Presenting

Old poems! Many of which I don't completely loath yet, but still know they're not where they could be.

Doctor Rivers and the Girl

For William Rivers and K.F.

She’s looking for the doctor,
Here are pieces of him, if you care to look,
Rivers is in the mud, in the graveyards,
In Oxford’s thousand year old halls
Where she reads the great Englishmen.

Rivers lives in the scrawl of his notes and letters,
The whispered love with war poets,
He’s with the headhunters,
All those ticcing, weeping warriors walking between the lines.

She will put the good doctor together and you will know him,
She will fill in his lines, shade his edges, rub away
The smears of indifference, the decades that bury him,
Because his mercy still shines on dark aged corners,
He’s been gone more than a lifetime, so he’ll never leave her.

The young soldiers died to prove his power,
They fell down before Rivers, wrote poems
In praise of how he set their minds quiet,
Then sent them back to their duties in hell --
For the pied piper this time he came
Down so gently, with such regret.

Her mum died on the Doctor’s birthday,
But no there’s no negative transference,
He heals all traces of war neurosis, of shellshock,
He puts her back together, too
As she maps his life, gathers the parchments and fragments,
She does it for love, we must love him, too,

Soft eyes, angel by the bedside,
Father of the Empire’s broken toys.

The Ballad of G-20

One night in Oakland town the cops came around
All lined up endless rows, telling us where to go
They have the rubber bullets, they have the gas
They have the authority to beat our asses if we sass em back

Pittsburgh, disperse, Pittsburgh, disperse
What’s the matter with a little order to disperse?
Pittsburgh disperse, Pittsburgh, disperse
Be thankful that it wasn’t any worse, any worse

That night in Oakland town, the cops chased me down
Pinned me on the cathedral lawn, what did I do wrong?
It was a failure to disperse, failure to disperse
Be grateful that it wasn’t any worse, any worse

What’s the matter with a little order to disperse?
What’s the matter with a little order to disperse?

Relax, relax, don’t fear the cops in black
We have all the protections we need
They’ll let us know, when it’s safe to go
Outside and use our rights to fight

So, what’s the matter with a little order to disperse?
What’s the matter with a little order to disperse?
Remember all the countries where it’s worse, where it’s worse
So let’s forgive the little order to disperse
Be thankful that it isn’t any worse, any worse
It was just a little order to disperse

---

I'm just kidding. But I still amused the hell out of myself last year by singing this off-key while strumming the only two chords I knew.

Your Greyhound poem

You will forget the brown stains on the fuzzy blue seats
The torn covers and springs creeping into your back
The smell of strangers too close to you
Their abused, drug-beaten lives they must spill all over the bus

The taste of old pastries and powdered cheese
The hours when you’re stretched thin waiting
To just stop, so you can move your spine, your knees
Any movement of muscle and bone, please God I can’t take another minute of this

You will forget how a stark, empty station at 4 a.m.
Can make you hate Baltimore or Milwaukee
Cities that meant nothing to you, with a dead-sick fury

But you tell them all back home, every time
When you woke not knowing if this was North Dakota or Montana
When you saw the kind-faced man in Butte, huddling his Styrofoam coffee cup

So you might as well only remember
The pleasure of yellow lines being swallowed for hundreds of miles,
Sharing your bag of chocolate with Asia, moving from Great Falls to New Hampshire
For a boy she barely knew

And always remember, (since it’s just as true
As angry, exhausted people in Chicago lines,
Sleeping on cold black benches, getting grifted out of 20 bucks
By one hard luck story or another)

When you’ve made friends with every face on your bus
Even if you’re keeping to yourself this route
Remember when the driver is steady and patient
When it’s midnight and the skies over Lima, Montana are turquoise-lit

Over one brooding yellow Motel sign
And you can’t get the scene in a photo, but you fix it in your mind
And the diner’s decor is pink-precious, but the girl at the counter is an angel,
The bus driver laughs with the fry cook over nothing much

And you take your black coffee and your rhubarb pie back onto the bus
And you should be sleeping, but you couldn’t possibly

Ghosts

The old school friend
Gets married in 10 hours.
You lie in white bedsheets,
You feel hit by ghosts;
Smothered by everything that ever
Didn’t pan out, or hurt somehow.

The dark covers you
Like a low, low, ceiling,
It crawls right up towards your nose,
As if you can feel your own breath against it;
As if things will soon get worse,
As if you’ll soon rung out of air,
As if there’s something in this dark to answer
Your wrinkled, wrong, thoughts.

