on a shoal of shale

Over on the Facebook side, I linked to one of my poems in UVA's Hospital Drive--a literary journal concerning medicine, health, etc. It is the second such journal in which I have published poetry. There are more that I have my sights on. I love the concept: the poetry of the body--sickness, healing, blood, bones, gastronomy, nursing, will and spirit--the lyricism of drawling decay, the staccato rhythms of the heart, the thrilling narrative of convalescence.

Here is a short poem that I wrote recently that belongs to this ilk. In fact, it is closely related to "A Man Drowns"--as both a foil and a cohort. "Disabused in Ambulance" is flesh where the other is air, is a grin where the other is a gasp.

Please enjoy and I will continue to share these, some of my favorite though most reluctantly-composed, poems.

Disabused in Ambulance

An angel hovers above you.

She glows, backlit by glory.

Supplying air, fastening her gaze,

Her silver eyes, on your failing one.

Breathe. Not a command,

A suggestion. If you want to live.

Only if you want to.

You do. If only for her. You breathe.

She smiles, her wings detach.

The siren moans, you recollect

Your death, assume your revival.

Your resuscitation. Breathe.

The vapor drifts from the scene.

You lie, half-naked,

On a shoal of shale. Her open mouth,

Sour breath, your pummeled chest.

Breathe! At the time—a command.

You obeyed. For her.

The siren moans. You moan.

in light of my thirsty, sunless cacti

I have failed my cacti. Several weeks ago I brought them in out of the cold. A week too late. Since then I have watched them become gaunt and emaciated. Have winced as Scooter (the short one) lost his happy plumpness, looking squished. Have frowned as Pickles (the tall one), once straight and proud, listed then bowed beneath its own weight. Have grimaced as Beans (the most ferociously prickly one) bruised like wilted lettuce on a Wendy's burger.


Attempts at revival have been made; but I fear the end is near. Am I ashamed? A bit, yes. Any regrets? Of course.

Speaking of: I call shenanigans on those who swear to have none. If truly one has no regrets then s/he just wasn’t trying hard enough, I think. S/he took no real risks. S/he has yet to live. As near as I can figure, I would say that my life is seventy-five-percent regrettable. Of the remainder, I am cautiously proud; cautious because pride comes before regret; so I hush my rare successes and teach them to be gracious--knowing how quickly they can be wrenched from my grip. On the remainder, I am sufficiently nourished; who needs the worry of perfection when hard-fought, dearly-bought sustenance is enough?; so I feed my rare successes in nibbles--knowing how thunderously gluttonous ones fall.

A life without regret? Perhaps. I'm not saying it's impossible. Maybe I'm saying a life without regret is itself regrettable. (Don't stop to do the math, come back to it.) We hear it asked: If you could go back in time, what, if anything, would you change? What would you do differently? And we hear it answered so often: Nothing. I'd do it all again, just the same. No regrets. But really? Perhaps. I suppose it's conceivable. But most likely, I think we answer that way for shame of the truth. We are conditioned to be ashamed of shame, to be embarrassed by failure. We fall on our swords rather than face our compatriots with egg on our faces.

In light of my thirsty, sunless cacti . . . If nothing else, I tried. In light of that . . . If I have failed at every turn, I have learned during the next straightaway. If I have failed to learn, I will, without fail, as often I have, come to regret it.

freshly minted

This is brand new. Just wrote it and thought I'd share it--still slimy with natal ooze. Gross, right? I guess that's the experiment here. Post first, edit later. Or not. I'm lazy. Unfortunately, my talent is sporadic. Comes, at best, in twos, like unclean beasts to Noah. Which brings up a question: why re-populate the earth with uncleanliness. By inverse adage, wouldn't that be ungodliness. My thoughts, I suppose, could not be farther from God's thoughts. Or should I say further? Ha! A grammarian's theology!

But I digress. Natal ooze. Here you go.

Coinage

A penny as old as I am:

As valuable as me.

We’re worth our weight

In free.

I plucked the penny from a crack

And chipped a fingernail.

Dead flesh and coin

For sale.

Copper and water—most of us,

Respectively. We flip

Senseless through air

And slip

Off the palms of distracted gods.

A penny from seventy-five:

As magical as me.

