Red Star: for Robert

Bobby Lee from Abilene, diligent baby boy lost in the swagger of Wall Street, Baylor boy, assiduous little man in big bog clover, the partnerships were beckoning, the caroms were caroming, little between him and God, save for demagoguery, who the more gogue was certainly up for grabs, till night fell on his heart and he were a very lost little lostie all by himself in the little skies of Manhattan, towers towering, but little hearts squeezed into the pasta shells of linguine heartbreak.

Woke one morning in that big West Texas bed on the Upper Westside, Central Park out the windows, Gail-ey Girl down the dark ladders, unswooned by the swagger, unimpeded by all the Barnum and Bailey, slipping down the pikes to parts west and Erie-ward and on into the big heartlands, leaving the edgy edgesters to theyselves. This prissy babe abdicating on the wherewithal of megalomania for Routes 66 and all the other blueberry cobbler burghs down the tubular dreams of those who find bliss in smaller quilted patches, singing a new song, savoring the nothing wrongs with fisheries, Catskills, Samsonite luggage, calculations of the pig, variations on themes of the Woody-mind, not Emerson and his ghastly brood.

Cheryl, bruised apple of his eye after the winds down tornado alley left him gasping in the last pew, theodolite in search of a new day, a topography sans god and all the rest, rogaining his way down a dreamscape that steals the heart before the heart sets her sights on the prevarications and egotisms of righteous despair . . . Cheryl, dabbler in need of rent, takes pens and pastels and renders his lost eyes in all their gaping horror, the emptiness of desolation, you know that desolation, you drove it one gaping-wounded blood-ridden drive through nighttime Lubbock, Buddy's soul in rhapsody but yours gutted on the floor . . . Cheryl, pockets his five Ben Franklins - what is sour Mammon to his pierced soul? - renders him the Pagliacci fool for love, the lost afterbirth of crucified passion, the kiss-off of see-you-on-down-the-highway-fool, these baby boys die hard, fast asleep in their arrogant errors, the miscalculations of skunkweed cul-de-sacs . . .

See the fool, see the agony, see the way out . . .

Walked out, this Bobby boy, walked down the Avenue, Elaine's and all the folderol a foggy mist, walked, Van-Winkled his way to oblivion, sought the solace of the naked head beneath his shaggy pate, dreamed himself a new pelt, rogained apotheosis, hirsute avatar, deranged Adirondack poet of the five and dimes, he could find no other sense to the peepshow distillations of the Big Boy colloquies. The first trail into the first woods, Hudson School painted glory, he shed, not some but all his clothes, right down to the pinstriped satin boxers, his genitals ripening in the glory of a new mown world, new moon blossoms, that formerly shaggy pate did rise like a harvest moon: three days of unshod miles, feet calloused by the footpaths of his ancestral cinnamon bears, bulk returned to his heart, bearing him up for the journey home. He prayed for a new coat and watched as the glossy red sheen filled out arms, legs, back, and face - body and soul melting into his new Easter morn. The Christ of the Holy Bear kindled a torrid forest fire in his lungs and heart, and the missional cries were heard forever in the forever evermore.