Category: Poetry, Pubished yes and no

RAW AND VULGAR (for Dan S Hart and Bruce Sehorne)
I
One by one hundred I just keep on singing, chewing time and killing meters,
Piling stars across the night, stripping pieces of this intolerant flesh
And laying it all down into an American song, a suburban pastoral
Of eulogy …
Counting stars and humming along as best I can. The night is a sonnet.
Yeah, song strummed on vapor trails, beaten through granite dust,
Sung along tree lines, blackberry patches, creekside in the rhododendrons,
Where up by the road this hydra headed plantation just keeps on building,
Keeps on killing all in the name of beauty and the South
And keeps on killing every beautiful thing about the South
The land that I see embedded in my skin in my voice and in my eyes
This land that is me that is falling bit by bit to the torture called
Subdivision, mixed used and expansion, this land that is dying
To be saved but nonetheless succumbs, that is the verse on my lips
A creation eulogy, a moment grasped on the dark walkway,
A stab at cityscapes and visions of malls and shopping districts,
So why is it all poetry is eulogy, why is that I walk not for me
But for sake of preserving a conversation or two shared between friends,
Ah hell, rip language sausages and fry me a river, this ain’t the South,
All dried up and filled with constructions that represent nothing
But bad architecture and childish business models, where a pure
Vowel stretched is an unrecognized dialect, a voice of nature
That is Georgia by the hills, but a suit can’t hear it and dollar
Can’t buy it, but there it is, spoken, sentences, long dipthongs
Uncorrupted by politics or northern aggression, I speak this, proudly.
It is my dream: My dream to be completely who I am.
II
Turn back and read, a day later it all looks childish.
I see the English ivy crawl up, devouring, eating pine and oak,
The suburb dies a little and the county tells me that easement damage
Is cost from my pocket book, my money county thief, mine.
Here is the test of the phrase “sins of the father” cause none of this
Is my doing, none of this is because of me, in fact it is in spite of.
III
Symbolic emails and one sided conversations collide and repose
As roadmarks to my evolution, pen-wise and keyboard enabled.
I want to forget who I am and drive the devil down. I love narcissism.
IV
A rain shower stands on plateaus west of here; steady, wanting to feed,
rain down on this water absent region, mighty and thick it sits and wails,
The Middle Oconee River limps currents below and then turns creek,
Just a creek where the bridge crosses beside a forest and a field. Just a creek.
Open land. Forest. Twin beauties. Heavy. Twins marked to be crushed.
And then end of the year floods came, tricky dead wood gathers,
Water, wind and a leaky roof cut smiles off my face like falling razors.
The development begins. Orange flags map and mark,
Signifying ends, and beginnings. I hate these things.
I hear the thistle weeping.
V
Muffled, trying to walk like light on mist without touching a thing in sight,
Without even being here I walk around the narrow dark path,
Steam pounds upon the beech bark, deer breath, crow, hawk and crazy squirrel,
Even my own clean lungs expire like oil into the pristine world around me.
Songs from Don Chambers tangled in the ferns and dangling in the magnolias,
His voice captures the mossy breath that lumbers over a cemetery, lumbers
The same way that it glides through song poems Falling Off The Edge Of The World, Strange Faith,
And I’m singing this elegy, singing Conjuring A Dead Rabbit,
In the song, in the moment here, in this moment now I see the veins
Entering my wrist, pumping, infused with this life and mystery forest.
Fear. Desire. Lust. Danger lurks. Passion speaks and I can’t hesitate.
And the horseman comes back around again beneath the eaves
Of a two trunked chinaberry, this again the pale green white vapor
Imitating form, horse high shadow and a vengeful snort laugh to anger,
I’ve never been less a man; I’ve never crumbled so fast under pressure,
But fall you bet, and I fall harder, fallen, a horse hoof rises between
Burgundy red wide eyes, “why’ve you come back, why did you come again?”
Circle me. Hooves, ‘chush, shushck, shush’ on pinecones and needles.
Circle trees and trample tender blue Sweet William, barely rising through the soil,
Lost country flower torn between barnyards and cornrows, around stoops
And front porches, lost in a stand of condemned trees, trying to find a way
Out into sunlight and hedgerows, and then it’s gone. I gotta fight.
WELL OF COURSE IT’S SCRATCH at the crossroads. The name is life and death.
That we live is the miracle and that we live on in question is the anti-miracle.
And in the garden of Southern mysticism a mirror is the answer to everything.
Break.
VI
3 a.m. the dogs leave the room to guard in a quieter night.
Talking about Elvis, the albums and the photographs,
