why i don't write
political poems
after 9/11
the sense of dissent
is road-blocked in my
brain. the sky
must be safe.
i remember looking
at the sky after that
terrible day:
it was infected.
clouds, scabs
opening rains
of anthrax.
i knew my side.
i felt the powers of the
military grow by days,
overwhelm all news.
& that's a good thing,
it is,
we're just trilling
wrens
in cages of
taxable time,
we need
fed.
we need
fresh air.
we need
protected.
sunday song
i hear our new kitten,
tyger, downstairs, mew like english sparrows
below the window in the hedges.
ann's preparing breakfast, corn muffins
& bacon, coffee. her flip-flops flap
across kitchen linoleum.
ann questions falsetto what do you
want little kitty? bacon?
of course, yes.
i'm smoking gold leaf tobacco
listening to all this
activity & these sounds.
sunlight
burns thru half
of dawn's dew.
catching sight of
catching sight of ann's tampon string
as she knees up off our bed
half of a second she's
around the corner in
the bathroom --
that's how i wake.
war of the worlds
on impulse around noon, sunday,
i suggest we go see this
summer's blockbuster.
"it'll be packed," ann
predicts, & i
agree. we have a
couple hours,
preferring west
erie plaza cinema
over the fifteen-some
screens at tinseltown
up on peach street,
all that traffic. we exit
with stern warnings
for the dog to leave
our new kitten alone.
tyger hisses when bangles
approaches: dog must
appear to be a big
black alien in
tyger's eyes.
on the way to 8th street
we stop at cvs pharmacy
for tampons & a birthday
card for ray.
nobody's home
so i leave the card in the door,
then take the back way
past projects & a main
u-haul place, down
pittsburgh avenue
& make a left
into the long plaza's
parkinglot. minutes ago
we wonder if there'll be
a long line, so we laugh
hardly any cars
are there
where
the movie's playing
in 20 minutes.
10 bucks gets us tickets
& 11 bucks get us
drinks, popcorn, & candy.
we can really sit anywhere.
i guide us left where
clumps of people aren't.
ann's very much devouring
the buttered popcorn
speaking thru handfuls
answers to movie
trivia questions on
the large screen.
i make guesses
she giggles at,
& the lights go
black, previews
begin. two
hours fly by
with the speed
of our bounding
kitten. neither
of us
are
really impressed by the movie,
& we didn't happen
to recognize gene
barry near the end
in his
cameo
role.
"well,
it got us out of the
house," ann notes.
tyger is accounted
for, & i've chained
the dog outside.
we are
not in any
actual danger.
however
vicious aliens
are
they're
stupid
as all fuck
karma ma
i crush an ant
angling up the white wall
with a small thick
dark metal buddha
base. bart & tami
sent us the buddha
i keep on this desk,
& the ant is dead,
flat, frozen,
angled & stopped.
it is goddamn art,
insect art on the
white wall:
pasts of ectoskeletal spiders.
ray
my brother-in-law is 54
today, or yesterday, or
tomorrow, maybe even
on the 4th. we don't
note everyone's birthday
on a calendar like a lot
of people do, tho shld.
i'll bet dave, ray's son,
my favorite nephew,
is coming home from
cleveland sometime
this weekend. maybe
he's already there,
at the house,
reading the erie
times at the diningroom
table while ray chomps
pounds of cereal
after working all night.
ray has worked steady
3rd shift for decades,
centuries, 6 or 7 days/nights
a week for 34 years
at the plastics factory
i used to work at too,
let go after 12 years
on election day.
i've never regretted
the loss of that job.
34 years & they're
giving ray shit
because he has to
miss work
for i.v. treatments
for a rare disease he
has but is doing
his best to beat.
34 years of dedication
above & beyond the call
of duty. his boyhood
pianist fingers
thicken
like knots &
moss on wet logs.
ray's done his duty.
3 kids, & jill, the youngest,
graduates highschool next year.
ray has stayed true.
he is a strong man.
he loves & is loved.
"i never get sick"
charlie remembers
the first time he vomited
in 1977
then the exact date
again in 1997
"tell me there's someone
else who can recall
the times they've
vomited," he chuckles
he hasn't been to a doctor
in twenty years
he's a few years
older than me
i see my doc every 4 months
"if i knew i'd live
this long i wldn't
have taken better
care of myself,"
charlie laughs
i want to live
into old age
eating the miracle
of
lipitor
charlie, man,
make a plan
to see
a
physician, please
be on a safer
side
what if you're
dead
& i need to phone you
maybe it's
confederate
bravado
but the north
won out
we
pressed
you rebels
down
like a shoe on a slow
snake
crushed its head
brain squirted
from its
eyes
i am
general
grant
get a
goddamn check-up
berate me
i don't have any idea where this
poem is going, or has been, in some
netherworld of selves pelted by lunar
flecks of carbon, iridium ingots
sucked into earth's stratospheric
lung; maybe i was playing ball
with the dog in the cellar,
then shower all the concrete
with a basin hose, & bangles,
mostly black lab,
goes nuts, lapping clear rock pools,
running up linoleum steps
with wet black feet, running
like a goddamn greyhound around
our rooms & things, then slipping
& slapping back down into the
basement, lapping more water,
between gulps he breathes like he's laughing
looking at me
tail, a sun-curved
pine branch wagging.
