The Dead End Street

On a street in an old mill town
there live twenty six poets
in houses made of words

The first owner of the Greek Revival -
the Formalist  – lives alone with his books;
stacked in columns, aligned in perfect rows
of equal heights – most are damaged by rain
falling through the holes in the old shake roof

but just last year
the Confessionals
had the house condemned;
now they roam the empty halls
listening to echoes and
putting out their cigarettes
in the garden fountain
while they bore each other
to stone with their only
subject

around the same time the Beats
bought the dump next door,
a fixer upper if they had a dime,
they put out the cigarettes with
the card tables and metal folding chairs
for all the angelheaded hipsters
from the cold-water flats

When walking by,
one must avert the eyes
and ears from the waving
of Ginsberg’s flacid organ
his Howling lips;
Ferlinghetti is still
constantly risking
absurdity and they
wonder why
there are no women
in this pigsty of a
tent city

             The Imagists…
what to make of this house -
a house of mirrors
with moving walls
hidden staircases;
the doors melt
in the doorjams,
the glaciers knock in
the kitchen cupboards,
a bowl of pears hold
summer in their purple hearts

The haiku poets
walk up the mountain at dawn
when the bank foreclosed

on the tenement
at the north end of the street
that casts blue shadows

At the peak they join
the heavy hearted Romantics
looking down on the ruined
earth, all of its defiled Edens
praying to imperfect gods
as the beautiful souls float by
with the blow wives
on the breeze -
they who have forsaken
the very idea of home

At the edge of a wood sits
a cottage of moss-covered stone,
last house on the left:
The House of the Moths.
Beyond the wrought iron gate
form and sound
collapse into nothing
behind locked doors

Home to suicides and rapes
slaves and concubines
housewives and freaks
unlucky immigrants
border jumpers
bug huggers
Fairy Dairy Queens
depressives and junkies,
The Man from Nantucket
singing sea chanties and
dime store hymns

These are the Outsiders,
the voices, softer than a whisper,
flutter in the darkness still
waiting for someone
to turn the key
rusting in the lock

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Wondrous Cauldrons

Wondrous cauldrons
boil the tusks
inside the indigo night
the rattling bones, the jungle heat
the stench of gunsmoke
and rancid meat

The matriarch waits
in the shadows for
the witchdoctor to
conjure her daughters
her sons, her sisters
from the roiling waters

A Chinaman squats by the fire
carving an ivory Buddha,
nearby sits the Wall Street wife
the neighborhood thugs
bush pilots and arms dealers;
a small black girl has a secret

An elephant never forgets
the poacher’s face
nor the tiny voice
who told the baboons in whispers
to pour sugar in the gas tanks
drop dead rats in the wells

Soon this orphan will join the others;
they will ride upon the high shoulders
of three million childless mothers;
the ivory will bleed rivers
into the streets of Hong Kong–
the watering hole of hungry ghosts

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Split Custody

In the dark of winter nights, I walk along
the west side blocks of Broadway
where a few old mansions still stand, some of them
life insurance offices, another a pet clinic

there is a certain stretch of sidewalk
where new streetlights cast a sickly light
where the pavement buckles from
the surface roots of the Western plain trees

the effect is not entirely unpleasant;
it recalls the grand boulevards, the parks
of a European city - La Belle Époque
this alee of shadows, half lit by a false gaslight glow

I walk here often in dreamlike respite from the blight
of the big box stores, the housing tracts,
the portables of the elementary school
deposited debris from a great flood

At the end of the block our stage set ends:
the apartments elevated over an asphalt courtyard
the gas station, the abandoned used car lot
the sourgrass patches, the soda cups in the gutter

At the curb I see, tidily stacked, the overnight
things of children – the two little boys, I guess,
playing in the shadows of the apartment’s
covered entry where their mother smokes

two pairs of tattered, canvas sneakers
two worn backpacks, the zipper broken on one
a coiled comfort blanket bearing
the burrs of last summer
a soiled stuffed rabbit
a sippie cup
two tiny lunch boxes

These things, mute guardians of children
seem to protest: “Take me instead, Take me!”
The little boys give chase – one the hero, the other villain
the mother stands silently in the bone chilling air

They are waiting for the rolling in of tanks
for the Boogie Man to drop down from the trees
for the Chitty Chitty child catcher
for a piloted asteroid
an Axis of Evil air strike
for Gotham to fall
for Godzilla to rise
for Mothra to descend

When she thinks of her ex,
in the shadows she thinks–
They might as well be.

