in lieu of sadness

One of the hardest decisions I make every day is whether or not to be sad. Because there are wars and we're dying in them. Because we all prefer our own way and there are not enough ways for all of us. Because there are things I simply can not do and maybe even more that I will not do. Because sickness is cruel and accidents happen and I always feel a little stupider than I was the day before which is only slightly ameliorated by the fact that everyone else seems to be keeping pace.
Which is sad. But for some reason and by some means, I usually stave off the sadness.

Because there are planetary nebulae and darling hedgehogs. Because eventually it will be autumn so there will be magentas and Brunswick stew, whiffs of beautiful decay and barks of backyard football. Because rain both comes and goes and is welcome in both the coming and the going. Because of food. Because of books.

And books can be sad, horribly, sobsomely sad but they also smell like autumn.

Besides, in lieu of sadness, madness is a viable option. So daily I can always decide to lose my mind. Or at least let it wander for a while.

And besides that-- sad's good too. Like decay. Like winter. Like ignorance.

something altogether peaceful

I have been in a prosy state of mind over the last week. Re-reading my novel. (Which, by the way, gets worse every time I read it. It's like there are little elves that skitter and twitter and make my manuscript sucky when I'm not looking. I really wish they would just help me with my cobbling.) Then I got a story accepted for publication which gave me a glimmer of hope, fiction-wise; so I've been skittering and twittering and attempting to make other short-stories less sucky. Add my quotidian, prosaic lifestyle to the mix and you've got a prosy state of mind.

That said, here's another fiction excerpt from a story called "Wet Cement." There are two narrative tracks that interweave as the story progresses. Both follow Nathan--as an adult in the past tense and as a child in present tense. The excerpt is an example of the latter. I should also mention that in the present tense, the narrator is given a juvenile voice. It is less evident here than elsewhere. But still, you should know it's intentional; otherwise, you might think me a tad silly. (Or more silly as the case may very well be.)

Simon is Nathan's older brother. Murphy is Simon's oafish friend. Dottie is Simon's girlfriend. The foursome have gathered at a forbidden rope-swing as naughty children will and, in an ill-advised grasp at glory, Nathan finds himself in a spot of bother.

Nathan is hanging from the rope like a horse thief. An idiot horse thief who had been trying to impress Simon’s girlfriend with a circus feat. Only he had underestimated, truth is, everything. He didn’t stop for one second to think what a knuckleheaded thing to even think about. Never mind shoving off the bank and actually doing it.

Murphy is laughing like all get out. Dottie, at least, is telling him to shut up. Someone help him. He’s dying.

Dying? Nathan is dying. What a thought for him. What a pitiful life flashes in front of his eyes. Not even all of it. Just that first time they actually caught Big Bertha and didn’t know how to unhook a catfish, only that there was a special way. That’s what he sees as he hangs, swinging, gasping—him and Simon toting the croaking fish that flopped like mad all the way home for Father to unhook. Nathan is vaguely aware of efforts to rescue him, shouts, wild and fearful. He’s on the verge of something pale, something altogether peaceful. He smiles, drooling, at the image of Father’s disembodied head looking over the back of the sofa at he and Simon and the dripping, croaking, flopping fish. Father looks happy to see them and not like they are going to get whipped for bringing a fish in the house. Mother’s head pops up beside Father’s, to see what there is too see. They’re grinning like kids. Like naughty kids.

Nathan is brought back to panic with a huge, long gasp. Simon yells, “You gotta reach, Natty. You’ll die if you don’t.” On tip-toes and not so steady, Simon stretches a branch towards Nathan’s hands.

Nathan reaches and barely grips the branch. Simon pulls him back to the bank of the gully. He has saved Nathan’s life. For happening so quick, it sure took forever.

“Your face is purple, moron,” Simon says.

This hurts about worse than choking. Being right about to hug his brother out of trembling gratitude and then stiff-armed with a “moron” to the face. He shrugs like no biggie but it is a biggie. It’s a hugie. He had almost died. He is full of love and boiling with hatred. So confusing, still dizzy. He will not cry. He will not cry. Dottie asks him if he is all right and he busts like a dam.

Murphy opens his fat mouth, no doubt to be a giant jerk-wad, some wise crack about the swing or the tears or both. But Simon stops him.

“Just shut up about it, Murph. How’d you like me to send you to the gallows.”

“Like to see you try.”

“Like to see you stop me.” And Simon chases Murphy down the tracks toward Sycamore Street. Nathan is left with Snotty Dottie who’s not so snotty now that she has so recently begged for his rescue.

The two older boys continue on, punching each other in the arm. When they reach the road, they turn left down the Sled Hill.

“They’re going to Finnegan’s Hollow, I bet.” Dottie’s voice surprises Nathan. He had been hoping they could just walk, no talking.

