I watch him carry on into the tunnel dark,
with barefoot bravery and flashings of spooks
while hungry patriarchs fled as fires into the sun to dream
their dreams of fistfuls, those nightmarish greenbacks.

I watch him head on into the tunnel dark
beseeching the blowhard’s handiwork,
whilst trampling sons and daughters into dirt like druggy hounds
wailing wailings coated by frothing sweat.

I watch him carry on, into the hopeless, tunneling dark,
banking against such spouting dragons of blistering bites,
lizards bestowing spilling carnage heaters that bang bloodily
at his door with claw and fang and fight!

I watch him carry on, and O’! how the tunnel is dark!
Hurling and howling in whirligigs of bedlam, singing,
what little lungs remaining; phobias contorting
him at night, jerking him in his horrendous ghastly slumber!

I watch him carry on into the tunnel dark:
in shroud, in nudity, in numberless number,
in raven garb, in skeleton, in stirring maelstroms of the deep
shooting cannons backing cannons upon quavering masses.

And still, I watch him, carry on into that harrowing tunnel dark
whilst shadows rake across his sundering limbs and popping eyes,
the wonderman a’come to pass round cigars packed rich
and light him up like a damning matchstick.

I watch, he’s carrying on into the tunnel dark,
untethered and alone as one could be. Holy rushings
in the trench are flooding fast about his straps and
whispering commanding cordial demands in lark,
the weeping bodies, building high.

I watch him, on into the tunnel dark,
and beat down demons that come from the never’s nowhere,
to splay what hickory flesh persists in the drawing drought
of his doubt so daunted, cloven twain haunted mind.

I watch him carry on into the tunnel dark
in bygone destiny strangling, in wallows and wallows
of fervent cries hushing his teeth from his mouth and
endowing arms upon arms and
yet, into the tunnel dark he goes:

without reaching, without holding, without fingers to clutch a pen
and scratch his prayer
his stricken
his sicken
his dreadfulness into an earth racing beyond sound.
I watch him, I watch him.

I watch him headlong into death,
I watch him carry on into the tunnel dark, and then rupture,
like a blossom accelerated, like a sudden scream,
back into death.