His best-kept cold keeps worstin’ all the time,
always a snot rag wiping the rift down his clownish face,
holding back what gives him fits inside: fits come
when he walks through pines out near the hydro dam
(golden eyeless wall for a flooded town).
This rascal with a heart spun from locust and crystal
eyebeams whose jumble left and right makes
girls cry when he testifies: Nutholms christyfasten
wellball womastikind volly friction sunsetspree.
Ask what wonder, hold first humbly the whetrock
which sharpens pocketknife ease of mansfallen.
Man learns to leave crestfallen wisps from the word usurper,
some brownie furred periscope head on the sea, a St. John monster.
Question: of the lifehood mold, where was Dimnah?
Greasy yellow curls of heavy-metal hair, Hobo offers
two-toke kill to smoke, batting his albino eyelids.
Dimnah on the lake bank sunning when Hobo swam
near the Fontana dam those summers.
“How’re you a doin’ name’s Hobo Bee Joe,” he gophers
his way a lockwree-a-latwroo through smoke. Hobo has
many hawg’s leg doobies, red hair sprouting ghastly buds,
his paleness works in winds in piled Crisco-Barbie hair
and fish-smelling breath. Hobo Bee Joe,
sin of a cave who fetches creek water and catches
black slithers in rain pools, after his Hotel landscape job
when he sits straight and tall and the spine serpent
emerges, eager for winter valences when the solstice
and bright pine tar flames up.
Broke-legged sunchairs on his porch,
swatches of bloody cloth hanging off plank boards.
Hobo fails to mention shouts of bigger demons
courageous and swift and a tall ash in the wet white mist.
He watches spiny fish flop from the creek and climb roots
of trees, reaching up to Hex Even.
Thick slugs in golden loaves await him, fruits of family disease.
Hold his head up, Aretheuse, rolling in thy fountain,
he is a water baby. Patience Pollen dots a dash
on her nose, goes “wash in me.” He called her muse.
