The Old Mule

Thkgvg

Who is a pilgrim?

Tell them to leave me the fuck alone.

The Midwest

Shallow bleating of this year’s turkey.

Crows swarm the cotton patch.

My nephew has a cow and he milks her.

I am no city mouse.

Here is the bridge.

Here runs the trail.

There is no loss but the giving,

And the heavy heat of such a far away place.

Arthur Rimbaud

From "Bad Blood" -- Rimbaud's entrance to his season in hell.

I will come back with limbs of iron, with dark skin, and angry eyes; in this mask, they will think I belong to a strong race. I will have gold; I will be brutal and indolent. Women nurse these ferocious invalids come back from the tropics. I will become involved in politics. Saved.

Now I am accursed, I detest my native land. The best thing is a drunken sleep, stretched out on some strip of shore.

But no one leaves. Let us set out once more on our native roads, burdened with my vice-- that vice that since the age of reason has driven roots of suffering into my side-- that towers to heaven, beats me, hurls me down, drags me on.

Ultimate innocence, final timidity. All's said. Carry no more my loathing and treacheries before the world.

Come on! Marching, burdens, the desert, boredom and anger.

Hire myself to whom? What beasts adore? What sacred images destroy? What hearts shall I break? What lie maintain? Through what blood wade?

Williamsburg County, SC

There is a buzzard roost near the dump in Black Mingo Swamp. When I was ten, we took a frayed sofa near the roost. Not to the dump. We took the couch to the solid waste facility, just up the road. There was a long haired fellow in some sort of jumpsuit with peanuts floating in his pespi. Behind elvis-shades he glanced from beneath his beach umbrella – perched on his throne in the marshy heat. Mosquitoes swarmed. The only trees for miles were pines. This fellow was the attendant, but I swear you could have dumped a body. You could hear the thud of old batteries, the clank of a root killer can, some Christmas lights and a muffler. We loosed grip on the old sofa and let it slide. It is still out there somewhere. A rotted curl of springs, mildewed fabric and splintered feet. The buzzards guard the heavens there. The beach umbrella, I am sure, had faded grey.

Cold Climate

Pretend nobody is near. Go outside and walk the roads. Turn upward. Holler at some geese. Make a grilled cheese and wonder why the phone does not ring. Remember, no one is around. This time, yell for real. At every decibel, you are misunderstood. A hand forged novel hangs in a sack. Maybe it is a flop-edged scroll. You appear like some medieval scholar -- a Medici in séance and a little drunk. Smell the incense. Not the hippie stuff; I mean the myrrh, the Caspian holly, and the cedar resin. Dip water from a trough. Dip a toe. Submerge. Shrivel. Trifle the robes of ghosts as you go under. Re-enter the universe in period gown. Leather. You own a rifle. Wolves circle. The moon just went beneath a cloud. 

De Soto

Our pumpkin is rotten. Last night neither one of us could sleep. I still don’t have a real job. Growing up I thought I would be an explorer. Yeah, I would make a good one. I would own a good tall set of calfskin boots and carry map making implements in a heavy, worn sack. There would be shoe leather for dinner, a musket for enemies and one good copper pot. I would take Indian wives…seduce them with Aztec dances. There would be a couple of flop-eared hounds with droopy balls. One might die and I would bury him on some hillside overlooking a stream. I would cry and kick the clay. We would press on, westward. At dawn I would sketch a rare burdock root and take seeds from a well fruited mayhaw. We would see the horizon – hungry, ready. Early our tents would be down and late we would remain, unfinished.   

Letters

Sometimes people have the hardest time saying things they mean. Words we use to communicate are like spears made out of stone. We launch the things off and they fall out our feet, dropped, too silent. We need some new codes, a glyph maybe, secret turns of the eye. Humans approximate with words, throwing stone spears at targets, dismayed at their wobbling heaviness and imprecision. Let us write letters, and mean them.

Caligula

The way to really feel is risk too much. Anyone in battle must know that. In Germany, Caligula feared for his life. This was just prior to his self-deification and the anointment of all state buildings. It seems he needed a way out, a real back door; the coins were not working.

He crossed the Bay of Naples on horseback, slipping north at dusk in a lavish show, such as he required. His horse pranced the bow of a thousand ships, moored sideways in a spectacular event of ceremony and state spending. Caligula was finally murdered by his own private guards, his cohors praetoria.

Mortality harvested his bitter frame – and the chute downward brought the soils of earth to his haunches.

One can not help but imagine his last moments of conscious thought. Would there be a moment of terror? Would the great emperor reach inward for peace, extol his sins, and then relinquish? Was there rumination on change and the great new centuries to come?

Here existed the shadow of a man who shook empires. He sought divine. He leapt forward into some feeble space of pride and ambition, and fell upon the lower citizens. Where do our emperors guide us now? With what wisdom might they lead? History is among us.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1529 - 1569)
The Bay of Naples