Kudzu #11

Sundial on its side
Like a watch in a drawer.
Who cares what the time?

Late July Funk

Grilling good beef
On a clean patio,
Sky empty as my mind
Toward summer’s end.
Pink crepe myrtles
And still-green tomatoes
Along the fence line,
And I’m wondering when,
Oh when, life will begin.

Prom, 1980s (for Jeff Tate)

Looking at old photos
Of a new friend
On a weirdly cool
July evening.
In the pictures
He’s about the age
Of my younger son
And as I look at him
In his silver tux
With his big-haired
Small-town girlfriend
Something in my heart
Dances slowly with Death.

Unseasonable

Movie at midnight—
Something we’ve seen--
And cold white wine
In plastic tumblers.
Outside the sky
Clotted with clouds
And a half-moon
Riding the chill
Above the pool.
No reason to leave,
No reason to stay
Save the only one
That really matters.

Meditation after breakfast

Sometimes the world seems
A wonderful little idea
In the mind of a happy fool,
A bit of a lark, a folly,
A fanciful experiment in lust
and need and near-collisions.
On those days it’s best
To take the sun as it’s given
And find a quiet place
Inside or outside yourself
To hide away the moments,
Your own private heaven,
The only one you’ll own.

Manifesto

Morning clouds and a Bloody Mary—
Why the hell rush things?
Sunday Morning it’s not,
And no cockatoo’s in sight;
But some days feel right
Lived at a deliberate pace
Rather than a breakneck race.
Time enough for all that later,
All that flurry and frantic hurry.
For now we’ll sit by the pool
And watch the lacy patterns
The warm wind makes
On the blue, cool water.

Kudzu #10

No alligators—
Is this really Florida?
Not one log no log.

Kudzu #9

Five hours of driving
Late into the Southern night—
Sing on, whippoorwills!

Kudzu #8

No sleep in two days,
But worries and fears of death.
Now—morning redbird.

Kudzu #7

Fine Florida day—
Rain flew out by the morning—
The palms shine and wave.

[He realized]

He realized
in staggering stages
that they had changed,
that they talked
without looking
at one another,
as two men do,
that she walked
out of the room
as he was talking
and never noticed.

He noticed.

He supposed—supposed—
he really had nothing
to say, anyway.

Did he?

The Good Ol’ Days

That damned, sad summer
The sun sat like an anvil
On our flat, tired town,
And we flocked to our churches
To pray to that tired old God
To send us His tears, His grace,
And we flocked to our bars
To damn Him and each other
As our fuses flared in inferno,
And as the sweat-streams pooled
At the bases of our tattooed backs,
We joked about global warming
In the hysteric tones of the doomed
And would have held each other
In our shared terror and rage
But for the damned, sad heat
Which made us hurt each other,
Tear each other apart,
Trying to pry that anvil
Off the dark bottoms of our souls.

Auditory

Below, the words you never,
ever, ever want to hear.

“I don’t love you anymore.”
“You need a root canal.”
“Mom? Dad? I’m in jail.”
“A spot on the x-ray.”
“This may hurt a little.”
“My period is really late.”
“We’re looking at cutting costs.”
“There’s been a major accident.”
“Your poetry isn’t for us.”

Cover your ears? OK, but
we hear what we fear.

Helsinki

Across the broad street,
A sweet flash of thigh--
The high color floats
And gloats in your face.
You place her right then,
Amend intentions,
As inventions play
And stay in your mind.
Be kind, keen lover.
Lay over her heart
A large part of yours.
Love tours summer lanes
And claims casualties.

Type A

Run that wheel, rat—
Wheeze your fat ass
Through your daily motions,
The endless, mindless errands,
The droning, pointless meetings
At which you all decide
More meetings are needed.
Kill that coffee, black and sweet,
That Red Bull, ginseng-laced.
Get up, get it together, get going—
You’re not quite dead yet.
But you are beginning to reek
Like a tired, sweaty old rat
Trembling in anticipation.

After a couple of boilermakers

Ever notice the acronym
for “good old days” is God?

Sounds like an email forward
But it’s just an observation,
The kind you’d make if you
had time on your hands,
A chip on your shoulder,
A reflective nature,
A Compaq on your lap,
A tendency toward ambiguity,
Fickleness, and doubt,
Toward wonderment,
Mystery, uncertainty, and awe.