The way his records were all picked up and auctioned off by RCA.
Raked through and sold by a thousand hungry hands,
Greedy hands, an iron broom separating songs
That should have never been released, the Kings throwaways
Bringing down the dollars, more in death than his voice ever could alive,
A living set of lungs and two walking legs. This man never sleeps.
Uneasy in death, unable to stay down, looking for other
Southern souls to wake and to warn from danger and wrath,
Yes, even Elvis still courses through dreams. holds his hand
To the heart and mind, sing a bit, even frighten and shake,
“Veer away from death old soul, veer away, AWAKE!”
And the unsteady 3 a.m. howls and gurgles up from my throat,
I lay sleeping and choking on the night itself, shake, shake,
Shake awake out of the shadows and I lay there waiting,
Really being pulled to the end of the bed, a shade laughs.
Trying to untie the muscles in my throat to scream, but I cannot,
Just a howl, just a prayer on the mist, just a man closer to god.
Pulling down an eleventh veil in the three o’clock hour.
Wandering spirit just wants to be known again and not lost,
When a wandering Southern heart just wants to rest awhile
And leave a message, “don’t let them forget, don’t let them hurt”…
3 a.m. this crazy 3 a.m. will never let go will always come back
And tell me yes there are passings here in the early morning,
Here where icon and a lilith fight it, tussle out over flesh
And leave me sweating over what does it mean. I hope it’s over.
What does it mean? What?
V
Uncomfortable. The sweet lonely swell of wind,
A scent of old coffee, charred and bitter,
But I can’t name it now, can I? Coffee.
There isn’t a better lament than the one
Of reaching for the pot and finding it burned,
Useless,
Bastard dark water gone into the morning,
My darling sultry tonic out of the dawn is gone, going, gone.
And you know, I wanted the warmth, the palm sugar oiled,
Taste the black rush of Costa Rican shady grove. Ah, what the hell.
Is this what the day brings? After haunts and haints fight
Over my pale night heart and dreams, me, is this it, me?
The mirror fades.
Why can’t I pass over and just say Hello to the day?
The mirror is gone.
Windows open.
VI
Salsa smooth salsa swinging in on the stereo
And I wish I could climb down off the ladder and dance.
Dance
That step forward forward sideways back sideways forward
And shimmy shimmy push and shake head bobbing down up up.
Dance little sister dance sings magic Santana band.
Aztec lizard gods descend and shoot smoke epistles to the land.
Corn grows and the tomato crops are looking healthy.
A strawberry bursts in the heat.
Language and growth,
So this is what dance is all about, huh, so I’ve been doing
It wrong all along, like so many other things, wrong all along.
Growing older much past the rebellion age,
Much past the point when I should know better
This thing about the dance hits me,
I never passed the stage where excuses were no longer necessary,
I never came to see that what I say and do announces,
That I do not need to always justify.
Just like the dance, learn the steps, learn the body language
And then the movement is enough.
The body always spoke in ways that I could not.
Salsa breathes.
Salsa and samba, the old Hustle and Pony, poems alive,
And the long passion of epics is realized in Tango and Waltz.
I can’t get past the Twist. Mash Potato, do this Patti Smith, boney maroney.
Do this thing where the emotions stagnate and yet fight to grow.
VII
Static snow on the clover and dandelions,
A clear, cold stream races over black slate and fools gold,
Jarred and smacked against the car door,
Jumping water and hitting the black tar once again,
This little truck of mine does OK some of the time.
Buddha on the dashboard, Mickey Mouse in the ashtray,
Goofy and a stegosaurus wrangle for shotgun,
And behind the wheel I sing and drive on,
Singing in the car, singing alone, fun Southern drive
Singing off key singing nothing like the song on the stereo,
Singing “it ain’t me babe, no no no, it ain’t me…”
“It ain’t me…so I break on through to the other side
day becomes the night night becomes the day week to weak
hour to hour break on through to…American girl raised on
Dreams and promises…break down and give it to me now it’s alright,
It’s alright…running down a dream runnning down a light”,
“in the shadow of the cage around the 40 watt light”
And after Dylan, Doors, Tom Petty and Drive By Truckers
The static claw finger hits a sharp banjo:
“I can waltz though my hands are tied I can hold you close
And whisper lies”, and so D. Chamber chants down the moon.
And by the time I’m at the service it’s obvious to me
That something is breaking, something is breaking inside of me.
Snow ices up on the window and I can’t see a thing.
VIII
I’m sick of all the killing and death. Sick of all the theft.
God gives and takes. Buddha laughs.
Great gods of murder, calamity and sorrow all come together