A melded two

Are we.

I pocketed the penny—quick,

My poverty a shame.

We’re dented just

The same.

Metal and pale skin—we are what

They say we are. We cling

To each other

And ding

In the jeans of impoverished gods.

befitting a storm

Here's a little ditty I wrote a couple of years ago commemorating a rare snow for us Birminghamites. We had one of our"winter storms" over the weekend and I thought I'd exhume the poem and post it here for your amusement. Fellow southerners--nod; distant northerners--roll your eyes; elsewhere crows--laugh.

Middle Alabama Snow

We wake to snow

But still incredulous,

Our disbelief like sleep

In dream-deep eyes.

In outsized flakes

Like kindergartners cut

From origami folds,

The snow descends

And reunites

On roofs and shrubbery.

The window watches on

As we look through.

Our wonderment

Is tempered by distrust.

We know the heavy sigh

And shoulder-slump

That come as sure

As morning’s sun, as sure

As he will stand and stretch

His sleep-fresh rays.

Our mittens are

Mismatched and our long-johns

Don’t fit and itch, but time

Won’t stop for us.

It never does.

By afternoon, the thaw

Will break a febrile sweat

Across the knolls

Of matted grass.

With snow in blotches

Like hives-mottled flesh

On hoods of cars

And yellow lawns,

The purple pansy will

Erect its humble head,

Revivified.

So quickly we tie

Our tennis shoes and zip

Our raincoats up. We grab

The boogie-boards

And laundry bins

To sled the nearest slope

And crash and climb and crash

Again. Again.

Then not so smoothly,

Now in mostly

Mud,

But again.

ground gears and crammed craws

Ether, good morning, how are you? I am well. You will be proud, I have borrowed from your Nothingworld. Copied and pasted from Amorphilacious-Antaginons. Facebook, as we call it. It happened like this: a Facsimilarion (FB friend in this case, real friend in all others. Thanks, Mark.) posted a link which got stuck in my craw, whatever that means, though I suspect it's related to grinding one's gears. I commented as is my wont when craw-crammed; and, being lazy by nature and indolent by nurture, I have used the exchange as a post below. How does it feel to plagiarize myself verbatim, you ask? It feels good, real good.

First things first . . . homework. Read this article.

Seriously, you have to read the article first.

Well, I suppose I can't make you read the article so here was my comment in response: [Commence potential alienation]

"Grrr. I would rather kids read something else than have nonesuched-knuckleheads tweak works of art like so much play-dough. He talks as if he's translating a foreign language into English--advisedly using updated parlance over outmoded idiom. ... But he's not. He's translating English into English--absurd in most cases, harmful in this one. The TBS example is questionable. The inoculation of strong language in The Godfather was not, I'd warrant, a function of a will to proliferate the appreciation of art to a broader audience; it was a function of TBS's subjugation to the FCC and obligation to squeamish advertisers.

"Let us read the "n" word in context. If in context, it's use is still objectionable--let us be offended. Let us put the book down or press on, suspending our distaste, pending the outcome, and make our value-judgments as mature, capable readers. Let's not revise our literary history for the sake of our guilt. Let us feel our guilt in all of its reddening force. or just read Berenstain Bears and call it a day."

Now, Ether, that I have killed two platforms with one grumpy stone, I hope I don't change my opinion on this subject. The redaction process is an arduous one--not the least bit hospitable to my lethargic noggin. May I be as stubborn as usual. That being said, I would love to consider an argument less brittle than the Godfather one.

I don't mind changing my mind, it's the effort that irritates me.

smell of absence

Here's one I wrote a couple of years ago. I'm in the mood of it right now and it's coincidentally seasonal. It occurs to me that I may have posted this one before which causes it to occur to me that I should create an archive list for the poems I have included in this blog. Look for said list in an upcoming page with links to the original posts. (Because I just know some of you have favorites that you would like to read again and again and again and again.) So, whether for the second time or the first, here is . . .

Grandfather After Nineteen Years

I knew you in the grocery aisles,

In the butchery bloody with steak.

I found you in the back counting boxes

Of cereal, at the register frowning.

I remember your store for its smell

Of absence when the fluorescents

Fizzed out like soda and the placard

On the door was flipped to Closed.

