I don’t know
what words mean
too tired to write poems.
You work!
Work is easy,
hardly matters.
Don’t remember words
noticing
length of lines.
Notice shapes in fire,
cannot smell smoke
genetic disposition
e-n-e in the ear.
Danish: slowgna,
maybe Swedish
“ta-shaka-de-seka.”
English: sandspurs
in my mouth.
Poem, home, cardboard box.
Miami, nights aren’t too cold
Though a few February nights
air nears freezing
as do I.
A dirty blanket
flecked with waste, vomit,
spilled food, dirt,
grease from the ground
sturdy box
mashed in places,
corrugation collapsed,
torn and blackened smears.
Words, roof, heavy paper,
not enough, as with all,
they are all.
Hershey kiss tattoos
up both arms,
eats cowboy bread,
hums a bar of
Red River Valley
before losing the tune,
then says “red lights
are just lights
that used to be yellow.”
He has no bars
around his mouth
only around his brain.
Green-cot-night
-fan-pulls-mugginess
in the room
on cricketback.
No, we are not
eating it today
take a dollar
pay Mrs Jones
for her corn it ate.
Drive him home
and fix the fence
fetch the pig
and make
him secure.
As anyone who has been reading much of my poetry lately knows, I have spent a great deal of time and effort over the past three years letting the concepts I have learned through my ModPo experiences infuse my poetry. This is an interesting (for me, at least), throw back to when I wrote poems for that moment, not with any thought to what the poem might mean. It almost seems like cheating. I hope you will respond in a positive or negative way to this abberation.
Hear about Fat Billy?
What?
Caught a ball of snakes.
Where? Was HE drinking?
Not on bourbon.
What was he doing?
Trying to get somewhere
bumped into them, rattle snakes
say it scared him, bad,
say they was all gray,
first thing he thought:
elephant trunks,
ball of Republicans down here drowned in the shit they made.
I know that’s right! You mean cottonmouths?
Rattlers don’t like water.
They were DEAD
Why you reckon they gray? And rattlesnakes?
Fat Billy reckons they were trapped under a porch.
What’d he do with them?
Ate’em. I told him they might be poison. You know what he said? Ever thing else is. You know, he’s right.
They got six on
Danziger bridge
last night
Black?
Yeah…
I struck a stone, a foot down where there should only be sand.
I will dig it out, no matter how large. I began to wonder, about stories of my childhood, Holiness preachers declaring God buried dinosaur bones to confuse the wicked, buried then down in that 6000-year-old earth. I think of God, a young boy, or a girl…. While her mother sews a magical garden of leaves, (Mother of God) this little god-child, this merry trickster crafts dinosaur bones, not bones, there were no dinosaurs, only a prank.
She buried them in soft sand of young Rocky Mountains. She named them that, Rocky Mountains. She liked the way it sounded. I like it, too. She swept her hands together like Micky Mouse in Sorcerer’s Apprentice and piled slabs of rock over them, her mother called, she forgot about them, then she was old, and had a long flowing beard, for who is to say an old woman, being god can’t have a long beard? By then, she had so much wisdom she had little room for memories.
You know this time, when she gave birth to her twins, Adam and Eve, the ones she told the story about the rib, the apple the snake and all those tales!
What she was thinking when she buried large flat stones in the fields of the New England farmers. Did she say, someday, they will dig these out and make lovely fences? Did she think of people all pretty on horses, a mess of beagles chasing some fox to its bloody red end? Did she like fox hunting? One might think so. Maybe she was more into steeple chases, with occasional broken bones and horses to be put down, no intent to kill. Unless she read Dick Francis, man loved to kill.
I will dig it out and take it to heaven and exchange it one day for a crown, no that isn’t right. Is this stone an emblem of suffering and shame? Will she look at it and smile and tell me about being a little girl in Alabama making mud pies with baby Jesus. I will stop her and say, but aren’t you his mother? I mean father, aren’t you God the Father? She will throw her old, old head back and laugh and laugh. Well no, remember my twins? Adam and Eve? Yes, but Jesus has always been my baby brother. Well except for that time he wanted to be a girl. She looks at some point far away and says softly “Lady Baby Jesus” and I stand there astounded, almost agog. “Oh, yes”, she will continue.
I will take this rock to Heaven. Maybe it is like the rock, like one of the rocks they built the theater out of, up north where dad fell through the floor. He was working on the wooden stage. He fell though, smashed his kidney, but got better later, until old when he had kidney stones. It made him think of stones on the outside the theater. Rockville Maryland, but it was a long time ago, I think he said Rockville because of stones. I could ask God when I get there, but her memory, oy vey.
Is God a Jew? No, really? Or a Muslim? Hard to imagine God a Holiness preacher, sweating, black suit, unairconditioned tabernacle, later, a fancy mega church, fat, smooth fingers, no sweat now, fake patting his dry brow. I am sweating. I will dig out the stone.
Three parts John Ashbery and one leftover bit from Rae Armantrout, like a morning biscuit shoved back in the oven, wrapped in a dish towel to be eaten later and now is later.
After listening to a Poemtalk that featured Rae Armantrout’s The Way, I was moved to write the first poem in a rather intellectual response to her wonder poem, then, pretty much as these things happen, the second poem came to me while making coffee and toast and taking a shower. I hope she isn’t horrified, if she ever reads these.
Do You Have the Jesus-bug Inside?
Jesus is the Way
Jesus is away
“Away with Him!”
Jesus Aweigh
Poor dead Jesus
slips over the rail
But Jesus walks
and the tiny
Jesus-bug
spreads Jesus wings
And flies into
the heavens
no pew cards
no cue cards
no trees
where Jesus-bugs
sit and sing
no Jesus-bugs
there.
Jerusalem Butter
Went down to Jerusalemtown
to get some butter
Mary and Joseph
had taken it all
down to Egyptland
‘cause Pharaoh’s acoming
looking for firstborndead.
They say
Jesus is coming
coming real soon
with butter, bread loaves,
fishes, too.
I’m sitting here
Jerusalemtown
waiting for Jesus
and a breadloaf
perfectly brown,
butter, too.
 | anthonyuplandpoetwat… on My Day Had Passed |
 | 777 san marin drive… on My Day Had Passed |
 | Mark on The Count |
| anthonyuplandpoetwat… on The Count |
| Mark on The Count |