You have a knack for making everything worse,
When every sweet song sounds warped,
Bleached out, like the light and laughter
When a night of drinking or the illusion of it,
Has gone on too long, and until you get it back
Nothing is worth anything and never was anyway.

Four in the morning can be the weight
Of everyone you’ve ever met;
Like the dark, that feels like a force
More sentient, and more malevolent,
Than just absence of daylight.

And the black and white cat’s
Black, swift shadow against the hall
The black shoes, newly shined,
One beside the other beside the kitchen table;
It all feels stretched and morbid ,
And now -- you are desperately afraid
Of nothing at all;
But most of all,
What lives inside your head.

G-20 poem

1. The mechanical voice

The mechanical voice has won,
The lines of black-clad cops retract over the most stubborn,
For the chickenshit, the bystanders,
Those waiting for the moment that is not this,
It is time to give up our brief protest.
Somewhere the boy with the bullhorn,
Talking about our God given rights
(“We – the people – have the right – to assemble”)
Has been suppressed, it is over
We will disperse, as commanded.


2. Body anticipation

As we cross the Cathedral lawn,
With tear gas building swiftly behind,
My cousin and I let go of each other’s hands,
Raise them above our heads, walking oh, so slowly
Past one man in armor, no face, weapon at the ready,
I wait for arms wrenched backwards,
Face on the grass, knees in the back, outraged orders,
I wait for the sting of his rubber bullet gun,
Each place on my body anticipating the turn to shining purple-black.

Music

The dead, poets of old can make us cry
With only words and moments, of wars
And love and some slice of feeling unique, but just like us,
Genius in its summation of all matter, all time.
I might be a humble writer, puzzle pieces arranged to a picture,
A builder of clever tricks of the light,
Yet, every time I stand in front of heartcries of old firesides,
With some beautiful boy pushing soul up from the guts,
Or wrenching out of some sweet tangle of wood and strings
Something that bubbles up from our maker, and from isolation,
Everything that hurts most in the world
Everything that troubles the mind or sets it aflame

No matter the turn of the pen and paper
Or however I arrange the pieces into imitation of gold
I will always stand, in some happy crowd, humbled
Sick with jealously, and the sharpest longing
To know like they do – and I will stand, moving
In patterns of joyful instinct,
Knowing I will never hold a roomful of strangers
In this controlled, loving chaos,
This compulsion to stomp and beat
The floor with black boots,
This power, some language
That cuts the air
I cannot speak it
---
This is what happened in May '09 when I saw Old Crow Medicine Show front row center. I like the ending. Maybe I can tighten this one? I was never good at purely happy poems, but this one is more jealousy.

Consideration of a grizzly bear (Monsters)

The deep, dark, woods are not yours --
You walk every time with the notion,
Of being overpowered and devoured.
Like the children always say and suspect,
There are monsters in this grim world.

They are not impossible monsters, no
They can be chased away or change their minds.
They are not often looking for you,
And they are never looking for only you.
They are not personal monsters of yours.

This may be a great relief, still,
These monsters and you might meet.
It could happen with the wrong day,
In the wrong clearing, they may wait
Hungary for the soft, pink, and small.

With open mouths and cold eyes,
They will not hear any of your pleas.
That is the city’s price, that is how it should be.
With all we have built,
You might someday be devoured.

So walk loudly, with great apprehension.
There is something frightful and good,
Like unpaved mountain roads and alone signs
That cut through miles of no belongings,
There is something real, like childhood,
About walking in another’s domain.
The deep, dark, woods are not yours.
They belong to the ones,
With the deep, dark, bellies.

---

Another old one I like the idea of, but no longer the execution.

Man Cannot Live on Jack London Alone

For Christopher McCandless

Man can’t live on Jack London alone;
They told you then, they tell you now
You’re dead and well preserved in celluloid.
Alexander Supertramp, fierce throated wonderboy,
You infuriate the know-betters, and the hungry.
Some to gawk at your rusty, sad, little ending,
They come to make it bigger, to pack it full of meaning,
Just like you did to yourself, the inside out.
Histrionic youth leads a great light when you live,
It’s impossible to sort through now,
With your boots still there on the bus floor.

The writers and the screen prop you high heroic,
Is it one of ten thousand fates ironic,
The one who got lost more than anything
Made a hero for stupidity, an idiot for sainthood
Dreamer, for the better, dreamer, for the worse
They spit about you still, wild Alex
With your giant, desperate, innocence
They can’t help picking you apart
What are you running from?
The motives, the complex
The fights and the control
If they all knew, to run is a reason
It might be ten times easier to move
For those with an itch grown in the bone
But I have to believe some spice would be gone
Something would be lost in the shift of living

Alex, to fight and die somewhere blank and wide,
In your head, in London’s imagined landscape.
Some see the hope of you every moment
They’re cowed down by paths;
The rest are satisfied in their scorn,
They can’t stomach your wasted youth
--Foolish, beautiful, gone, lived, youth --
The kind that makes whole worlds.