And have a laugh on us. Thanks for nothing sister Shiva,
Thanks for nothing, you Ego freeing beast, thanks for nothing.
Friendships become harder the older I grow. I want to capture
Daylight and hold them all close a little longer,
But that’s not gonna happen.
Looking out past tear and salt drowned eyes,
Hugs and handshakes don’t compensate,
And yeah, I march around all tall and red faced, the ground my bulls eye,
The brakes in my mind get lost on trails of tales of wild spotted deer,
Of nights driving home through fog and mist, through sweet alfalfa,
Through fields laced with yellow wheat, with rolled bales of tall rye grass.
The road to Oglethorpe County was a lot of woods and pasture,
Horse fence and dirt roads, roads pine lined and blackberry guarded,
These pulsating roads were the ones we raced,
The ones we drove every night,
Home from the rock and roll mecca, Athens, Georgia.
And home we drove in Dan’s beat up maroon Volvo.
To the dark, dark inner country roads, part pebble, part asphalt,
Where a Church stood, where three tattered white crosses guarded the lawn,
This church dedicated to snake gods and white flowers,
To dogwoods and the book of Jeremiah, to marching into glory with a song.
How many girls stood in the crossroads at 1 a.m and promised lazy love
Into legend, who promised to each steady standing star that poem was all
And we were just a stanza.
That’s the story I want to tell. The one I try to set loose
And yet every second I breathe an ocean bursting,
Call it what you will I call it emotion.
Not a dry cheek in the amphitheater.
We hold each other now to hold onto Now.
When a mother loses a son and a wife her husband, a daughter her father
And the rest of us just stand and wonder, someone tell me
what of mother, husband and father? So I have to speak……..
I must but I can’t I have to speak to eulogize to say something that will comfort.
“When Napoleon met Goethe he paused and held up a hand and said:
Here is man.” (in French of course but here it is the importance of phrase)
Not here is a man or here is some man or the man, no, he said Here Is Man.
This is how I feel when I speak of my friend, that here is man,
An example of the life lived for us all. Daniel S. Hart truly was Man.
But this is the thing, the Kantian thing that is there, the thing is that,
And that is us, we are each man and woman,
and we are each A man and A woman.
And we are as well as are not.
I am. You are. We are.
I. You. We.
I am.
I against I? Hell no. I am.
Water spirits leave.
I know this ice melts and all love evolves.
IX
So tell me why when dark clouds know my name and the crows know my name
That with each wind and crackling loud ka kaw!
I am not comforted I am not calm. Call my name!
Shadows press into the window, up against the wall,
Shadows even know my name,
Yeah, marching straight time down wet and hilly streets,
Marching so I can find me, find me a maze to circle in and around,
Go down by the water in the gulley by my house,
Go down like Moses to the slow and sludgy ripples, go down and dig the bones,
Dig under the stones, dig under the fallen leaves,
Dig at the base of dogwood and maple; dig ‘til you can tell me
I’ve dug down far enough, dig until the answers stand taller than the sun,
And then, then tell me that the crows don’t know,
That the crows and thunderbirds have forgotten who I am, I have.
I have given up the hunt, handed over desire,
I want to know so I can be calm so I can sleep.
So who will comfort when the herd stampedes and all you can see is dust and sun?
Will the rains really do this, will the rains wash away or just push,
Push the trash Deeper in? I want a bucket to throw up in.
I want a Western saddle and a gun. I want to ride.
GO!
“Open up the gates, I’m coming home” sang the goat.
X
And I wrote. In sadness and loss the page becomes me.
There were many things including this, and the one that was carved in stone,
The poem that was born from his death, as memorial for his wife, Beth,
His daughter, Zoe and to his parents Marvin and Orlene, to any who
Would see in the Brandywine Valley this six foot tall polished and gray
With arched top stone, granite, so hard and ever lasting, granite,
And it was there, and I was humbled more than ever, G-d looks upon us,
And we read the Kaddish and I wore his bar mitzvah cap,
We held hands and read these words, so Southern yet Jewish, so Universal,
Words to praise a life, words to grant peace, words, adoration and comfort,
This is the eulogy, my last song to friendship, to my dear friend, Dan:
My life lived so fast, full and pure,
Brimming with energy, desire, curious for more,
One dream to become completely who I am,
One love and one child my heart became alive,
And with all these things I was happy,
Happy to be amongst you, happy to be a man,
Happy to have flown, fished and found,
To have found this life just what I wanted
Just what I loved: To be a man,
A father, son and husband to the world.
H Lamar Thomas

