3 of 30 : Elegy for Tim Cantrell

He was a horse thief and a drunk
I have found him sleeping in tall grass,
outside the bar, met him when he lived
in the woods, on the run from the law.
With a needle wrapped in string,
a bottle of india ink, I scrawled
a blurry cross on his arm, and the alcohol bled out
In prison, he read Blavatsky.

In prison, he read Blavatsky.
and did his time, and was released
He carried in his head, a murdered father,
a tangle of useless language, Blavatsky
We used to play Pyramid, upside down
with a pinochle deck, and endless blue cases
of beer. Played circle of death, the
bicycle cards face down on a stained carpet

The burned down houses, the bartered cigarettes
Blavatsky and a blurry cross
coke and hotel rooms

Now your sons are fatherless, and you haunt their heads
the table where you died some shrine, the pill-dust
in the cracks of the wood. You died , your secret safe
the head full of Blavatsky, of dead fathers
gone into dark, the blurry cross on your arm