--YOU BUILD ME UP FROM BONES

  

Different Ghosts

Tonight the ghosts

are throwing punches again.
One has brass knuckles,
the other a razor wire wedding ring.
Jackson Pollack blood splatters across the walls.
Down the hall we huddle like a human tent
but there is no force field for this kind of thing
and the imagination can only do so much.
Little Sis screams, “Make them stop!”
My brothers don’t hear her, the ghosts don’t either.
They throw jabs, an uppercut, a haymaker.
The cupboards rattle as glass explodes against a water spout,
the trailer rumbling, trying to hide inside a sink hole.
More Jackson Pollack, this time chunky yellow vomit,
cracked teeth, broken fingernails,
bloody tufts of hair and scalp.
Little Sis asks, “How can ghosts bleed?”
I reach down and whisper in her ear,
“These are different ghosts. 
They’re not our parents.
They’re not.
Now say it after me. 
These are different ghosts.”

 

Broken Halos

The man was no one I knew

though he somehow knew me,
said, “Call me Uncle Buck,”
kept touching me, kept telling jokes
that were crude and not funny.
“Come on, kid, lighten up,
I’m giving you my best shit here.”
In Sunday School they said angels
are all around us, everywhere, if you can
just adjust your focus to find them.
But the only halo in this room
was broken in half, each gray semi-circle
dangling in a valley of mottled skin
under the man’s milky eyes.
When he told me
he knew ways to make a boy like me rich,
I abandoned God and flew through
the trailer door,
soaring over treetops and hills,
over Pasco, Spokane,
Falls Church and Mahwah,
flying to where I am right now,
so much older,
but breathing and alive.

 

Wishing Wells

My older brother

ran away at thirteen,
wound up somewhere south of North Dakota
breaking horses.
But there weren’t horses where we lived
so our mother broke children instead.
Single-file, couplets, one-at-a-time,
it didn’t matter.
A belt, a spatula, an eggbeater,
that didn’t matter either.
She was a pro who’d
finally found her passion,
inspired by some source of
evil I couldn’t comprehend.
What she never reached
was the well we’d made inside of us,
that long, dark slip of
sturdy, earthen walls where
we’d drop our pennies,
making wishes,
brave as hell perhaps,
or just young and ignorant enough
to believe they might
actually come true.

 

Off The Table

Two days after I’d visited and

said I would buy Dad a computer,
Mom called me at work
to say that idea was off the table.
He’ll only use it to watch pornography, she said,
the sick, kinky kind.
He spends every day in his shop
walking around wearing women’s clothes,
bras and wigs and high heels, she said.
He’s not what you think, she said.
So that notion about a computer,
it’s off the table, she said,
her voice so flat
it could have been a recording.
After I hung up
my assistant came in, frantic,
her face a blur of concern.
Everyone’s waiting for you, she said.
I asked who, what.
Have you lost your mind, she said,
there are two hundred people out there.
I gripped the edge of the desk,
watching the wood warp
and squirm inside my palms.
My assistant cleared her throat
and wrapped on the doorjamb.
Seriously, she said, this is not a joke. 
You’re holding things up.
I looked at the ceiling, at my feet
and shaking hands.
It might have been me
or someone else who said,
Tell them I’ve got the flu. 
Tell them laryngitis.
Tell them I’m in a coma.
Tell them I’ve switched companies.
Tell them.

 

--WHEN I THINK OF YOU YOU’VE STILL GOT ON THAT HAT THAT SAYS “LET’S PARTY”
 

 

…Yesterday another friend of mine died suddenly while gardening.  It was a shock to hear.  He wasn’t necessarily a close friend and I only saw him once or maybe twice a year, but still it was a railroad tie to the gut.

He was the ringleader for our fantasy football league, having started it 40 years ago, back when you’d have to get a newspaper and comb for stats, writing them down with pen and paper.  He loved football and he really loved the column I wrote each week with made up conversations (raunchy ones) between my wife and I.
When I think of him he’s always squinting through a smile.
He has a son and wife with a name I’ve always loved—Sunday.

