Hotday

Eighty-nine degrees
by noon. Afternoon trembles
like a candle flame.

Rufus Johnson Alone All Day

Today‘s the butt of a quite endless May
And so much sun bludgeons this hapless plain
Rufus resembles that proverbial egg
On the sidewalk, yet without any pain,

For he’s on at least beer number thirteen
Without even a game for an excuse.
His son’s left home to become an actor,
And so Rufus has become a recluse.

All Saturday he sits on a green chaise
Staring out at his sad, still empty pool,
Listening to old Willie Nelson CDs
While the weather goes from scathing to cruel.

Neighbors fret outside the privacy fence,
Conferring in hushed tones about our man.
They saw it coming when his wife ran off.
They hear the crinkling of another can,

Its clatter on the upswept concrete deck.
The sun begins to set on Rufus town;
Willie’s blues eyes are crying in the rain;
Here, a hellishly hot night settles down.

Oops!

OK, I knew this was bound to happen--I got caught up in a project yesterday (driving to Kansas City and back to pick up a home entertainment center my wife bought on EBay), and I forgot to do my poem when I got home. I intend to do two today, so check back later!

Logorrhea

Mouth agog, tongue flailing,
I fling my monologues—
Orphaned and homeless—
Into the tattered atmosphere.

My students mostly stare,
Or text, or roll their eyes,
Humor me with half-smiles,
Pity of the living for the dead.

Truth: I really am a bore.
I bore no one more than myself.
And so I talk, and lecture,
And pontificate, and preach.

Often I envy the mute.
I wish I were Meher Baba,
Silent for 44 years.
Maybe then they would listen.

Once I was considered shy,
Quiet, a reclusive loner.
I want to find that past self,
Ask him to show me how

To live by pointing,
Gestures in the air,
A stick drawing in the dirt.

In Which C.C. Is Introduced

His name is C.C. Hornbuckle,
And he prospers upon the plains.
Inside—oh, dear—he’s so fickle,
Stuffed full of ever-changing plans.

He plans one day to be better.
Then the next he vows to be worse.
Meanwhile, he keeps getting fatter,
And for death begins to rehearse.

He has ev’rything, it is true—
A sharp family, shiny job,
Nicest house with the nicest view—
Yet night and day does he still sob.

Of Miniver Cheevy he thinks—
He’s read a few books in his time—
Dreaming of knights of old, but blinks
The comparison away. I’m

Stuck in the now, not in the past,
I don’t give a shit about knights.
He does give a shit life can’t last—
It’s the oldest, tritest, of plights.

Artist (for Gary McMurtry)

The phone hasn’t rung me awake
Which is a damned good thing

Especially at 3 a.m., the time
At which they killed you.

My father always said nothing
good happens after midnight.

So why were you in that field
Of darkness, of darkness?

Those stones were so heavy,
And you were always skinny.

Your bones must have burst
To blood like water balloons.

So much I never heard;
Even your brother wouldn’t talk.

I know it was about drugs;
Back then, everything was.

So it’s 3 a.m., and I’m wishing
I still had one of your drawings,

Something in graphite and pulp,
something other than your dying.

Semantics

I used to believe in words
sky, truth, mother, water, freedom.
But try as I might,
I can no longer touch these—
water runs off my hands.

If I touch my neck
and speak the words
I feel their weird vibration.
It’s as close as I can get
though mother sticks in my throat.

A guitar is hollow,
a resonant box.
I am mostly hollow,
mostly water,
in which I no longer believe.

The sky isn’t falling.
Truth is illusory.
Freedom is a bird
thwacking into a jet.
Water runs. Mother sticks.

In the beginning was the word
in ancient Hebrew.
The Greeks called it logos.
I call it a lie, yet, damn it,
I grip my throat and speak.

Late May in Oklahoma

Sunshine like a whip
Cracking across my shoulders—
Summer’s brash entrance.

Walking on Campus in Late May

Squirrels, birds, and bugs
The only life on campus—
Summer vacation.

Nebraska, May

Above us a sudden hovering,
shadow wings over corn fields.
Late spring-thaw mud sucks
on my black rubber boots.
Distance disappears to horizon
blank and bleak as this sky.
Green flies swarm the roads;
from far a screaming comes.
Souls drum like rain the dirt.

foster

you wore a chemo pump
in a black fanny pack
as you told me
about the snakes
that were summer-bad

i’d seen the holes
marring the lawn
i mowed for you
that i so so hope
you’ll mow again

you praised the six
scrawny tomato plants
i set out in rainy april
we know how badly we need
that sweet red slicing

literary

you just don’t understand
but that’s the point
your referent is dysfunctional

i’ve spent time in the joint
was that a witticism
no, you don’t understand

we stand on the edge of cataclysm
which can’t be described in words
late capitalism’s collapsing

you need to simply watch the birds
be aviaspecific—genus—class
all i know’s what i see on tv

you’re giving Wittgenstein a pass
i don’t care about your philosophy
and I don’t care about your poetry

so we’re doomed to repeat history
and get knocked on our ass
final victory goes to the nerds
i won’t read higher criticism
ah, then you’ve become my point

For Jesse

Smudged soul, damaged dreamer,
you labor through your allotted days
wearing attitude with a wan smile.
From hundreds of miles away I see you
driving your truck full of blood
across the windswept northern plains
no doubt with Pink Floyd playing
as you deliver your scheduled units.