“Sure,” he says, meaning who knows what.

“Were you scared? I mean when you were up there, back there?”

Nathan feels his lip doing that lip thing when you are about to cry after you had already been crying enough. He manages, “Nah.” Like he’s some big tough guy. Like she was not a first-hand witness to the whole blubbery freak-show.

“I was scared,” Dottie says. Her voice is like his mom’s, like Mary’s, he imagines. It coats his insides like Pepto in those commercials. He knows his face is on fire and just looks ahead. His lip has stopped that thing and now he can’t grit the goofy grin out of his cheeks. She says, “Hey Nathan,” not Natty but Nathan, and he stops and turns smack into her puckered lips. They are silky wet like milk and her gloss tastes strawberry. Strawberry milk. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh man.

tottering

In which the main character, Justin Latterly, has been confronted by his employer's seventy year old wife (presumably), Gloria Grace Stenson, with a series of double-edged questions, the answers to which all seem like traps. The excerpt is the culmination of that scene. (Gloria Grace is one of my favorite characters and perhaps the novel's most compelling.)

Her eyes watered—on the verge of hysterical laughter or hysterical tears. I had seen the look before but in younger, simpler eyes. But just then, with two lustrous welts clinging tight to her lower eyelids, the woman tugged at my soul, seemingly hungry for all of it, to satisfy what craving I could not imagine. We were on the brink. Time, for all of its usual calculability, whether figured in terms of every memorable moment or as the weight of all such moments crashing into you, was completely non-essential. Not so much standing still as standing on its head, simply killing itself until that moment passed. That anguished moment. On the brink, on the verge, tottering above the foggy abyss. And the real question was not any of the ones previously asked—neither hypothetical nor rhetorical nor to do with Gloria Grace Stenson at all but exclusively, unbearably, and incomprehensibly to do with Justin Michael Latterly— or, rather, the person by that name.

I kissed her lips.

The moment passed. Time resumed.

She laughed hysterically—two tears like pink quartz on her youthful, red cheeks.

world wide laughter

Dear Ether and Friends,

The new issue of The Able Muse is online. My poem "Boy at Play" is accompanied by an audio recording. I hope you like.

I pray the site has a crow firewall. Nothing's worse than World Wide Laughter.

Regards,

Johnny the Lackluster Poet (Most of his friends know him as me.)

snuggle-puff

Look how my little babies have grown. Granted not much, but they're jus' lil' things to begin with. (Check out their baby pictures, I'll wait.) Clearly, Beans [left] has grown the most all around. Pickles [center] has gotten taller but remained skinny. Scooter [right] . . . well Scooter's a little tubbier and still the shorty of the trio. But bless his heart, he's still my favorite because he's safest to pet. Quite the snuggle-puff by comparison, actually.

Meanwhile, what have I done in two months? I love my cacti, but darn if they haven't made me feel stunted. Have I grown at all? Girth-wise, let's just say I'm like Scooter minus the shortiness.
But I'm not here to talk physiology; I'm here to talk poetry, philosophy--of life's riches and dearths. Have I made progress in my understanding of the world? No. In fact, I have been in retrograde motion in that regard since I was 25. Have I grown to know myself any better? Well, I have grown to bore myself more, if that counts. Hopefully that's just the contempt born of familiarity and not the 4D image I project on the world.
Have I learned new things--unnecessary but beautiful things? Have I chiseled any marble-nudes? Are there any tempera frescoes on my ceiling? Perhaps, I expect too much of myself. Maybe I should measure my success in ounces and millimeters. One poem at a time. Paragraph by paragraph. In doses of modest improvement. Horizons expanded by the merest thread each day.

All things considered, it may be my only choice. Which is no choice at all but one, nonetheless, I must choose. Or not. There's the philosophy. Here's the poetry: Cacti are green/ Roses aren't blue/ Both will prick flesh/ What else is new?

going moses on you

Ten More on Sandstone Tablets

I shall love Tallulah, Louisiana for the tongue

And palate of it and offer no further excuse.

I shall live on the outskirts and marvel

At the population of unpeopled kingdoms.

I shall not root around and toggle brain lobes

Or tweak heart valves because I cannot.

I shall not sing tenor when baritone will do

For the simple songs of nature and thoughts.

I shall only struggle with nightmares, not waking life—

For the sake of my spirit, for the sake of mind.

I shall stop and smell the sewage, too,

Otherwise the rose is just a rose that’s just a rose.

I shall not laugh too hard or cry too hard

When buzzards swoop to tug at mincemeat raccoons.

I shall not stuff my wallet full of condoms,

Business cards, bank plastic, or photographs.