DANIEL S. HART
AUGUST 27, 1967 to December 4, 2007

Oh damn, yes that’s my name on the marker,
My name before my calling, that’s my name on the stone in the Brandywine Valley.
I am not ready.
Unblinking green eyed stare.
This land is so beautiful.
I want to create.
I am ready.
And it like this, it is this, knowing friendship and love,
Beloved and warm, chaotic and embraced for all the right reasons,
A better man for my wife, a better friend and a better life.
I am not ready.
Open sesame dammit! Open up and stop being so vain.
Wish I could meet the author of the Song of Songs, of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah.

XI
Bang Bang! The night, bang the cracking limbs in the storms,
Bang! burn down the ragged barns, put up new fences and plant bamboo,
And it does not help to fear or to attack, it does not help to ever give up.
Shouts and shouts and that recurrent Bang! of silence burning down,
And memories run away, inspiration dies at the Bang! but Bang!
It does and I will not give up.
I remember standing beneath the water tower at my house
On the Star Highway, Hiway 1 of the California legends,
Standing by my Malibu station wagon, stand in the night, tired,
Leaning and looking out on the wild succulent grove, moon bright,
Moon alive and smooth, an easy wind curling down the mountainside,
Traveling to my house here near the sea, and then as on cue an owl flies by,
Yes, swoops and hoots, clicks a few times and crawls into the tower.
Native Americans there said the owl is a death message,
Bang! it scared me, but there is always death, just the same as life,
So each night it became a ritual of me standing and loving the stars,
And sister owl just hanging out, raising a family, living the owl life,
Living in a way that makes a mockery of metaphor and fairy tale.
But any way, I hang onto to both legend and truth.
Both have meaning.
I am glad.
The buzz of gnats and a passing choir of dogs howling,
Power and knowledge, acceptance and atonement,
Creation expands from silence,
Creation pops bubbles and smiles Peace inside inferno,
And I know I love. And this is what I know,
In deep water and in dry summer, all thanks, all hands,
There are no more metaphors.
Embrace. I am glad. Glad for all that I have known.