…So there might be another funeral in my near future.

 

...Funerals do a lot of things.  Aside from honoring the person who’s passed, they tend to make you think about yourself.  You can say they don’t, but you’d be lying.
You assess the crowd and wonder who will show up when you die.
You think about yourself, your life, wondering if it was well-lived, if you grasped the right amount of happiness and for how long.  You wonder about the choices you made, the good ones and poor ones.  You wonder how much life you have left to live.

...Funerals suck and don’t suck. 
They’re a paradox—often it’s the only time you see certain people or talk to people you were once pretty close to.
There are tears, of course, but usually some laughter afterward.

…Ultimately, funerals are a sledgehammer to the head and heart reminding us that all we have are these seconds and minutes, that they’re fleeting, and so it behooves us to use them to the full.

…I am tired of death and I am tired of people I know dying, but I’ve rounded second base now, home plate isn’t that far astride, and so there’ll surely be more on the morrow.

...I'll miss you, Mike.  You were one of the good ones.

 

-“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” Susan Sontag

 

--LOVE IS ALWAYS THIRSTY

 

…I read six books in San Diego—well, either in San Diego, or else to and fro.

They were all quite good in their own way, except maybe the last one.  Perhaps I didn’t get the last one.  In fact, I know I didn’t get it, not like I should have.
The book in question was the latest issue of “Poetry,” a journal that has been around since the 60’s, or thereabout.
It’s a thin volume but very dense, especially the many pages of commentary at the end that made me feel quite stupid, both as a reader of poetry and as a writer of it.
The author spent a great deal of time instructing.  He talked a lot about “unknowing” and sighted various famous poets to underscore his points, such as:

-“I confess to a desire to forget knowing, especially when I sit down to work on a poem.” Mark Strand

-“I hardly knew what I was writing; I just knew that the words were right.”  Elizabeth Bishop

-“To me, poetry has a duty not to know what it thinks.” Alice Oswald

Most of it confused me.  Shouldn’t poetry know what it thinks?  Shouldn’t a writer know what she wants her poem to convey, at least in some respects?

It made me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. 
I certainly didn’t when I first started out, because back then everything I wrote rhymed, and they were pretty awful.

The first non-rhyming poem I wrote was a short little thing for a college girl I had a massive crush on:

Lady By The Sea

Beauty had never done as much,

nor the sea in all its wonder,
but you,
walking the beach barefoot and free,
have.

I liked it all right, and she did, too, or so she said, promptly requesting another.

Her second poem was inspired by birth control. 
At eighteen, I was still terribly naïve and thought birth control was similar to aspirin—something easily obtained without forethought.  When a friend explained that this was not so, I was a little spun out. 
I know how sexist this is/was, but I thought you became attracted to someone, then very attracted to them, before plotting sexual escapades.  (Again, I realize how ignorant and chauvinistic this makes me look.)
I guess I was just jealous to think this girl could/would/might have had sex with some other boy that wasn’t me if I hadn’t stumbled into the picture.
Anyway, I wrote this, which I thought was bitter irony, but which she thought was a fun little piece meant to induce chuckling.

The Pill

Take a pill,

swallow it first,
then some water to
quench your thirst.
Hop in bed,
your pleasure be,
no need to worry,
you’re pregnant free!

I hope my poetry has improved, but I’m having doubts.  (Most writers I know are insecure about their craft.)

In San Diego, I came about this darling girl and wrote:

Childlike

The child wearing a bug costume,

running through a maze
of waist-high hedges,
skipping and giggling,
this girl,
perhaps three or three and half,
she owns the sun
and sky and wonder
while the rest of the world waits,
desperately wanting her to own it as well,
if even just for a few days,
if even for a few brief moments
of unvarnished bliss.
Her laughter is an earthquake.
It rattles the thickest, tallest trees,
and plucked from their branches,
each leaf floats and free-falls,
for once unafraid of landing or death,
simply content to have witnessed,
by happenstance,
joy so pure and genuine.