The kind you’d likely make
If you indeed were me.

heat

109 degrees this afternoon
no clouds no hint of rain
only waves of heat
breaking over the wheat fields
now in mid july shorn dry

pool water like warm seltzer
ac wheezes and strains
lava breezes skillet sidewalk
they don’t dare touch
sweat trailing their shadows

separately they imagine igloo
roaring fire fumbling of furs
onto a dark icy floor
bodies moving toward warmth
on the longest, coldest night

she and he: the further adventures

‘twas a moment only
the lonely moment lost
such cost they bear
who share such love
push shove each other
father mother husband wife
this life short long
this wrong blessed rightness

Kudzu #6

Squirrel’s tail whipcracks
Above my pup’s yapping head—
Pity she’s so short.

summertime she and he

she and he lounged in the lake
as the sun was settling down

he and she loved their lives
and their together times

she and he sometimes hurt
each other but burrowed on

he and she bought burial plots
when their money moved out

she and he slept side by side
until the first one died

he and she aren’t there yet
I’m getting ahead of this moment

she and he lounged in the lake
moon spread its glow around them

Wedges of an Old Friend, Now Deceased

Gary,
You never
Made sense, guy,
With your strung-out
Hair and erratic bathing habits,
Your charcoals of children
Growing into trees
Under Lenora’s
Eyes.

Gentle.
That’s one
Word that fits.
Like we imagine deer,
Or perhaps they dream us.
Without the normal malice,
Even when sober,
Which wasn’t
Often.

Dead.
That’s the
Damned, damned reality.
Buried in red dirt
In a town you hated.
Still, you avoided the rush.
And I see you
Yet, drunken artist
Of my
Memories.

Conversation

“I love e.e. cummings,”
She said.
“He loved the French whores,”
She said.
“That’s understandable,”
I said.
“After all, they were French,”
I said.
“He was in a prison camp, you know,”
I said.
“A French P.O.W. camp,”
I said.
“I know,”
She said.
“He loved the French whores.”
She said.
We drank our wine
And stared into the night.

[Dog at my feet]

Dog at my feet.
Feet at my dog.
Whose feet?

When we meet,
Our smiles
Cross swords.

Made of words,
We go on and on,
Indomitable, snug

In language as a bug
In our bed.
Whose side?

So we ride
These words, this life,
Until they end.

End.
End.
End.

Riversong

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River tracked on westward
Toward the border, Coaldale and Hontubby,
southeastern hills of the old Indian Territory
where the Choctaw had made their home.
Eventually it would snake through its namesake
To fall into the Arkansas at Fort Smith,
To become a mighty, major river at last.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River ran shallow and brown,
Shadowed with runoff from the chicken plant,
The pulpwood mill, the furniture factory,
The chicken houses spotting the county.
We were advised not to eat the fish,
But set out trotlines anyway, ran them daily
In a small, leaky, flat-bottomed boat.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
I sat for hours on various stumps and logs
Watching flecks of yellow foam pool
Along the quiet shallows, listening
To my heart thudding to the whippoorwills,
The slow croak of Buddha-like bullfrogs,
Witnesses to the casual devastation,
The slide and dance of algae in the sun.

Behind, below the trailer we called home,
The Poteau River tracks on westward,
wandering shallow and brown,
past where I sat for hours on various stumps and logs,
another witness to the casual devastation.

Kudzu #5

Blue jays and redbirds
Wrangling above the still pool—
Welcome home, Morning.

The Strip Pit

They told me it was bottomless,
And I believed because its skin
Shone black on starful nights,
Reflected nothing to heaven.
When I was baptized in it,
A part of me knew God couldn’t see.
No fish or snakes swam its deeps,
Yet when I dared that water
I felt innumerable nibbles.

That vast hole was left by coal
Miners when my father ran young.
He’d swum those very currents,
Endured those dark movements
Beneath his dangling feet.
He first showed me its coolness
One August day after hauling hay;
We washed away the straw and dust
Until dusk floated in on the wind.

The coal from here burned long ago,
Heated homes or steamed a turbine.
The miners moved on, and my father’s town
Melted into insignificance.
Even my father left, for labor and family.
Only a few stayed, and today
Their grandchildren float those black waves,
Eyes flying through great swaths of stars,
The empty water heavy beneath their backs.

666

Radio’s gone silent.
The end wasn’t violent.
I saw the white moon rise
Over the blasted fields.
Faint light bled through the skies.
Love’s the last hope that yields.

Sounds Like

Chalk on a nail-board,
Asphalt on rubber tires,
Eardrums striking music,

Shore crashing onto waves,
Melodies entering birds
Like random memories,

Laughter slipping into children
Formed from “I love you”
Falling from your lips to me.