XII

I look on the face of a thirty-year-old pocket watch,
It reads 10:10 and the horses on the silver cover stand in place running,
One nipping the neck of the front steed, left legs rose, poised, racing.
There’s no race.
The engraving says: ONE STEP UP.
Pale etching in old metal; oak leaves and vines on the back, almost filigree,
Kinda cool, it feels soothing on the tips of my heat ravaged fingers;
The wages of a life in the kitchen, delicate yet worn and scratchy engravings
On my own speckled hands, freckle shining, bright blue veins pulsing,
This is a race in itself, isn’t it? The shot of blood always moving, in and out,
A few pints here, a few pints there, paused in the heart holds and parlors,
My own wind up is the wind pushing over Pacific waves, over sand and saw grass,
Cleansing thing, a very nice cleansing thing these bastard lonely waves crashing
Over inside and over again into each other, and then the break, the rush over rock
And cliff side, this is the way the heart must be, bashing and pushing, holding
Buckets of molecules for a moment long enough to shove it back down,
Tick tock, it goes again gaining speed and building momentum, tick tock,
This isn’t it, Wendy, but the crocodile follows all of us, doesn’t it? Tick tock.
Captain Hook isn’t even the problem; the darkness can’t have a name,
The dark stabs and penetrates smiles and hope; the dark is a sharp knife
Held at minute hand’s tip, ticking, stupid tick, not a rhythm not a beat
Just this horrid shining set of angers and discord slung from clocks’ end
Into the world around us.
I want to take one step up.
I want to evolve.
And these crazed Pan references are Freudian old, dead Id old, moldy dead
Vacant slabs of thick paint old, so old I know there is no forgiveness,
No more turning back clocks and memory, I can’t bounce from rock to rock
Or over dunes like I did in the Mendocino days, I kinda walk and wander,
Skip rocks over kudzu patches and wish they were the sea, I wish it was the sea.
XIII
Ballads and bad lads, a slice of night on the specials board, long days hawking
Fresh food for the masses, long hours sweating, living on a nerves edge alive
I press on, cutting, slicing, portioning, thinking, rotating, cleaning, directing,
A shout here and there but mostly speaking, speaking works wonders
When the crew is all love, love and hate for the food. A Chef’s life.
Some days I feel like food, as if I were the garlic, the ginger, the cinnamon stick,
Yeah, like a clove of garlic squeaking, watching Chinese steel
Come down on the bamboo board, being torn apart and then thinly sliced.
Being a part of the picture, a piece in the puzzle or best of all, an ingredient,
True, oxygen kills and gives life, and we fight against oxygen sometimes,
Working fast, getting the ingredients together just in time, just in that moment
Before aging starts to take away flavor, we do it for the flavor, chop and run.
Fresh means something; it means something grand.
XIV
Nightlines breaking like beech trees falling in sudden snowstorms,
Tulip maples and magnolias felled in the roads and backyards of my home,
Fences break, roads succumb and power lines flare up like cherry bombs.
Staring up in the scattering snow, so thick, no form, just a shotgun blast
From 10 p.m. March 1, 2009. Hear the forest killing itself.
The crush of stupid drivers coming down the hill, the spinning desperation,
A slip and a crash. Just go to sleep big Suburban, just go to sleep and stay
Awhile beneath the pines, stay a while and leave your passengers to go,
Let the land drink in this cold display, let the land rest and regenerate.
I got a Huskavara chainsaw chewing it’s way out of the garage,
16 inches of blade, hungry to get going, oiled and gassed,
This is one angry machine, and I am one cold driver, one cold man
In one cold white night, one rich night into an icy dawn, grey dawn.
I am Lonely in the snow. My shoes wet, my toes cold from sweat and melting ice.
Shadow lays itself down upon a broken and dead dogwood.
Lifting the breathing carcass of Rose Of Sharon, or was it Camellia?
To me it’s all pink blooms in winter, and it comes back to life,
Frozen flowers and all, this tender but feisty tree comes back to life.
“I wish I had the power over judgment day”, wish I could resurrect
These few fallen friends, good people downed just like the pines.
I know my heart is sleeping in these ponderosa pines, and I know
My thoughts are tangled like Ledbelly’s heartless love,
I sense a train is coming, I hear the grave stones crack.
No dust rises around my feet and the food I eat is salty and raw,
Man, I want a press pot coffee, Columbian, black as hell and burning.
And the snows take another tree down, down across a roof out back,
A woman comes out screaming, this tree just killed her house.
Death has mercy. I think. I hear the songs my friends used to love,
I hear them laughing as I chug along, I wish dear Bruce and Dan
Were here today, I want to tell them they are loved, I want those
Spirits to be free, the river howls down in the distance and I sing louder,
Louder than the cry of all the birds around me hunting.
I sing loud. I want the devil to know that I am coming for him.
XV
I am the guy in the graveyard holding his breath
Till mortality stops being mortal.
Chinks of stone embed in my palms from holding broken Jesus statues.
I call down stupid demon history and swear these angels
Are nothing but jokes against all things that I believed.
Come down and hold me.
Tell me something is cherished.
I am not done. Am I? I am. . . . NOT DONE.
Quick poet chained with bracelets and charms.
See the alarming happiness and hope silenced.
See this? What does anything matter if it just
Means that again this is tossed out into the wind,
Friends dying and killed, blood, booze, explosions and heroin.
My own vanity can’t even justify this thing that I call me.
This, this life that I believed was beloved.
It is not.
Is it?
It’s all about me. I’m all I know.
The mirror never takes a holiday.
Fuck!
There’s a spray of barbed wire behind every birth.
Mystery slams a hand down and ushers up a smile.
Anyone can do better. Anyone can be more.
We have a choice, to create or to destroy; it always comes around to this,
Around and around, the need is not the question; the want is not the desire,
I have chosen that no matter what I will create and I will build,
I do it all in reverence and love, from laughter to a scream, I do it all with love.
Pure heart comes from a wild life lived.
Justice comes from doing these things in spite of the hate that madness brings.
And yes, as surely as the round Buddha touches earth,
As surely as the Prophet fed the masses,
There is a car waiting to take it all away. Death drive. Life drive.
Just drive on. Drive on. Drive.
This thing that’s on my lips? Beloved goes on, she goes on and says
She wants to get away, it is all she wants, she wants to go away.
She does.

