at least they’re not barking at you

When I was [supposed to be] a student at the University of Montevallo, I took a trip, along with a group of other [more scholarly] students, to England; we sojourned in London for several days then traveled to Canterbury.  One of the day-trips scheduled while in Canterbury was to the White Cliffs of Dover.  Naturally, I signed up and asked to be called when the bus was ready; after all, what self-respecting, aspiring poet would wittingly miss his chance to channel (pun, sadly, intended) Matthew Arnold's lovely lines in the poem"Dover Beach"?  

And so it was unwittingly that I missed the bus because someone, unwittingly [and here unnamed], forgot to call.  The closest I got to the cliffs and the beach was through squinting eyes from halfway up the hill to Dover Castle.  (There is more to this story that involves a persistent petulace on my part which no self-respecting,aspiring adult would care to memorialize.)

Anyway, here is the upshot--a poem I wrote in 2010 some twelve years after the event.  What the poem signifies, I don't know.  Maybe [probably] nothing important.  Probably something small--to do with hindsight not being 20/ 20 but rather squint-slitted against the sun-radiant straits of memory.

At Least They’re Not Barking at You

You still regret the white cliffs, Dover missed

For missing the bus.  From the castle hill

You flew the best you could on eyes

Meant for ogling women.

You ogled women—Canterbury

Pop-rock-hip-hop-and-gyrant dancing ones—

From France.  The yankee songs you left

Back in Alabama.

The Alabama where now you are this

Unkempt laze-monger cursing neighbor dogs.

Retriever—golden, Labrador—

Black, barking loosened hell.

What new hell is this?  What bastard regret?

White cliffs and long-lashed women speaking French.

The beach suggested over beer.

Hung-over in Malden. 

In Malden where the scraggled kitten nudged

Your shin and lunch was shit, you expected

To be wise by then or by now

At the very latest.

But lately, very often, nearly always

The dogs are wild with slather and slaver—

Ado for spandexed joggers juiced

From the sweat of doing. 

  (first published in The Louisville Review No. 72, Fall 2012)

statue/ chimera in niche

Here are two versions of the same idea and therefore this is one of the best extant examples I have of my revision process--an extreme example, at that, as most of my revisions are comparatively minor.  The first poem, "Statue in Niche," was the original version and published in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry (Volume 4, Issue 2, 2009).  The second poem, "Chimera in Niche," is a slightly more concise rendition that I used in my Master's Thesis. 

Picture, if you will, one of those fancy buildings with sculptured depictions of sundry grotesqueries, and here is one of those statues--sentient and amorous-- lamenting his stuck state.

Statue in Niche

The rain again, the never ending rain.

Unfortunate men, primped in suit and tie,

Attempt to juke the downpour in knee-high

Gazelle leaps with long-lost dexterity.

The raven on the spire might care to leave

When the rusted bells toll the sunless noon,

But for now he’s onyx set in the festooned

And melting cross of Christ--as if to stay.

A woman, lovely in the sort of way

The skyline will be when the air is clean,

Umbrellas her head with a magazine.

She suffers the puddles although they seep

Into her shoes.  From this side of the street,

Where I’m ensconced in Doric colonnade,

She flickers in muted whites and grays

As cabs and double-decker buses splash,

Undaunted by the weather, through the trash-

Filled gutters.  Lovely in the sort of way

That dancers are in callisthenic splays,

She lifts her wrist into the gloom of clouds

To check the time against the ironed shrouds

Of rain.  And I would shout any o’clock

To turn her head, if I could just unlock

My jaws— my plaster lips, my cement tongue.

 

Chimera in Niche

The rain again, the never ending rain.

As cabs and double-decker buses splash,

Undaunted by the weather, through the trash-

Filled gutters, she flickers in lovely blues

And grays beneath the gargoyle’s flooded flues.

Meanwhile I cower in concave façade

Sandwiched between one melting cross of God

And one ionic pillar.  Doomed to spread

My wings in vain, to stand flatfoot instead

Of flying,  I must wait for her to look,

To put down her make-shift umbrella book.

Wait . . . she’s lifting her wrist to the clouds

To check the time against the ironed shrouds

Of rain.  Damn me, I’d screech any o’clock

To turn her head if I could just unlock

These plastered lips and quit this age-old snarl. 

death be not incarnate

Here starts some posts in which I share previously published poems which have only appeared in print until now.

Death Be Not Incarnate

Death be not incarnate.  Be proud as you will

But not with puffed chest or fanned plumage.

Carry no sickle across the threshold, be no

Pestering crow.  Death do not assume

A shadowy form.  Do not even reek of anything—

Neither pleasant nor foul.  Be terrifying

As you will, but be so invisibly.  Silently.

Odorless as the soul.  To come in the flesh

Would be obnoxiously rude.  To mock the systems

Of solid biology.  You are circulatory already,

Digestive enough as things are.  Leave endocrine

And arteries alone.  Leave us our defecations.

