The Nutcracker Buck Sessions

on a dirt road
off a highway
its walls all flung open
like a railcar
from a dead star
crashed into earth
you come from nowhere
but you could go there
on the fourth day of July
and empty your pockets
of all that you’re worth

I’ll have some Black Cats
some stink bombs
ten Roman candles
one for every year
since I’ve been born
gonna shoot em
at the fence posts
set em off in the ant beds
they’re prettier at night
but I can’t wait that long

in the nighttime
I hear the coyotes
like women crying
and the junebugs
sound like washtubs
thumping on the windowscreen
can’t wait for Christmas
does he miss us
when he goes out drinking?
gonna buy myself a hot rod
when I hit fifteen

I’ll have some Black Cats
some stink bombs
fifteen Roman candles
one for every minute
I’ve been standing here
in dead sunflowers
I’d stand for hours
just wondering how you stood it
all that noise
all that silence
just pounding in your ears

now the fields
are flat and broken
the sky don’t know nothing
a land bereft
nothing left
of the place I grew up
just an abandoned
fireworks stand
at the edge of a dirt road
and the smell of gunpowder
and stuff that blew up

I’ll have the Black Cats
some stink bombs
twenty Roman candles
one for every year
since I’ve been gone
we ask ourselves
if empty shelves
will ever be replenished
with anything so beautiful
and anything so wrong