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The Bananafish is not at home

This site is shut for winter, i.e., the shutters are drawn, the fire’s cold, nobody’s home. I’ll be back in the spring, when the light is better and the days are longer. I hope you’ll visit me then. In the meantime, if you live somewhere with harsh winters, stay warm and be sure to tell me what you’ve read (if it’s any good).

 

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A Brief History of Echoes

A Brief History of Echoes

Womanhood had come to her in a warzone,
after the time when the dune grasses
and chaparral had been cleared and scorched,
the wetlands drained and the creeks diverted
around the undulated greens, all making way
for the terracotta villas – those uncanny colonies
sprawling as far as the eye could see and beyond

she left the sea for a high hilltop cave and sang
into the void, listening for the song of hydrogen

For many years, she heard only voices of machines
the blood-curdling anthems of tyrants and
the shrieking of their terracotta villa wives who,
after French manicures and Thai massages
juiced beets with burdock roots,
after holding a benefit to benefit
the last polar bears and running caribou, now
needing new homes in the lower forty-eight
because pipelines need straight lines–
she heard the sound of Nothing for the first time

Nearby on far-off Io, interstellar sirens
heard her gentle song echoing in their
Jovian conk shells; they pulled the anchor of
their iron rock, and set a course for the small sapphire
of Anthemoessa, breaking the sound waves with their
cold frequencies, following a lonely current

Circe, fierce captain on the bridge, piloted
the great rock across the oceans of eternal night
the ship broke the ice fields of Saturn’s rings
with its mighty iron hulls, sailed fearlessly
into the eye of earth’s perfect storm of unlistening

Over time, the iron oxide dust on her plastic
skin began to rearrange itself, and so
the ambient terracotta villa Muzak piped in
through holes in the houses of the Lotus Eaters
became both Requiem and Prelude, inaudible to all except her,
there, listening from her hilltop cave to the silent void
with nothing but a small human heart

She, shopworn oracle, foresaw that the next age
would begin with a wind chime in the driftwood eaves
with the shape of laughter in the darkness
with the hushabye of pine needles on a granite peak,
with the ring of a monk’s singing bowl washed up with
the debris of the evening’s plastic tide

It would begin with the wind whistling through
the wasted miles of organ pipes laid in the oily tundra
where the metal had rotted, and the wind,
blowing around the bones of the polar bears
and the caribou and of the cannibal men
whispered of changes not yet known

Humming softly to this ancient song, suddenly recalled,
the woman made a small fire for Our Ladies of the Iron Rock
who were so weary from their journey

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Far Beyond the Farallones

Note: I really tried to work the phrase “More than 47,800 drums and other containers of low-level radioactive waste were dumped onto the ocean floor west of San Francisco between 1946 and 1970; many of these are in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary” into the poem, but it wasn’t very musical.

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Harpies

This week our assignment was to write a myth or dream poem. Since I’m also writing an article on John Waters for our local paper (he’s coming to the Sonoma International Film Festival to do his one man show), I was inspired to write a poem about Harpies set in a mythical trailer park. (This lovely photo of Edith Massey provided a good image to start with.) I must give Dante credit for the last two lines – his Harpies are the most horrible.

HARPIES

The Mind Abhors What the Eyes Adore.
Consider the case of the Sisters Domingo,
Unholy Wingéd Birds of the Double Wide:
A front yard flock of pink flamingos, wading
among the cigarette butts, dry dead grass–

Imagine a string of Christmas lights
strung between the telephone pole and
a half-chopped pine spiked with nails.

You’d know the place by the smell of grease,
the stink of creosote and Salem slims,
by the torn American flag rotting under
the dank, black hollows of the juniper bushes.

You’d see the El Camino on cinder blocks,
the Tennis balls stuffed down old tube socks
for a blind bull terrier named ‘Cookie Jim’
in memory of the Sisters’ meth-head brother
who flew the coop when the rent came due.