At another point during the trip, I was transfixed by the ocean.  A lot was happening on the surface— streaming sailboats, cruise ships, ferries—but I saw the sea differently, and later, on the plane home, I wrote this:

Sea Sick

There is no threat of mutiny,

but then again, the sea
is capable of anything
when she is this blue,
this unhinged and misguided.
Look: even the gulls fly away.
Whales leap, trying to escape her embrace.
Clouds haven’t been seen in weeks.
And so she inhales and exhales,
shooting waves across her crest
in rippled, liquid curtains.
She opens her arms and swims,
treading water, face sun-scaled,
sweating algae and plankton
until that pale peace 
is stripped away.
Finally she holds her breath
and dives deep,
roaming the murky depths,
searching herself for evidence
of mistakes made, misplaced love,
the reason her life has become
so very vast yet devoid of meaning,
surrounded by beauty with
no one to share it.

I wrote other poems.  I’ll keep writing them.  Mine will never be all that clever.  You’ll be able to track what I’m trying to convey. 
They might not matter at all, and that might not be important.

 

 

 

--WHEREVER I HAVE GONE, THE BLUES ARE ALL THE SAME        

 

 I’m So Glad You Woke Up

The moon is quiet tonight,

knitting secrets against her breasts again
like a fastidious jeweler
as clouds shudder and shift
while the universe gazes back awestruck.
Yet, can I admit it,
to you or myself,
how there is a pin or pole inside of me--
a stake, a shiv
a shaft, a pipe
an icepick,
someone’s rusted jackknife or crowbar--
stuck all the way through
my hide and the shallow
measly meat of me,
chest to back,
pinning me to a wall
like a bloody poster left only to drip
and drip
and drip?
And I can’t move
or breathe at all.
There’s nothing to do
but watch your chest rise and fall,
study your back freckles as you doze,
memorize their pattern
and constellations,
close my eyes and pray
that this is really real
and not some dream I’m dreaming,
on my knees and praying
that you’ll be here in the morning,
head cocked on a pillow
with all sorts of flouncy hair,
saying, “Good morning, Handsome.
I’m so glad you woke up
and that I can see your face again.”

 

Small Gods

I am taking the small gods with me,

a trail of butterflies floating above my head,
each meticulously painted, as unique as snowflakes.
Even when I swim the lake, they shadow me.
Even underwater, these insects dive down, too.
On the shore, their beating wings dry me off.
I’ve never had such friends, so generous and attentive.
They lead me to a copse and then a clearing
smelling of moss and honeysuckle
where deer nuzzle the snouts of other deer,
hummingbirds spinning in place
like tiny prisms or tufts of breath,
sunshine breaching through each seam
of the swaying branches overhead
as if its announcing the first birth of human life.

I am taking the small gods with me everywhere,

day and night, today and tomorrow,
slowing down, taking the time,
finally learning to see beauty,
even when there might be none.

 

The Currency of Despair

Around me now

everyone is dealing in the currency of despair,
their hope shredded napkins,
confidence wrapped with barbed wire,
pixie dust locked up in an unreachable urn.
I want to tell them they
must have something to sing about,
someone to sing to,
songs that make the heart jump and hurdle.
The way to defeat despair is to never cash it in.
Pick a bouquet of blue bells instead.
Make crazy monkey love till dawn.
Dance naked in the rain
with hands held high
and mouth open wide.
Catch every drop of chilled moisture
and swallow as much as you can.

 

How To Feel Less Miserable

I am out of orbit again.

Gravity has lost its sense of reason
The sky keeps changing clothes and colors--
red dress, yellow dress, brown dress.
If there are pills to combat a feeling like this,
I want some.

Yesterday a woman claimed to be psychic.

She predicted a three year old girl
would be murdered today, but could provide neither
the name of the girl or her killer.
I’m not making this up.

People without a fear of heights

think you’re a pussy when you stand
far from the window, nervous and sweating.
It’s easy to belittle what you
don’t understand, and fearful people
have little to defend their own phobias.

Maybe it all boils down

to the fact that I’ve got
too much time on my hands,
thinking about things
that would better be left alone.