Breathe not icy breath.  Whisper not dooms,

Tickling ears.  Slink and steal, as you will—

Leave a wake of carnage but be not incarnate.

You have emissaries aplenty.  Ambassadors

Wrought of real stuff.  They are the flatline

On the vitals screen, the blooming celosia

On the shirt of the bullet-shot.  They are the chalk

Outlines of defenestrated discontents,

They are cross and chair and needle.

So Death be proud—you’ve earned your laurel,

Outpaced our pumping organs.  Only spare us

Your hooded robe.  Leave us our carbon copies.

 (first published in The Louisville Review No. 72, Fall 2012)

the bear and salmon show

[For a glossary of the once-nonce, now-minted words used below, refer to their context usage in: "beer foam on terra firma."  Or, skip to the next decipherable word and ignore my nonsense altogether.]

Ether,

It's been a while since our last communication.  I have been busy elsewhere from Elsewhere, namely over at Swallow, Socrates.  It's a long story but I'm sure, given your nature, your Eminent Diaphanousness, your broad-band acceleration through the whole web of Philosterous-Nonesucherol, you could scurry over there and scurry back before I know you're gone.

I'll assume you went.  I know, I know--sob story, isn't it.  But that's there, not here.

Here, Elsewhere, that is, I was updating my publications list on stage left (your right) and decided that I might as well toss some literature your way.  And, I am painfully aware, in the way of the chortlesome crows.  Let them laugh--I'm far less humiliated now by my smallish poetic efforts than when we began our correspondence back on April 12, 2010.  (We're getting old, Ether.)

Preface to the poem:  Now and then, great things surface on that predominantly insipid crust of media--Amorphilacious-Antaginons--which is to say in the parlance of Substantiopetrapopulus, Facebook.  Such a thing was gifted to me by my friend Mary Maxwell.  It was link to a site on which one can watch bears catch salmon in real time.  See for yourself @ explore.org.  

I'll assume you went.

At first, I unabashedly admit to watching this magnificent phenomenon, transfixed, for thirty minutes at a stretch 3 or 4 times a day.  Over the last two weeks, my time and frequency have diminished but I still check-in regularly.  It helps that I adore bears to the point of distraction but I can't imagine not wanting to behold such an ancient and vital display of wildness for at least a minute or two, adoration or not.

Meanwhile, other things have been going on in the world besides the bear and salmon show.  Noxious things.  A man is proven to have wreaked ruination on the lives of young children for the satiation of an aberrant urge while his compatriots abetted for the sake of convenience.  Another man meticulously plots and executes an ambush of terror on a theater full of harmless humans.

These monsters and the usual suspects, as well:  One candidate makes too much money, one candidate takes too much money.  One restauranteur disapproves of your convictions and capitalizes, one restauranteur approves of your convictions and capitalizes.  Oh, and Kristen stepped-out on Robert to hook-up with Rupert and now the whole thing's gone south--lachrymose teens and inappropriately concerned adult women are incredulous, distraught.

The handbasket is woven, the brimstone is molten, and all passengers are boarding at this time.

Out of these conditions and due to my obsession with bears, I wrote the following poem which, in reality, has very little to do with either.  Its about bears and salmon.  And a gull in cameo support.

In Lieu of Human Scandal: Live-Cam at Brooks Falls

Harvest season for the brown bear—

Pink salmon hurtling upstream.

One atop the falls, eyes locked

On the foam; a flying circus,

An urgency of fins, pelt the heron-

Patient beast—portrait of awkward

Majesty.  When now and then

Lucky maws clamp in purchase,

The bear shoulders into the plunge

To eat her catch on the banks,

Trailed by a covetous gull.

any random square

I wrote this poem four years ago in February of all things.  As you will see, that month does not come into play--a fact I'm not sure struck me as odd at the time though now it kind of does.  Today, it is coldish for late April.  Even so, that is not the point; it is simply what reminded me of this poem.

 

To Get the Sense of Drowning

I wanted the moments of my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered.  I might as well try to catch time by the tail.

                                                                                                       --Jean-Paul Sartre

Some Spring mornings feel like Autumn, some

Autumn ones like Spring, and for a moment

I get dizzy--

Days spent confusing them with others. 

And once, in a vortex,  I felt myself slipping into

Singularity—

A preposterous mathematics. Once revived, still barely alive

I mistook myself

For everyone.  Now huddled over my direful chest—all lungs and clinging to barely life—now praying to God, now God Itself, now the pretty paramedic.

June always sneaks impertinently in when I’m not quite

Done with May.  December does this too with its ticking bomb

Of shopping days and ball drops and

My own pallid birthday

Compared to Christ’s impending one.  And middle-Alabama knows

Its shocks of heat and rain on any

Random

Square of the calendar.

Of the jillion cigarettes I’ve smoked, I remember

Two in particular.  One—I sneaked past the nurses and into

My convalescent lungs.

Two—mother caught me with my head out the window, her

Disappointment matching mine at all possible

Points in time.

The poet warns of rosebuds, the prophet of infidels.