The last time I saw you
I was more than a little drunk,
I stumbled back to my hotel room
and you drove wearily away
for what I didn’t suspect
would be so many years.
I’m A positive, old friend, and so afraid
I won’t immediately recognize your face.

Landscape Poem #2

Now I live on the plains
but once I lived in the woods
whose deep darknesses
I loved, feared, thrilled to.

Once I came across a house
no one had ever seen before
where lived an old crone
whose necklace was of bones.

She owned a white dog
(or maybe it owned her)
whose red eyes glowed green,
the strangest eyes I’d ever seen.

I didn’t go in the house
when she invited me for tea
(did I mention the bones and dog?).
I backed into the black trees.

On the plains houses are plain—
their crones never wear bones.
Yet I miss the strange woods
as I miss madness, horror, and pain.

upon opening the curtains

morning light wet with meaning
winks over the lonely horizon

in boxer shorts alone in a hotel room
blurred from both reading and dreams

faded denim of the sky unraveled
by sudden threads of cirrus clouds

false fire alarm in the early morning
raspy rough sleep before and after

white steeple erupting from a treeline
barely beyond the perimeter road

slow stretches and incantations
awareness of what is to be done

the world comes in a rush at the window
flies in on a shard of late spring light

[down in a hole]

down in a hole
the universe lives
scratching and grunting
through the eons
shaking its head
star-systems fly
into oblivion
so much dandruff
caught by the gale
whipped into black
where someday
I’ll look for you

How to Say

I shoulder your feelings
post-diagnosis days are shit
but at least they’re days

from every direction
comes the primal darkness
in conversation, TV commercials

every book you read, movie you view
someone falls away while someone
grieves the gruesome blankness

and it’s all unreal, all fiction and film
nothing to do with your life
everything to do with your life

The Death of Punk Rock

A.A. Diaper wipes. Lear Jets.
Designer safety pins.
Designer cheeks.
Yoga, Zen, Feng Shui stageset.
Bottled water and a masseuse.
A 50th birthday. Maybe a 40th.
Staying in tune for an entire set.
Groupies with small children.
Wives with small children.
Cooking with Rachel Ray.
A 401K.
Black leather jacket too tight
To fit over a paunch.
Growing up, growing out,
Growing too tired
To stay pissed for very long.

What is Needed

In the wild morning
after lifetime of regret
finally a rose.

A Day in Mid-May

Lightning in your eyes
thunder rumbling in your heart—
yet the storm’s outside.

Mood Poem #9

something lives under
the black water
left in that pool
from last summer

late at night
that something screams
the truncated shriek
of a garrotted woman

when I walk by
the dark surface
bubbles and rolls
even on windless nights

i need to drain it
i bought a sump pump
the constant rain
has been the excuse

for why I watch the water
reach toward the house
endure those wet screams
and fear oh yes and fear

coyote roadkill

blood powdered the two-lane blacktop
a thin garnet film interspersed
with bits of bone flesh and gray hair
not unlike yours old friend or mine.

slowing down I slid past the site
where old coyote breathed his last
under a knobby pickup tire
his pointed skull lay flattened wide

trickster brains meringued on asphalt
his old lady beside the road
shifted her mangy weight from paw
to grieving paw then stared me down

as I respectfully passed on
knowing she’d dart yipping to doom
heedless careless her borrowed life
life that was already long gone

Whatever happened to Shane's little girl?

Third time this week, the teacher said, with thin, wet lips.
You shrugged, mouthed the magic words, waited for the punishment
Which was a reward, no more of this school for you, not this year,
No more of these professional sadists with their bland, bureaucratic smiles.
Inside something reached to touch the sky through the hole in your head
And something else huddled in the dark at the back of your soul,
The something else that had huddled since Daddy left you with her,
And she left you with—well, with whomever, whenever, for however long.
You thought that there really should be a falling black gavel,
A huge blood-saturated stamp thumping upon a white, white sheet,
At least some faceless blue uniforms leading you down a telescoping hallway
Whose end was the same as every other end you’d never seen.

Rimbaud in ICU, 1989

Another night of nasty pain and sweat pissing from you into your sad pillow.
You’d notify local authorities of your situation if only there were any.
Too late for all that drama now, too late for dread as the moon’s below
Your shrinking horizon. Your remaining options now few, once many.

You vaguely recall the coming here, the clownish pratfalls face-first into now:
A woman or man in tears, clear vodka over ice, children, children and blood;
A nurse with yellow syringe and yearning smile, an actor with smirking bow,
Something always about loss, a whole world flushed in a sudden flood.

The idiot sun stumbles in from the east wing, but this stage is empty
Save for you with your ridiculous jungle of hanging bags, tubes and wires,
Hovering huge faces filled with perfect teeth you paid for. It can’t be.
Another night has always, always been. Trust no one. These people are liars.

You push the blessed, fascist button and for a moment it all fades
And you pretend as you have so often pretended, it truly seems forever,
To believe in the profoundest nothing, no shining paradise, no Hades.
A pretender no more, you know you’ll never again disbelieve. Never.

What this blog's all about

This blog is The One-Year Poetry Project. Simply put, I plan to write a poem each and every day between today (May 9, 2009) and one year from today (May 9, 2010). I will then post each day's poem on this site for people to read and respond to. I hope you enjoy my work!