THERE REALLY IS ONLY THIS
Roaming, running errands in the grey winter afternoon,
thinking of better moments, of more loving faces
than all the frowns in the cars around me.
And the radio plays “It’s A Beautiful Day” and I sing along,
ah yes, it is a beautiful day in it’s own way…..
but it could be better still, and my memories tumble,
roll and materialize with images of heaven, of all beloved.

Warm daylight, she moves across the room
with a bounce in her step,
and her loose black robe falls back an inch
to show her perfect firm tan and welcoming breast,
she turns her head and smiles,
and as she turns her mass of black hair follows,
and cape like it wraps around her shoulders
and rests on her right arm, and she brushes it back.
And me, I sit and idolize her.
And all the lands and loves and places of my past
dissappear in an instant as I see that she is all there is.

I jump to follow her, to hold her in my arms,
to breath her in, to taste the sweat on her neck and cheeks.
And my head fills with the smells of crushed allspice and lemon,
of salt and the aromas of sea winds at night.
In this moment lingering, in this eternity before we kiss
I see the flashing lights behind my eyelids,
and as I open them to see if this is real, if this is true,
I look into her deep sensual, almond brown eyes,
and slowly merge into her vision, into her body.

Soft caress of lips, a touch of our teeth,
and I feel what can only be called an elegance,
an elegant curl of her tongue around mine.
And as we hold and explore, pass our hands over each
others body, press harder and harder our mouths together,
I move her away, so slight and dear,
and with three fingers lift the edge of her gown
to move it down and around her curving waist,
shifting her weight, dropping her arms,
her clothing drifts like feathers to the floor around her feet.

Thin, long and silky, she stands amid the crumpled cotton
around her ankles and folds her arms around my head
to grasp the hair at the back of my neck,
she bends her own head back, and as I twine her around
my wrist she leans into me and nibbles on my Adams apple,
with tiny snapping, and then quick breathing in my ears,
she leads me as she kisses me into the gauze lighted
and intoxicated atmospheres of our bed room.
And as I disrobe with her hands guiding mine
I feel this way, this way of so long ago when love was new,
and the body was unknown, I shiver and tremble
just a little bit, and press her into the mass of blankets
on our unmade bed, press her into the pillows with a force
that exposes my lust and love for her,
and as she lays back and looks up at me, I see her as laughing,
sexy, inviting, mysterious and sensual all at once,
I see her with all my body and spirit,
and her touch, her smells, her tastes and hugs and kisses
rush in and shake me from the foundation up into my heart.
And I think, so this is love, this is really love,
and I feel this is the body this i s the only body,
the only love for me from this day forward for all my life.

Not enough, no it’s never enough, we wrestle and we melt,
and she rolls over to show me the watery curves of her thighs
and hips as they effortlessly flow upwards into her back.
She tosses her head and catches me adoring her,
she catches me smiling at her grace and her beauty,
at her slim hips, at her tight skinned ginger hot flesh
that I so love and that I so cherish with abandon,
and as I lower my head between her legs and kiss her vagina,
and inhale the sweetness of her from all over,
she hums, she quietly giggles, and she fills the room
with a beauty only captured in the lights of the Milky Way,
with a beauty only seen in the form of the mythic Helen,
and so drunk on her flesh, so high on her spirit,
I rise up on my knees and enter her moist world of love and sex.
And as we move I have this feeling that I never want to come,
that I want to be inside her forever, that I just want to feel
her for this moment as a divine moment held in time,
in this place in this green room in this womans grasp,
and she rears up and bounces like a wild mare on the plains,
and I lose myself inside her, inside her where I belong,
where I long to be……………..shoutin

IN EVERY WAY
Behind the hedges in the backyard
We kissed.
In the kitchen by the stove we kissed.
After work in the grocery store
We lingered by the boxes
Of ripening guava.
Thick tropical scent griped us,
And yes, we kissed.
What else are we here for?
It seemed the fruit was turning to wine.
I remember every place we’ve been
By the times we touched,
By the love when you pressed your
Hand into mine,
By the meals we prepared;
By the idle moments sitting.
The months and years shine
When we are together.
It’s too sweet, I know,
But I really don’t care
Life tastes better with this to share:
A simple kiss for you: my love.
My beloved.

