Posts for June 17, 2018

These things 
that feel like disfigurements,

they are 

your roots, wild,
expansive &
unsightly.

You are like a coffeewood,
yellowwood, trying to delve down
in a land stripped
for parking lot and 
littered with quick
and shallow pioneers,
in a world that would just as soon
use you for popsicle sticks
or toilet paper. They do not understand
what is happening to you.
For them it is all different.

Last through this storm 
and the next one 
and the next (for they will never cease),
and your scars will give you gravity.
They will change you in ways
that do not look pretty — you will deform,
you will knot, you will gnarl —
but these pains can pull you deep
into the cycles of things, and the moon
will become like runes,
the seasons like a drumbeat, your
heart will find the things that make
a melody of your days 

and by and by you 
will discover
a song to keep 
the wolves at bay.

Sing it with love, everyday. 
Some will be good, 
some will be bad, and some will
be nothing but the sun rising
and setting with 
the same clouds you feel you’ve seen a million times 
drifting slowly, pointlessly 
in between.

But sing,
and grow, and be;
you have no job in this world
but to be what you are,
big and lush and
more than most can handle.

And when
your roots again struggle
with the hardpan of this ruined land,
you will know to just
breathe through it, singing softly
and root deep
deep
deep
so that nothing will pull you out
before you have had 
the fill your kind
was made for.

A man tries to pull his dick out at me in a parking lot 
I lean forward and say “no” 
he waddles away with his pants unbuttoned 
it might have been less the command in my voice 
and more the metal spike I was holding at him 
but either way
large woman meets larger world 
flattens it into just constants 
puts the leftover vowles in her glove compartment 
and throws her Buick into reverse 

Crushed
stark
fear
dark.

Crouch
grip
cold
gun.

Stood-
heard
wood
creak.

Bang!
Mean
drunk
done.

My Poem

was only
feelings–

words put
on lines

until you read
a love poem

and recognized
yourself.

LETTERS TO THE DEAD: SIXTEEN

6/16/2018
for Mark Morgan (1950 – 2017)

Privy Thoughts

On this year’s visit to Clear Creek Retreat
your presence is as real as the words I write. 
I sit in the outhouse behind Swinford Place
writing to you in your “other world”:
that is no world but this one

This elegant handmade craper faces east
and is well supplied with sawdust and lye,
the smells of our daily mess made fragrant
with the user’s light spread of cedar chips;
thumbed to the overhead beam a note:
KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL

Behind me, the day’s first stirrings 
of the random assorment of youth who
occupy this stead and spend the hours
such self-sufficency requires. You
and I witnessed the hard pull of it:
the garden, hoop house, herb bed,
cobb oven; their bodies taut & tan 
were intoxicants to us two old men

They served a meal, tame and wild,
and asked us to say the blessing.
“What blessing can we give?” you asked.
“Of those who’ve come before us here.”
That is when
we wished to see what they may be

As I reach the end of what I’ve come to do,
Chinese windbells sprinkle your spirit
down the valley all the way to Anglin Falls;
it sounds like your birding voice:
hushed, expectant, knowing the call to make

In case you were wondering (and why wouldn’t you?), these things did not happen when I was in the sixth grade:

I didn’t take out a mortgage (that would come later)
I didn’t lose my virginity
World War III didn’t start (but it was close)
Nixon wasn’t elected President (that would come later)
I didn’t get bar mitzvah’d (that would come later)
I didn’t get a recording contract with a major label (still hasn’t happened).

I didn’t have surgery (happened earlier, then later)
Nobody walked on the moon (that would come later)
We didn’t have a cross burned on our front lawn
My parents didn’t get divorced (did not come later, never happened).

Castro was not assassinated
Khrushchev did not bury us (but Putin’s working on it)
A tornado did not blow our house away
Happy Chandler wasn’t always happy.

There was no rapture
Elvis did not die (that would come later)
I did not steal a car for a joy ride
I did not join Boy Scouts
I did not have a near death experience

My class did not take a field trip to the Cayman Islands
I did not do heroin
I did not get a dog (that would come later)
I did not try sky diving.

I did not vote in any election or referendum (that would come later)
I did not get a book published
I did not, to my knowledge, eat quinoa (that would come later)
The government did not take away our guns (didn’t have any).

Esperanto was not taught in class or spoken at home
JFK did not stay at Frank Sinatra’s house in an addition built especially for such a visit.

I did not lose my virginity
Wait, I already said that (but, you guessed it, later).

Sometimes I meet a stranger
who–
like the breath-locking first dive into
springtime water–
strikes me.
I hope I don’t stare,
but,
do they know their beauty?
Then they move on
and the world fades back in.
I think, then, 
it is better to notice beauty
than be beautiful. 

“Just what the doctor ordered”
Here in Ken-tuck-ee
Get your liquid postcard
Beneath our ‘nolia trees

Centuries of seasons,
barrel years roll by
Sweet fruit, oak and spices,
Of barley, corn and rye.

Spirits soar from black-charred tombs,
Angel share descends
Gifts us with the fragrance
Of Master Brewer’s Blends

Limestone – filtered waters
Tame the bubbling ale
Follow black-fenced pastures
To navigate the trail

Prognostication
riddle tied tongues
tracing futures truth

Above the dais
Soothsayers speak sacred rites
capitalist end

Echoes of Janus
saturnalia beckons,
masters will serve slaves

Servants burn temples
the shrines shall fall, “San Souci
all fall, San Souci”

my room is piled high with junk,
school papers lined with ink
spread thin across the floor,
tattered book with long cracked spines 
stacked high on my desk,
open top boxes line the walls
contents jumbled, 
haphazard.

the fan in the corner blows the paper around,
ruffles the pages of poetry and prose,
mixes the fabric of dresses and white gown
hanging on the back of my door. 
and in the middle of this is me,
shifting artworks from before I could draw
and essays from before I could write
into neat little piles
and placing them in boxes
marked with purple sharpie.

and on the outside of this,
my father,
peering around the corner of the door,
occasionally making his way in
to remove a book,
a pair of worn baby sandals,
a medal from grade school,
a stuffed dog
from their boxes
and restore them
to their dark corners.
or rarely
to take with him,
tucked under his arm
like a gift.