Like the fact that all the bees are dying,

elephants are being born without tusks,
and somewhere right this moment
a child is being hurt when it did nothing wrong,
but be born by wicked parents.

In two more days the sun will revert,

shine on my uplifted face while
the ocean mists my skin.
I’ll be a tourist, distracted by scenery,
with no time to ponder anything but
my own greedy pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

--THE BOOK OF LOVE IS LONG AND BORING.  IT’S FULL OF CHARTS AND FACTS AND FIGURES, AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING. 
THE BOOK OF LOVE HAS MUSIC IN IT.  IN FACT, THAT’S WHERE MUSIC COMES FROM.
 

Talking To Animals

Growing up on our makeshift farm

often became a calamity,
like those times Cathy and Irene,
our Guernsey milk cows,
somehow escaped the barbed wire fence
and made it all the way to 8^th street,
hooves clattering on the pavement
like someone thrashing pots and pans together.

I had two pet calves then,
Go Go and Thunder.
They were exceptional listeners and
for a long time, my only true friends.
I fed them candied oats out of my palm,
milk from a plastic bottle tipped with a rubber nipple.
As they tugged and sucked away,
foam bubbles gathering on their lengthy jaws,
I told them all of my horrible secrets,
how I thought life was playing
cruel tricks on me and my siblings.
I took their wide-eyed stares to mean
I’d shocked them with such confessions,
only to realize later that they were always wide-eyed.

By the time the calves turned two
and were no longer calves,
they became someone’s dinner,
leaving me dejected but grateful that they weren’t ours.
I have a dog now.
She’s a great listener as well,
her eyes shiny and alert as I speak,
sharp ears always upturned at the ready.
Still, I keep my secrets mostly hidden.
She’s a cute little thing,
barely six pounds soaking wet,
unable to bear too much weight
or learning that her owner might not be
the man she assumes he is.
 

 

Learning How To Swim

In our camper,

which was my room one summer,
I found the photos by accident--
a stack of Polaroids stuffed in the back of a cupboard,
cinched tight, covered by a velvet Crown Royal satchel
with script scrolled in navy and gold.

She was topless in everyone,

her bare, swollen breasts oddly lifted upward,
as if they were inflated,
which of course they were,
inflated like the floaties I used to fasten my arms to
while learning how to swim.
It was daytime in all the pictures,
abundant sunshine screeching around each shot
in sprays of pale yellow piss or bright bland ochre,
and so she squinted back at the photographer,
always smiling though,
offering the same beaming grin that had won her
first place in a number of beauty pageants
when she was younger and
maybe not as wicked as I knew her now.

In some she blew a flirtatious kiss.

In others, she cupped the denim shorts
that tightly hugged her ass,
her head cocked back as if giving herself up as a sacrificial offering,
her neck a crowbar of rippled, white metal,
wearing a blonde wig,
a brunette wig,
a strawberry-blonde wig,
a _______ wig,
a _______ wig.
a _______ wig.

If it were anyone else,

anyone but me and her,
it might have felt or meant something different,
might have even seemed admirable--
an older, married couple shaking things up like that,
injecting innovation and spice,
new breasts and new kinky exploits,
a little fun in the sun,
pose-and-click boob job pictures
taken just for them.

But again, this was now about me and her,

about me, and her, and him,
whoever he was.
And so I studied the photographer’s shadow,
the flattened length of his body
angled on the ground in silhouette. 
I searched for a flattop haircut,
for any clue or reassurance.
I bent down and peered as closely as I could,
inspecting grain and shadow,
yet it was impossible to say one way or the other.

Stumped, I burned them one at a time in the sink.

I watched the gnarled hunks of ash
skate around the water-filled basin
before finally succumbing to the drain.
When the last charred piece slipped down,
I gripped the counter, squeezing the fake wood
so hard it seemed to excrete moisture back into my hands.
I knew there’d be all kinds of hell to pay when
Mother found the photos missing,
but it was suppertime and she was calling for me,
yelling that my food was getting cold.