BETWEEN THE SEA AND THE SWEAT

In another summer with another sweating night,
my Georgia steams and I steam along also from
too much coffee and too many Camels, and my life tries
to rise, tries to hover above the wilting mimosa.
And I daydream away into August fogs on Manchester Beach,
feel my shoes start to sink in the stones and ice plants
of the Mendocino coast, and it’s so seductive now,
like a curved finger calling me over,
over to vistas of two story waves and whale spout fountains,
scenes of a sparkling sea of St. John’s fire racing
on the limbs of midnight tossed runaway redwoods,
these great ancients dare another rampage,
another cut of the saw, another rogue current…
And I start to feel the memories rocking, rocking,
rising with white flash of moon on the ridge,
on tide heavy winds that smell of evolution and urchin.
The far Pacific in my opium years of mist and storm
is always captured in these dreams, in these green house days.
Shaking my head, salt crusts on my lips,
and I walk out into the bamboo woods behind my broken,
depression era home, smell the Broad River,
cherokee rose and honeysuckle, slap a mosquito,
a gnat and a sweat bee, watch the slow crawl
of grass thick humidity slide up the spine
of thirsting pecan and cracked bull pine.
And I walk with the woman of black halters
and ginger scented skin, and she touches my arm
and asks where I am…and I don’t know how to say
I am between the sea and the sweat,
so I tell her I am here dreaming this and that,
this and that more now than ever before in my life.

AFTERNOON MEADOW

Van Gogh’s crows perched all over this town,
stuck in the updrafts, riding the fog’s hard edge,
doe carcass, possum body, urinary rivers
and the rancher’s overflow all feeding the flying herds
of these great black caretakers.
Defiant on the roadside, jay hunted in the low sky,
yet climbing in from the distance
on a rapid shadow bullet flight, these birds ascend
and dive, rise and hold, and there,
in the hunting climb where meadow, sky and tree
blend yellow, blue and thick green, then the black,
the blue background yellow bottomed canvas comes alive
with the specter’s held in eternal flight…
yeah, that’s it,
the picture holds,
and it’s Van Gogh’s crows all over town.

RAIN KISS (MAY AWAKES)

Rain? Are you touching me now?
I thought I felt rain on my shoulder.
The smell of mushrooms bursting,
thin skinned puff balls blowing
grey smoke in the dry afternoon.
The acrid smell of Comet cleanser and baking soda.
She promises rain, but tastes like perspiration.
I kissed her fingers. Khaki tan and soft.
And it seemed the sun exploded in my eyes.
Turn this over in your heart she says,
and she says there is no price on dusk today.
Down, damned and drained I tease each
lowering cloud with lidded glances
and an Elvis Presley snarl.
Brown needles drop off the sargeant juniper.
Starving bonsai: what is your peace now?
Giving up, I don’t even cut back the bamboo anymore.
And the arid heat is murder here, here on
the banks of the slow Oconee,
here we all sing “summertime….”
She cat licks my left ear lobe.
Breathes into the soft lymphatic skin.
And the vibrations curl, shimmy and shag.
Are you touching me now?
And the cumulus thunder shouts,
pregnant black clouds roll over and foal.
And suddenly, as parched as I was one second before,
here I am, drenched and laughing,
finally, finally my Georgia sky became itself again,
and the late spring rain storms came as promised.
She holds me close, asks if I can smell the grass
turning green again, if I can feel the branches
gathering up all the water they can….
and I just say yes, yes I can.

IT WAS COLD BEFORE YOU

Looking up into what was October
when the frosted winds came,
and November stepped across the river.
Inside, the house grew frigid
in it’s emptiness.
Then there you were,
as if with me for all time,
beside me here in the living room,
open arms wide in the quilted easy chair,
yes, there you were,
shining like a forever summer.
My warm love,
my smile in darkness.
Today I was up early,
rubbing the Laughing Buddha
on his lucky little belly,
thinking and thankful,
I know no matter what
there are those few things
that are so good, so giving,
even in times that say
compassion is a joke,
and peace of heart is a myth,
and I think, yeah,
sometimes the love stories
must be lived,
like the one that says that I am
glad I’m living this life of mine.