Whenever a skittish postman happened by, or
the mute meter reader from the gas company
was doing scheduled rounds in the neighborhood,
the Sisters Domingo would shriek and shout
flap around the yard, foam about the mouth;

With their chipping coral painted talons
they could fire an empty Schlitz or a can
of spray-on cheese like a split-finger fastball.

After Jason finally saw fit to set a match
to the shake roof, a final hush descended; light as
snowflakes, the ashes of a burning trailer fell.
Mongrels, rats and Cookie Jim gathered,
drawn to the acrid stench of stolen meat;

Passersby Beware!
Clawed feet and swollen, feathered bellies,
[the Sisters Domingo] caw their lamentations
in the eerie trees.

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Underwear for the Afterlife

Another writing prompt from Dr. T: “When I was in the Underworld…”

Most women remember someone telling them – a mother, a friend, a friend’s mother – how it is always important to leave the house in underwear you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have cut off you if you were ever in an accident. Such a strange world we live in. Of course, I had to write a poem about it.

Here is UNDERWEAR FOR THE AFTERLIFE…

When I was in the Underworld
I remembered something weird
My Mother used to tell me–

“Before getting into a car, dear,
Always make sure, have a care
Your underwear is clean and decent;
You never know when you might be in an accident,
Pinned to a tree with the wheels still spinning,
Still turning with the car sideways in the ditch
Or flipped over a cliff.

You never know when an
Eligible bachelor, maybe one of those
Brave Blue-Suited Firemen or Paramedics
Might have to use the Jaws of Life
To cut you from the wreckage.

And even if your friend is dead
And spread along the highway in bits,
Limbs in the thickets and drainage ditches,
Her limp body slung over the center divider-
You never know when
They might still have to cut your clothes off YOU;

You know how hard it is,
When the blood and gravel mix in
With glass shards in your skin,
To get the clothes off to check
For further injuries.

So, my dear, have a care what you wear –

No teddies made of gummy bears
No rubber-studded negligees,
No Superhero lingerie or
Or chocolate covered bustiers
No furry thongs, no leather belts
No corsets made of weasel pelts
No babydolls, no black silk slips
No paste-on cups in the shape of lips
No super-conducting underwire
No French Maid or High School Nurse attire
No garter belts or Union suits
No bloomers made from parachutes–

Because, wouldn’t it be a shame
For some handsome ambulance driver
With a steady job, a promising future,
To find you caught so ill-prepared,
Wearing the wrong sort of underwear?”

When I was in the Underworld,
Even with my chattering teeth
And my blood as cold as ice,
I remembered her strange advice:

“You know it’s never what’s outside that counts
But the person underneath!
If you want to catch a decent man,
Dear, stick to cotton briefs.”

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La Sirena

This week our prompt was “I sailed the Seven Seas long before you were born.” I was thrilled to have a reason to use my favorite treasury of words: The Sailor’s Word-Book. It’s available as a free download through Project Gutenberg.

LA SIRENA

I sailed upon the Seven Seas
Long afore ye were ever born
‘Til I were caught up by th’aigre
On a bitter Jan’ry morn.

We passed the weary hebber-man
Until we’d reached the Main;
Into heaving waters La Sirena went
And she were ne’er seen agin.

“Luff and touch her!” cried the captain.
Did by the westward drift we blow
Towards black alligator waters
Where the mangrove fingers grow.

The branches ripped the ragged sails,
The roots tore at the hull,
And drew us down into the swampy
Where we be a’waitin’ still.

When the water’s calm and the moon a’full
Glowing coldy through the moss,
We raise the ghost of La Sirena
And sing of loved ones we have lost.

I sailed upon the Seven Seas
Long afore ye were ever born;
I left you sleepin’ at my Mary’s breast
On that bitter Jan’ry morn.

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A Brief History of Mirrors

Every semester my poetry prof. assigns something he calls a “fascination object” poem. In the past I have chosen things like a weathervane or a Jerusalem Cricket (aka potato bug); this time I chose a mirror. I found an Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on the history of mirrors – much is borrowed from that entry, so I guess this is really a found poem as well as a fascination object poem.

Whenever life gets overwhelming, I look through NASA's photos of cosmic beings like this jellyfish nebula. It makes the laundry less daunting.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MIRRORS

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