed
an industrial collapse.

Like a rolling snowball
come feel my nature.
Let's come simultaneously
rebuked and accumulating karma.

It was a lot of fun
but just one of those things.
Sit around on Nebraska Street
and just stew.

Your ice cream from Venus
on my lips.
I must see you tonight
love me
I am the sensitive one.

-Will Dockery

Bluebird

Bluebird

So many tears
on a moonlit mile
through Aokigahara forest
old man tips his
snow cap.

Bluebird
on white snow
shivers her timbers.

Snow balling
a white kiss
a love seconded.

She makes me think of
a haiku, though unfinished.

-Will Dockery

These Night Moves

These Night Moves

The night moves dark and silent
I walk the midnight streets again.
Fire up a final cigarette in the starlight
a storm is brewing
a twist in the wind.

The clouds cover the moon in grey swirls
the moon like an egg standing.
The night I met you it was like a dream
had no idea you'd mean a thing to me.
Breaking diamonds on the trail
and sliding back twist and shake.

-Will Dockery / June 1977