----
This poem is two or three years old. I should definitely re-do it. It's muddled.

Traitor

In that last photo
I took of him in half-shadow,
He looks like a book jacket
From the memoirs of a great dead adventurer;
Or the face of the poster of a long-lost boy,
In black and white where he left us,
When I told him it was okay to leave
If he really couldn’t stand that town.

He turns his face away from the lens
Just so, like he’s seen a better fight,
Away from us and what we have built with killing comforts --
One day I fear I’ll lose him to Montana wildfires, to North Korean refugees,
To sabotaging mink farms and taking over highways,
To the desert, like Ambrose Bierce, and the rest of us
Will have only stories.

He leaves school forever, takes a Greyhound to a Reno payphone,
Suggests he’s going Northwest to save the redwoods,
Says he’ll call again or send a note.
I have earned that much for understanding him.

His mother, on the line in moments,
Knows me and knows her boy
Knows I stammered out a gut-lie before,
And in her voice
I hear the dreadful empty space of all those left--
Christopher McCandless you shouldn’t have,
I think,
And I tell her what I know.

Places to be quiet

(1)
Slow water dripped ten million years into towers and catacombs
Into traps for the dead traveler
And me, almost smothered on the rocks everywhere
But determined to be here now and here then
To feel the human sacrifice in the air
Years of blood to keep the universe in balance
Years of youths sent underground
I listen, and these youth’s chatter bounces off the hushed, wet earth
Their boys, Pennsylvania, tans and the things she said
All of this is not a part of Xibalba
Only
Ferman’s paddle, soft and even, like the breathing of a mother
And the water drops, moving from the ceiling to our lips, knuckles, down our backs
Each one supposed to be bring luck
We are so lucky today
(2)
Beers and ice and waving to lost friends
They interrupt the singer with their cries of love or biggest hits
We’ve all collected here for a Sunday night
We’re here for these speakers of some truth to dance and delight to
But when the songs get low and slow and shivery
The crowd’s hum rises like a flock of turkey buzzards
And they can’t feel the singer’s voice
They can’t hear how it gets bigger as it sinks into his chest
I wish he would sing to me alone
Not because I crave some importance I don’t posses
But just for how dead-silent I would stay
Listening to the singer

San Francisco

Tobin, last night we staggered into Station 40, weak from a mosh-pit battle
To open couches in rooms divided by hanging blankets
Feet on floorboards, all night creaks of lives spent passing through

Carving out life from dumpsters and dead industries
And we wake to cut oranges and apples for an anarchist named Irish
Fruit that has almost turned, though the smell tears my stomach anyway

But we leave this place with thanks, to find our own way
To take our dirty teeth and sleep-stained lips outside
To the San Francisco streets, wondering where the coffee is

I make you stop for the best graffiti
“Sanctuary city for the rich”
“Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos”

A Levis ad turned to an anarchist call,
“Don’t work”
You take me to see Bernal Hill

So we climb through the cigarette butts
And the yellow summer dust, the weedy pink clover,
Past the joggers and dogs, you in your dog-eared khakis shoes your mother is dying to throw out

And there are blackberries covering the last ridge
And we praise our free breakfast, yell to Gavin Newsom
Find some citation to stop us from eating your berries

Below us now, the whole city is a perfect model city
And we feel the wind, the kind that always climbs
The kind you can never find on the ground

Yo Hablo

Me gusta eschuchar la musica de La Plebe
At the bus stop at 7, with my cafe I’ve made too strong again
And I get drunk on that, my three hours of sleep
The Mexican punk railed into my ears
I catch three or four words every few lines
I know you would understand more
I hope you understand I’m learning this for tu, mi primo, mi mejor amigo
I like to think of you 2500 miles West, still in bed
I’m awake estudiar espanol
So we can disappear into Guatemala o Argentina together
So we can whisper “pinches fronteras”
As we sneak hot cafe to las immigrants

Grandpa

You would hate the idea,
Still I want to get tattooed for you
I was thinking
A pair of sneakers
And the word pathetic,
On the right side of my left calf
For all the times you would look up and down
Your eyes fall on a family member’s shoes
Mine, perhaps green converse, red and black checked laces
And then you would croak out the same verdict
Pathetic!