 

--ALL I WANT IS FOR YOU TO MAKE ME SMILE

 

 Sunday Best

We are busy taking photos,

busy being still as totems,
our parents seated in the middle of their brood
like elderly hippie royalty
though we know better,
though we are each sharper than people give us credit.

Dressed in our Sunday Best,

we resemble dime store mannequins
made from faulty plastic molds,
mom’s blonde wig a mass of hair-sprayed waves,
dad’s hair a flat matt of porcupine quills,
all of us something we’re not again.

The photographer is a fastidious ant man,

telling us how to smile and stand,
which way to tilt our chins,
how the backlighting will create shadows
if we aren’t able to hold ourselves together.

Just last week one of us was

a runaway, a soldier and a felon,
a bad poet, two wrestlers, and four abused siblings
quaking in a shroud of defenseless skin.

But today our grins are fashioned with see-through plaster,

our arms hung low like chimps so that no one
—not the photographer,
or those who will view this picture years later—
is able to see our hands,
some scarred, but all fisted tight.

 

Shrink-To-Fit

It was a rare day of glory,

Dad high on sunshine instead of Schlitz Malt Liquor,
so giddy for some reason that he
nearly skipped through the aisles at 2 Swabbies.
When he told me to pick something out for myself,
I believed it a trick and looked the shelves over
to see who might be watching,
waiting to bust a gut with laughter.

But he was serious.  He meant it!

Dad who never bought me anything but meals
because we were what people called White Trash
and because that’s all he could afford.
When I picked a pair of Levis off a stack asking, “Are these okay?”
he tousled my hair with his grease-stained bear paw,
checked the price tag, and said, “Sure thing, Flower Child.”

But the pair I’d chosen weren’t the right ones,

weren’t Shrink-To-Fit, the style all the other kids wore.
These jeans stayed black-blue and stiff as shingles.
Wearing them at the bus stop the next day,
Dad drove by in his white Caddie,
cigarette smoke climbing the car windows
like dragon claws made of fog.
If he was looking my way or even knew if it was me,
I couldn’t tell.

When Steve Pittman asked,

“Ain’t that your Dad?”
I stared at a rusted beer can blinking sunray code
in the pile of detritus behind us.
When he asked again, I stared some more
and breathed through my nose
until the bus pulled up and I got on,
taking the first empty seat available.

 

 The Horse Whisperer

He never knew how much

he scared me,
or maybe he did.
Perhaps that was the idea.
After he’d been released
from prison,
my older brother went
around the table telling
each of my siblings
who would make something of themselves
or who would wind up on Welfare.
He said Welfare had my name on it,
then asked if I was a punk,
asked if I knew what a punk was.
In prison a punk is the guy everyone
rapes because they can,
because it is just that easy.

My brother is a different man now.

He’s a genuine horse whisperer,
out in the middle of nowhere
with his wild mares and stallions,
using secret words to coax them.
I wonder what he says,
what parts they understand
and how much they obey,
or don’t.

 

Spin The Bottle

We played Truth or Dare,

then Spin The Bottle to see
who would kiss who.
I kept getting Monica Westfall,
a chubby girl but kind of cute
with her white bell bottoms
and different colored pockets
that reminded me of a Twister matt.
After a while we retreated to the dank basement
which smelled like a root cellar.
I sat on the washer, her on the dryer,
both of us unsure how to get started.
Even in the shady darkness
I could see that she had the deepest
dimples I’d ever seen,
that, in her own way, she was quite beautiful.
When I said she was,
she applied cherry ChapStick
and told me I was too skinny but
she wasn’t all that picky.
We leaned between the seams of both machines
and kissed for hours,  just kissing,
nothing more than that,
no bases covered,
the heat of those moments
a crimson brand against my skin.
The next day my brother
asked if I got some Nookie.
I didn’t know what that was exactly,
but I swung hard anyway.
It was the first blow I ever landed on him
and the last.
I didn’t mind the beating that ensued,
didn’t even ask him to stop.
It’s funny how the imprint of
someone else’s lips on yours can
erase all kinds of pain,
how it can make you feel
that you might actually have
something to offer another person,
even if it’s fleeting and only temporary.