a man must know what he's
doing, whatever he's doing,
especially if he
writes it, if he intends
to clear the prisms
from translucent
language, if he so
gorges on those prisms,
he spins years
webbing his cage,
shits gnarly prisms,
pisses crystals;
a poet shld know
words shatter
the backdrop of sky
is
hiss.
the last poem
this isn't a college course
in creative writing where a
professor chuckles
where students sit
where profanity is more
sin than normal daily
language
watch those worms
what you say
in a coffee
can
deep with a little dirt:
say "cool"
as nightcrawlers
tunnel crack rock
as a chub
chomps bait
explodes
like a
fart tub
bubble
we're people
full of red
worms
full of
black
wrens
full
of demolished
walrus blubber
we shit sunrise
light
we piss
like
sliced net
tuna
we slide
slime tin
road
lemons
bob
in a creek baby
our ears are
hawks
nailed against our
heads
what's a
face?
a canadian
goose
eating yr forehead
that's
what a
face is
that's
what's
itchy
what's
most morose
about poetry
a poet
is always writing
the last unnecessary poem
on cocaine
on a
saturday train
silence
is breath chug
applause
green streams
bleed dimes
on sandy grasses
paths
to cave
brain
be
wary
what you sniff
what you see
say
taste
a poem
is a fuck
hole
clyde is coarse
bud big as pig neck
he hugs
it all in from the barn
squealings slip
around breezes
in upper trees
up with a chittering chipmunk
& butternut nibble
wasps shimmy into
caves of tree-bark
rain is pelting leaves like dark
paint
in reality he's down here
aiming a .22 pistol
between the eyes of a
helpless, held-down
hog
he has to shoot
3 shots to the head
brick-pit fire
sizzles as
paint drips
across a canvas of fire
before my sister gets here
my mother just cellphoned me
kathi & the girls just left new
castle, with my stuffed grape-leaves
they all made, & syrian bread,
& shunkleesh (peppered spiced
ball of white flake cheese
aged in the dark in white towels
he's the pampered chef,
my sister sd to my mother,
tho that doesn't make sense.
i don't know how to cook syrian
food, tho of course i love eating
it. the drive takes about an hour
& a half, so about 5:30 i'll
cellphone kathi to see for sure
if she's dropping my arab feast off
or we'll go get it tomorrow.
i want to paint a picture of my sister
stuffing my stuffed grape-leaves
into her mouth the whole
ride up to erie inside her
gold mercury
sable -- & my nieces are
aghast, no, no mom!
those are for uncle ron!
uncle ron is fat enough,
kathi, inaudibly declares
aww gettin' drunk
all that fiberglass dust
refilling my sweat-pores
i'm very itchy around my neck
tho i showered, scrubbed good,
even put ann's body-lotion on,
holy fuck it was hot at work.
i was one of the few who stuck it out
the full shift. let's discuss
aches, & fiberglass dust in one's
sweat. no, let us not.
i have a new-found love
of straub beer
"honestly fresh all
grain beer", no sugar or
salt or preservatives.
i think it's strictly western
pennsylvania beer.
the distributor will only
give elmwood beer
2 cases every friday.
it's a matter of freshness.
i love it. i gave the girl
at the beer distributor
a $3 tip -- "oh no,
that's too much," she gushes,
but i say oh yes keep it.
"i'll have a beer on you tonight,"
she replies like a song.
ann's now home, period's
started, we think last night
my cock must have punctured
the thin membrane holding
her flow. "i thought it was
all yr cum i was feeling,"
ann laughs.
lsd
i don't think i'd do it these days
half a century old when life & time
& space is already so altered
& strange. when i was 18
in lugano switzerland
there was a backstreet
vined hippy bar named
nino's where denardo
& me scored red microdot
with 2 amerikan girls we met.
it was very intense & wonderful
& 12 hours later we're
driving a rented fiat
thru europe to amsterdam.
the moment we park
& stand up out of the little car
2 long-haired guys approach us
& one of the guys pulls like a log
of hashish from his coat.
we want buy some?
those WERE the days.
these days
all i know are
hallucinations,
severe thought-processes,
a startled mind
cartoon
face
aging decades
in moments.
denardo & me
stayed up all night
tripping our very brains
out
in the dark
& fuzzy dawnlight.
i cld not
do that now,
yet i did it
then,
& that
seems enough.
back to reality
7:30 evening churchbells 2 blocks east
open window arrays of birds kids motors
green trees voices tv & as today's sun
blurs into milky blue fog
i'm shirtless
i'm smoking
nearing sleeptime
a sleepy sleep
time
at dusk
cool breeze
all i am
is not all
i was
every one
of you has also changed
repair, if there is repair,
is short repair
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