And all of us would laugh
Every single time. Grandma too
After 60 years together
That I knew not to envy
You were a bossy husband, a lacking father
Trained in leave me alone
Let the kids win and lose their own battles
Make their own pick-up games in Pittsburgh Birdland lots
Offer comments only if the kids try to wear white socks
Or show evidence of being Hippie-Democrats

You stopped going up to Canada before I could remember
Though there’s that picture of me in your arms
On the porch overlooking the family stretch of Lake Erie
Both of us bald, you tan and looking more the Navy man
then usual. You holding me aloft
As you sit in a beach chair looking so happy to look at me

And then there’s the photo of you, Grandma and Aunt Boo
At a party in your 50s (You went to parties, Grandpa?)
When Grandma’s hair still lingered Red
As your nickname for her
Boo’s leg is draped across your lap
And you beam, as Grandma feigns shock
Here is my sister-in-law’s leg, your face says
And I don’t think I ever saw you look
Quite like that

I can’t put any of that on my left calf, Grandpa

But I thought about a bigger tattoo
Maybe just black ink
One of your mix tapes you made from the radio
Carefully wrote down the song and artist
Then lost the all the covers
The tapes scattered on your TV tray
But you could always find the one you were looking for
Your stop and start was always a little slow
So you would push play and
Trumpet, saxophone, piano, someone swinging out some old song
Maxine Sullivan, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie the king

You saw them all long before
You ever saw me
But I used to sit and see you
Play air piano, bobbing your head
You might say listen to this cat
Listen to how he played the horn
I learned to love the music
But to love watching you more

I’d like to put all that in the tattoo you would hate
But I’d stop, like all children’s stories, before the end
Before your heart seized and faded you away
No longer king, but trapped in your old chair
Like a cicada skin stuck fast to an oak tree
Dazed most of the day

You couldn’t keep your head up
You couldn’t stay warm
In spite of the space heater
Grandma tried to bring back Basie, Benny, Peggy
But they wore out
When you wore out

And Grandpa
When they took you to the hospice
Dad called me
Told me not to come
So I followed my sudden, choking need
For a pack of the Dentyne cinnamon gum you used to chew
(Not the Marlborough Reds that clogged your heart)
And then I found a Maxine Sullivan record

And I just missed my chance to tell you
How much I learned to love that damn record

Maybe I should just get a tattoo
With all the things I hadn’t said yet
On my the right side of my left calf, I’ll have the tattoo man write
Grandpa, did you ever see Jack Teagarden?
Why wasn’t Maxine Sullivan as big as Peggy Lee?
I almost like her better, Grandpa
But you have to love Peggy Lee

Poetry

All of it by me. All of it endlessly in process.

Rachel on the floor, at Ruby Ridge

Now Mama is in pieces.
My baby sister with blood, brains in her hair,
Mama’s arms still hold her strong.
But all Mama was now stains the kitchen tiles.

Now Mama’s curtains can’t keep out
The flood-lights and the bullhorn taunting,
“Send your children out, we made pancakes this morning!
Send the children out, Vicki!”

Days and days, they won’t stop talking noise,
The tanks in the yard crushed our vegetable garden,
Our dead yellow dog. The shed where my brother lies;
Where Mama washed his back clean
With a kitchen sponge and Daddy screamed at Yahweh.

One second Mama was, the next she was not.

Stop this, Daddy. Now. Let it end

Even if the devil armies overtake us.
I can’t breathe on this floor,
With Mama’s blood turning turkey red,
Smelling like the sun turned to rust.

Going to Chechnya

We’re crossing the cattle guards into Chechnya
Where the Russians and the rebels both cut
off heads and hands.
Where, I have read, the people
are so polite to guests, they apologize for only just surviving,
For how little they have kept.
Where they can’t hear the heavy artillery two blocks down anymore,
where the war is simply years and years.

We are much too old to pretend such terrible places,
But our bloody-curiosity makes us ache
to know. So slowly we build into the game, walking upstream
Up the rocks, the waterfalls, the fighting cold of Harley Creek
I suspect Montana looks nothing like Chechnya.

You and I should know better than to play at horrors
But I’m the daring, beautiful war reporter
You’re my drunk Russian guide
My name is Charlotte Jones, for some reason
You are just Leo, friendly, half-mad,
Porcupine about your true self.

We’re not sure where we’re going, what Rebel
Leader we’re seeking in what mountain cave,
Only that our imaginary cigarettes must stay unlit
For fear of discovery, so we duck and crawl up the creek,
Talking about other wars, about New Years Eve
in Sniper’s Ally. Sarajevo was our big one,
Because we know a little more about it
Than Chechnya, anyway.