IN A CEMETERY OFF WOLFSKIN ROAD

Blue notes whipped off a catgut slide
break the rain gray road with moans and shouts
of a South that believes in death and crossroads,
and the speaker crackles, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon,
Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, Patti Smith, Nick Cave…
And the country roads deliver, spirits wash,
eight cylinders rumble, 195/75 r14 tires swish and hold,
and the pear green pastures sway down in water,
Appaloosa and Angus march windward to the East,
and the blue notes roar, the country blues howl:
Through red wine and heroin, seduction and prayer,
terror driven up from the swamps and delta
into these Georgia shacks, into these temples,
into a day where the song is a cracked lip,
dehydrating in the rain, begging, demanding…
And the car rushes by the scenes:
Nouveau redneck red brick mansions, an El Camino,
Dodge Ram, minivans, trailers, busted axles and rims,
barns from the first war tilting, still standing,
burned-out barns, fire-charred houses, open wells,
harness on a water oak, to the right a graveyard,
a church, Primitive Baptists or Fundamental,
simple worship and deliverance, it’s all the same.
A gospel of sin runs down and sings salvation,
beer bathed christenings lurk in the stream,
laughter rises on the water, and the rebirths are carved
in heavy fruited chinaberry by the minister’s study.
Pecan tree shells itself out front here,
here by the marble and granite markers,
by the three white crosses, tall, white crosses,
and I stop and sit awhile, watch the rain and winds rush.
A stand of blackberry shimmers and shakes,
and road whispers “follow me,”
and I don’t know where to go but go wait,
go here and wait…
and wait..
Watching the crossroads, watching the dead stay dead.
Between the rain and the heat mists rise on the meadows.
She seems there: Wide hips large breasts long smile,
dark voice cool, cool across a burgundy smile,
seeing me seeing, waiting, singing dies irae,
her dark voice powered by depression and thrill,
and the devil doesn’t come to meet me, history does.
Mirror fleshed and blue veined, spirit fades in,
and fades, fade to wind,
fade to shouts in a city street,
fade to quiet on the road/hillsides,
she stands alone in the cemetery in the rain,
lingering in the dusk like a blanket upon the days,
becoming moon, becoming night, the next blue dream,
and a ghost dance churns behind a thin heartbeat,
“gotta go now, don’t speak.”
And she weaves into the spray of a passing slant 6.
And the blue notes pound off a rain gray road…

FUTURE ZEN

Setting it all up to break away and run,
like feeling your way through
a briar floored forest,
you know, there’s a walk space,
tiny prince williams, fern, mountain laurel,
dusty mushrooms
and crumbling chestnut roots,
somehow safe and somehow threatening,
and it’s not at odds,
it’s just the way it is.
Just the way it is
when you know it’s time to enter
the deeper heart of the woods,
muscadine and maypops,
brown trout and stone flies,
always that, the good and the bad…
BY THE CREEK THINKING,
Always the beyond where it doesn’t matter,
this summer zen that smells like raw earth
and tastes like spray off the green Chatuga,
hhhmmm, yeah, sit a while here with me,
your face framed by slow waves of perfect black hair,
the mists wrapped about the laurel and magnolia
of our Blue Ridge hills,
in the pines and in the pastures,
I just won’t decide. Passion rests.
There’s no good or bad.
There is only this,
this you and the smile that reflects my own,
that lands like pillows and shines so hard.

FUTURE PERFECT

FUTURE PERFECT

How can I write the face
that wilts into the shadows…
How many different words
will I be forced to speak
before we reach the place
where we will meet?
As though we were the couple
in Hopper’s famous diner,
silent, common and apart,
facing the same direction,
but still refusing to see the other.
Nighthawks whisper, right?
And with all the bravery
of one man into the storm
I turn and ask to please
come out, or else shall
I just come on in.
Nervous years collapse.
And you raise a smile
from those long moments.
We turn the light on the shadows
where strange faith and life hid.
And I feel the soft kiss,
that love instant that says
there is no thing greater
than to speak and to smile