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