In the house underneath, when the den

Was dark with Christmas lights,

You called for your rifle and fired

Into the Blue Ridge foothills.

Deaf, I waited for the moment

To make sense. Needing the toilet,

Not daring to budge. Your scope

Brought me close to the beast—

The struggle up, the final buckle,

And also, now I know, the fragmented

Whole of our meantime lives:

Each malaise and renaissance,

Each –ectomy, suture, and December

Ever since. And always—ears pricked,

listening—the preserved and looming

Bust of the eight-point buck,

Its dead eyes following me.

snapshots of Snapshots

Here are some snapshots from Snapshots of a Voyage, as promised. It is a blank verse retelling of Charles Darwin's journey on board the Beagle with Captain Robert FitzRoy and of his exploits on various continents and islands around the world. I have tried to be faithful to the idiosyncrasies of Darwin's manner and phraseology as gathered through his letters and diary. It is easy, I think, to amalgamate Darwin the living breathing human, with Darwinism, the theory of evolution which sprung from his scientific aptitude.

Of those whom our retrospect makes giants, research generally proves to be of average height. This is especially true at this stage of Darwin's life. At the age of 22, a young man embarks on a remarkable journey of discovery--of self as well as of the natural world.

(These excerpts may seem like a lot but the work itself is 24 pages long. So I've been extremely selective. The pictures are for purposes of the blog, they are not a part of the poem itself. Which is to say, I'm not a multi-media artist. Not cool enough for that.)

***

Can one

Take back harsh words or do they pollute

Until the end of time? At any rate,

This place is gorgeous, Father. Let that be

The final word on Salvador. The grass

Is elegant. Has that been said of grass

Before? Even the greedy weeds possess

A beauty to match the flowers.

Collage

Of sound and silence, chaos of delight.

***

A veritable sailor is your Charles,

Dear sisters—taking sport in furling sheets

Against the Samarang. A regular

Man o’ war befuddled by our Beagle.

There I was, picture this, both hands engaged

With the main-royal, studding-tack betwixt

My teeth. A major breakthrough with the men.

Imagine me, the seasick note-scribbler,

Ensconced in quarter-deck tomfoolery,

Allowed in sacred precincts, bawdy tales

Fantastic with the lies of otherwise

Shy seamen.

***

Beagle boasts

A fiddler. Funny fellow, this one is—

Up to one thing or another all day.

Mostly tinkering. Occasionally

He helps me with my obsession—the birds.

Me and my man, Syms Covington, have caught

Some eighty species. Slit ‘em and gut ‘em

And jot yoor’n letters, he sings while we seive

The entrails through our fingers. What a joy

That Covington is.

What a bloody mess!

***

What Eden is this

Where reptiles rule? Is all temptation moot?

All knowledge native? Where, Creator, hide

Your likenesses? Erasmus, get a load

Of this, because I’ve said nothing yet

Respecting their monstrosity:

Eight grown men to shuffle these tortoises

A mere ten feet. Humdingers fourteen stone

At least. And damned disgusting iguanas—

These clumsy imps of darkness.


***

I hear the grunts behind a hut—three, four,

Perhaps five heathens forswearing the laws

Of their Creator. Dipsomania

Abounds, all manner of vice oozes, seeps

Through street-ruts, pools and festers.

A woman wails. A missionary daubs

A single tear with a grime-stained sleeve.

I am on the verge myself. A child wails.

A mongrel dog lies dead in our path,

Flies swarm the mange and feast. I cry.

Now FitzRoy takes my hand. Deluge—my tears

Like God’s bursted firmament. Heaven help

These creatures. Oh, Fitz, they need Christ.

***

By elephant,

I clomp through the Mauritian wilds.

The scenery bewitches. Oh, a sweet

Virginia would be nice. A lovely girl

For romance and idle nights beneath stars.

***

Cape Town—another little embryo

Of England hatching. Nations send their men

To lose their tongues and spend their hearts out.

***

Yes, there is much of matter—bugs and beasts,

Stone and tree, lava and river—to see;

But there’s a sense in solitude, amidst

The temples nature built, that matters most . . .

More stirs in the chest of man than mere breath.