I shall shall—headlong, shoulder strong, into the gut

Of Atlas and learn my lessons whiplashed.

I shall not shall not—except in these things,

Unless Tallulah turns to Vicksburg with tooth and lip.

yet my jogging days

Sometimes, New Friend, I consider my capabilities. What are my strengths; what are my handicaps? Almost immediately to mind and for as long as anyone can remember; my two or three cups of tea have been of the cerebral variety. Which is to say, as a child and youth, I spent a lot of time in the woods familiarizing myself with loneliness--unless you count the squirrels and caterpillars. But being alone was fine; it gave me time to consider. Things. Stuff. Whatnot. The stuff of science and poetry--the abstract made tactile, odoriferous, enumerable. From such a springboard, my trajectory could hardly shoot me anywhere but where I landed. Where did I land? In college studying literature and philosophy. (In gymnastic terms, one might say I "stuck the landing," too--given the virtual decade I haunted the information-stained walls of my two alma maters. Ha--that sounds like a sitcom. My Two Alma Maters. Something to do with lesbianism and awkwardness . . . hmmm . . . I'll think about it . . . )

On the other hand, what of my physical strengths? Do I have any? Have I ever had any? Short answer: No. Long answer: No, not really. Longer answer: Sure, with four brothers, I spent a good deal of time playing sports and engaged in less organized physical activity. And I have the scars to prove it. And the lingering psychological torments. Going to small private schools afforded me the opportunity of starting on basketball teams. Because my six-feet of height was good enough to earn me a role under rim grabbing boards and slinging elbows. Sadly, I averaged about four points a game--abysmal for someone who often had the ball directly under the rim. For the most part, my athletic achievements were of the participatory variety.

So that's the background but where am I today? Cerebrally--essentially where I have been immemorially. That is, engrossed in things, stuff, and whatnot. Sometimes happily, sometimes begrudgingly. And physically? Well, I can muster a reasonable round of golf and lift piddling nieces and nephews over my head for a few giddy moments.

I have an old poem, New Friend, that arose from one of these moods of mine--this self-evaluation, of sorts. I think you might like it. You strike me as the intergalactic type.



On the Intergalactic Distribution of Talents

Light echoes star to star.
Time groans deeply in worm-
Holes like a tuba.
Five years to tie my first laces.

Hydrogen huddles and breaks
Into everything. Particles fox-
Trot, waltz and tango.
Six months and I manage a two-step.

Perennial Maypole of spiraling
Suns. Earth wobbles but never
Falls Down.
Yet my jogging days are over.

Poem seeking title . . . any ideas?

(it's also brand-new-ish, so other suggestions are welcome)


Corinne beneath the willow dressed
In yellow like the sun above
The cirrus clouds.

Imaginant with wild ideas,
She clarinets, chasses, and whirls—
A girl apart

From others, gauzily concealed
By fountains of frosted green leaves.
The wind-songs rise

Into the slouching boughs—fireflies
Of quarter-notes. Corinne—the friend
Of enemies,

The lover, soft and young, of brutes
And vagabonds. The willow waves
Its valances

In time with music unheard-of
Since time began—the billioned years,
so long ago.

She goes. She goes. Around the tree,
Corinne, her clarinet, her dress
Chiffoned by wild

Ideas and sun.

for want of ice in the freezer

Like MacArthur to the Philippines, so I from Arkansas and Mobile have returned. Good times were had by all, if not all at the same time. However, besides fun with family, the prevailing theme of the week was heat. Oppressive, stultifying heat.

Therefore, instead of regaling you with anecdotes involving nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters-in-law, I have decided to mine my writing for pertinent nuggets and to post them apropos of both this blog and the inferno outdoors.

So come inside. Cool off. Enjoy a lemonade or an ice cold ale (you Englanders feel free to suffer your room temperature brews, we less pretentious Yanks will settle for refreshment.)

I hope you enjoy these snippets . . .

Here comes the sot making his ambling way

Down the horseshit cobble of New Orleans.

On saxophone, Max plays requests. I request

Otis Redding and quaint information

To do with the barges on the river—

Going where? Carrying what? Now the sot

Would like a smoke. So light me now, my friend.

She’s hot like hell today, yes, no, perhaps?

Yes, no, perhaps-- time will tell how hot

Hell gets as compared to the horseshit cobble

Of New Orleans, how sultry without Max?

(from “Calories”)

***

The efflorescence of May entreats the eye--

Celosia red-hot and pink begonia.

Christ of Mercy potting a row of impatiens.

We’ll see you amidst the mercenary summer

Waves of flame. And tolerate the gathering

Of us in the shadows of the Ozarks.

