The Old Mule

Beneath Plates

Beneath plates of thin glass
were sketches from Picasso, quick
lines from a schoolbook. Heavy wood
public floors, a tasteful light. Silly
boy, bewildered by our strange
white eyes and hanging necklaces.
Is this what you have come to, this
island, here in the off-center of
Barcelona, in Summer. My Spanish was
almost useless there - and the healthy girl
at the pension mocked my drawlish
brogue, with a smile. She wore a smock
and baked muffins. My heart sang.

Beneath thin plates of glass
we wondered at the cool stroke
of hands' long departure, and the
hour of our own art, and the tempo
of funny things we leave behind.

The Night Before

Spent the summer learning
the routes of the city buses.
I crossed the Los Angeles
River three times, at least –
hunkered line of sand and debris,
and made my way down to the city,
clapboard place of textiles and food
stalls. Empty folks wandering,
wondering – a long slide of
sidewalk. Not many trees.
And in Hollywood we drank
whiskey after whiskey at that
grain-wood bar, heavy service.
The music too. And the feel
of the hills, there around you,
womb of dust brush, lit by the
quick hand of magic parlors
and back yards. I wandered from
the tar pit and fought the radiant
boredom of step after step after step.
This was the summer of ninety-eight.

Ted Kooser in Vietnam

A poem for Monday by Ted Kooser

In January
 
Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese cafe, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles. 

Edward Abbey - Missoula

I know that I have posted this before, but it deserves repeating:

Edward Abbey
Missoula, Montana
1978

"Do not burn yourselves out.  Be as I am.  A reluctant enthusiast and part-time crusader.  A hearted fanatic.  Save the other half of yourselves for pleasure and adventure.  It is not enough to fight for the West.  It is even more important to enjoy it while you can, while it's still there.  So go out there, hunt, fish, mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the griz, climb a mountain, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet elusive air.  Sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness of the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves.  Keep your brain in your head and your head frimly attached to the body, the body active and alive.  And I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in safe deposit boxes and their eyes hypnotized by their desk calculators.  I promise you this:  You will outlive the bastards."

Those Other Days

With your cedar plank and weathered maps
we scavenge from town to town the dusty hearts
of shore maids and their lonesome sea swept brows.

Between the singing from our traveled breath
and the toil of dinner’s stew, I find my mind
perched in recline and a sea-harp tuned to soothe, so

sing with your whistles and dance on your toes,
I spy a wine dark sea. The solid thud of isle’s embrace
and the fruit there plucked, and the hammock hung,

do draw me back to the lonesome tides
and around, and around I brew. 

But study your maps and hoist your cloth –
the parchment of a stomach soft, until
our minds are driven forth, released, and

to sea we lift our land spent limbs
renewed and ever-young, (what salt does cure)

pitched forward with the weight of tides
and hung loft with the memory of: 

Goodbye, goodnight. I will sing you through
every town we venture from, and every
wave we pass there through.

Tuesday

So this is a cold Tuesday in Fall. Wandering around in a daze. Not knowing where I put things. Maybe it was the poor sleep or the Less Than Zero book, which I have started twice. In any event I have a good stretch set out before me, and I was able to read Ghost Money before work, which, if you know me, you know is my favorite poem. I mean who writes lines like this?

Between voices and fireworks

wind works bricks to dust—hush, hush—
no language I want to learn.

Lynda Hull wrote that. She had a terrible time with life. Maybe that is what enabled her to speak so clear, write so well. She was in and out of jobs - teaching stints. And the heroin, that beast, caught her too. And,

—the moment
where men and women turn to each other and dissolve
each bad debt, every sly mischance, the dalliance of hands.

Funny how we never know what our biographies will be. Hers was an epithet, I mean epitaph. Or a tangled heap of metal, her car. An unexpected passing - and after all that! She speaks of green corollas and the scent of ginseng. Tin foil and lanterns. Her words seem a languid repsite from her life, a visage of a new land, a new home:

It’s dangerous to stand here
in the chastening glow, darkening

my eyes in the mirror with the gulf of the rest
of my life widening away from me...

But what is it that we look for in such a poem? What is it that we hear, and feel a connection? Is it the story or the sound? Why is it so hard to bring these moments and hold them in mid air. To feel how we are, to speak with our bones and loose our tongues for the sake of time. Everything passes, everything changes. Did I hear that? Today I need some sort of a song. Or a thing like this, to remind me of what is honest.

Wai Min is in the doorway.
He brings fish. He brings lotus root.
He brings me ghost money.

At Night

I keep dreaming
of the diplomat's daughter
even though she is
more than I can handle.
Why do men fly
to these bright stars?
We take turns staring
over wine (in my dream) -
a well lit Italian...
Paolo's place, twelfth street.
And well fed we wander
over steam grates past
the Russian bar
and the palm reader,
settling near a park.
Delicate anemone, an
opening just for winter -
what show of thighness.
Your breasts are bees
and your nipples are little
hammers of syrup.
Bring them to me!
In this city, heavy with
the science of evening
and the back and forth
between humans. Weighty
globes. A sea of topography.
Make waves, fly flags.

An Air of Friday-ness

Okay, it's Friday and about mid November, and hot like summer. My brakes are gone, I have terrible food in the refrigerator and the bank closed before I could deposit (umm, cash) my check. So, in light of all of this...I present a brief respite. Right here.

And in other news, I was stalled in traffic for thirty minutes while a helicopter was transported down the road, and whose blade got caught between a Bradford pear tree and a sagging phone line. Fuck it all. You know...fuck it all.

November

My feet hit the ground and right away
I knew it was a new kind of morning.
The cypress at the corner of my window
seldom bends into these kinds of angles,
and the city is unquiet. Unquiet. Toward
the harbor, large boats are mired in mud
and men run their decks in foolish fury.

The city is unquiet, unquiet, and so
I knew it was a new kind of morning.

I am not yet back to where I used to be.
Have  I said that before? It is the dusk that
loosens the knots of my tongue. And so in quiet
I gather with the fishermen on the docks
to inspect the colors in the cooler. This night
our net was full with the gravity of
species. And the large boats are lifted,
lifted with a heavy moon tide. Foolish fury.

I gather with the fishermen on the docks,
and the large boats are lifted, lifted.

A Song for Winter

The hips of a woman
are a most delicate experiment,
so with nerve tremors yet steady hand
I pull a mask and set the sleeping gas.

Three, two, one with gauze
and I lift a finger for another
piece of pliable metal to peel you back.
This is no quick run, we have moved too deep.

Place the machines in motion,
turn back the clock to the start...
I hear music in my concentration
while you see stars, you see stars.

And while our lids are flipped
and the room white with plaster
and light, I fumble with the nurse
not for spite, not for keep.

And in bone we meet
with a cautious examination,
a reveal, and a careful put back.
How did we meet? Awake, awake.