Reading Smoke

                   for Bubba Michel

This is your brain on music
The reviews are pretty good but the future uncertain
Altitude sickness mild, alcohol enhances

Some of the best lines come falling asleep
Be still my beating brain
The earth yields to its own its own

I. Tractive effort – as it relates to Adult Attention Deficit Disorder

Steam’s a lot stronger than diesel
Passengers are lading trailing tons

Adhesion is the rail & wheel joined without slipping
“In most cases especially for steam locomotives
this figure is a calculated not measured one.”

When adhesion is insufficient
power through pistons and rods
will slip the wheels

No useful effect will result
Cohesion another matter entirely
although critical to brain function

Weight needing to be
five or six times piston power
so the brain can do its work with

less annoyance from slipping
than would be
the case with less weight

II. The brake test has three categories:

1. terminal, 100% brakes in opposition
2. road test, count of cars, put ‘em together, do it from the rear
3. running test, engineer feels the weight

Look at your smoke, tells you how all the rest is doing.
Black, you’re adding some coal, heading uphill, looking for power.
Grey, on cruise control, got it right, for now.
White, need more, fuel, juice, power . . .

The wheel is the handbrake

Guys running on top of the cars
make sure the engineer has his air
lose yr air yr shit out’a’luck

III. Each aspen grove is a single plant

Some scientists believe they may
be the largest living organisms on the planet
Each has its own DNA, lives and dies as one

Others argue for all the redwood trees
in North America, say they are
a single plant, who knows, not me, but
I do keep listening

Leaves come tumbling down & through the car
Max Pacheco sure put his name on a lot of trees
or maybe only one or two

At some point, don’t even want to know
what the name is, just want
to be in it, “the moment”

the moment of the country
the moment of the country

IV. The White People

in the restaurant object to
the too enthusiastic rendition
of “Let’s get drunk and screw”

Lightning cracks and thunder booms &
Washboard Hank sz
“I’m going there” & does

in his steel hat, rain pouring from the sky
& channeling through some freeway
architect’s escape mechanism, leads

the way to New Mexican Cantina where
water covers the floor & plastic buckets get only some,
We all sing Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road &

Don’t let the rain come down.
What do you expect from someone who
hits himself in the head for a living?

V. Mesa Verde

People lived on this planet
lived on this earth, this
place: 1st village, 2nd village,
3rd village, now under aluminum shed

Majestic long house, great palace,
balcony house, house of blue spruce
cut deep and sacred into
mesa cliff, which to see

these days you gotta
get out and walk, cut
a footprint or two into
that mesa-top clay, scramble

time to time on scree and granite
confront the real! Deal
with it, hombre, gringo, rhinestone
cowboy & the horse you

could never ride in on. All
things to be pondered in the sky
high bar, watching the playoffs,

talking to other fans there & the
Jamaican bartender just
doing his job. Pretty
well, all considered.

VII. A Film About the Napoleon of the Woods

Pop! Bang! The machine blew
a hole in your film. What else
can go wrong or you do, get back to

ground level, watch the Jaguars
get beat by the Patriots. The Patriots
win more times than not, even

in Jacksonville, FL, named
after the $20 a throw Yankee President
the French in those days called
Napoleon of the Woods.

VIII. Author’s note

In the late 1990s
& early 2000s a series
of serious fires swept Mesa Verde National Park
revealing architectural treasures hitherto unknown.

In Oct ’07 a similar series
of fires engulfed
San Diego County & northern Baja CA.
Revelation not expected anytime real soon.