(from "Christ of the Ozarks")

***

How loudly picturesque, though,

The house whose death

Comes blazing hot and fast, whose

Recognizable rooms are soon cinder

For the lungs of family and neighbors--

Smoldering chimneys

And charred stovetops. The house

Dies long before the fire. The fire

Continues to gnaw and spit after rafters

Collapse into basements.

The fire becomes what is alive. A life

To itself. It burns to burn, to live

In this moment.

(from "Death of a Fire")

***

We take whiskey neat from coffee mugs

and talk about the war. Neat for want

of ice in the freezer, talk for want

of scratch to bet on our greyhound,

Jesusacomin, who’s four-to-one

at the matinee. “Hell, it’s hot today,”

I say, “think what it must be over there.”

Meaning where the war is, not the racetrack.

Joe says, “I know that’s right.”

No power for three weeks, Joe sits

on a porch that’s sinking prow-first

into a flotsam of empties and earthworms.

The mosquitoes, when you smack them,

smear red and black and somehow green.

Joe just let’s them suck.

He pats his bare, sweating, pelt

of a chest for the pack of Camels

in the pocket of the shirt at his feet.

(from “The Matinee)

***

I regret

Brandy and cream sauce

In lieu of marinara.

Heart heavy, bowels seditious

To my cause. A pasta malaise

Seeks shelter from July swelter

Night in middle Alabama—soggy

As she ever is after tickling

100° Fahrenheit all day

With a goose feather and a view

To collide with a front

From the Gulf of Mexico

No matter that I’m trying,

Trying

To get sober.

(from “Poor Robin Crusoe”)

***

She welcomes

the first of June with sunrise-

Eyes and raisin bran. Today will be hot.

Though not as hot as it could be.

Beginning with the horoscope, she reads

The morning news. Today will be full

Of fortunate meetings. That said,

She had better stay inside.

(from “Second of June”)

***

Four hours ago, the air outside was almost cool. Now, as I step through the automatic glass doors, the glare and heat of the sun is oppressive. My eyes ache and blink for several seconds. Despite being somewhat blinded, I can tell there is no one sitting by the fountain out front where I expected to find my wife in assignation with her “last pack” of cigarettes. There is, in fact, no one outside at all. The parking lot is half-full with cars and SUVs. The heat wavers on the hoods and roofs.

I can smell smoke. Delicious cigarette smoke from somewhere. Most people, when they quit smoking, say they don’t like being around smokers. They say it is too tempting. Not me. Give me a passel of smokers, circle ‘em up, and I’ll pirouette with a torched Zippo. And it’s not nostalgia, no maudlin psycho-grab for the glory days. The things just smell good to me is all. I walk around the side of the building, following, as they say, my nose.

Fifty yards away, Linda is crying beside a roaring air-conditioning unit. Her hair flows skyward, swooshed by the fan. Not weeping, just barely crying. Like with her eye-rolls, I don’t need to see to know. It’s in the way her left hand cups her mouth and her right arm crosses her diaphragm under her breasts. Her cigarette still smolders in the mulch at her feet. I inhale deeply, savoring the aromatic burn of bark and tobacco, and start to approach her.

(from “Waiting”)

***

The four kids don’t seem to care about the July heat. It does tricks on the pavement like Bugs Bunny in the desert looking for an oasis. Summer is supposed to be hot. That’s why there are Slurpies and Otter Pops and pools at the Y. And shorts and tank tops and flip-flops.

“What’s an oasis,” Nathan had once asked Simon.

“Something in the desert that’s a mirage.”

“What’s a mirage.”

“An oasis that teases you.” Nathan can tell that Simon likes to be smart, knowing stuff like that. It makes him feel old and Nathan likes the way it made Simon be nice to him, so sometimes he asked about stuff he already knew about.

(from “Wet Cement”)

***

Leonard was already awake and came bounding from the tree-line where George’s property backed up to the swampy woods beyond. In the summer, the bugs were out of this world. Mosquitoes like hornets. Midges like a Moses plague. The air itself was a sauna except it smelled of brine and musk. Leonard joined George by the mailbox, his cougary face like a pin-cushion, full of barbed quills.

The cat purred, deep and throaty. Get, said George, showing the tom his bare foot. Leonard cut George a feral leer and bounded back into the woods. Probably to come back smelling of skunk in an hour, George thought. He picked up the paper and shimmied it out of the plastic. He held it to his nose and took a long sniff. Looking back at his trailer, he saw Venus low against a cobalt sky. He said, Morning Star, out loud for the sake of practice and went back to drink coffee and read yesterday’s happenings.

At ten o’clock, he left for work. On the way out, he put a red-delicious in his pocket. The screen door alerted his mother of his desertion and she squealed, Funnel cake! just as he walked out. Leonard came bounding from the woods, smelling of skunk.

(from “Yesterday’s Happenings")